Cultural reggae acts Bushman and Kabaka Pyramid are the lone artistes out of Jamaica featured on this year’s staging of Rastafest, Canada’s largest Rastafari festival.

The event — which pays homage to Rastafari culture and history, and celebrates reggae music in Canada — is set for August 16-20.

One of the special features of Rastafest this year is the hosting of a reggae music conference, the first ever in Canada.

This forum will examine some of the major challenges facing the genre globally. Among the issues are a lack of airplay on international radio stations; the lack of recognition from international music awards and the stiff competition Jamaican acts face from from non-Jamaicans creating and performing reggae successfully. Worldwide sales of recorded music in traditional formats is also set to be up for discussion at the event set for August 17 at the Toronto Plaza hotel. The conference continues the following day at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University.

Reggae insider Lloyd Stanbury is a featured speaker at the conference and is set to speak about the future of reggae music, and how to keep this genre of music alive and prosperous in North America and around the world.

“The number of reggae artistes signed to major labels and large independent record labels has declined significantly in recent years, hence there is now less radio exposure for reggae on mainstream North American radio,” said Stanbury.

— Richard Johnson