Refurbished Studio One a potential tourist hotspot
Cultural luminaries say the
Last Wednesday evening (Jan. 29) a wave of friends, families and reggae lovers flooded Studio One in celebration of Clement Seymour “Coxsone” Dodd legacy and his contribution to the birth and development of reggae and ska.
Senior lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Professor Donna Hope shared that the restoration of Studio One as one of Jamaica’s treasured and historical establishments has the propensity to attract visitors worldwide.
“I believe that this location with the murals will become an attraction. People will want to come and see it and I will probably take my students to come and look at the murals and look at the location.
“It has been repurposed and refurbished so we can say this is Studio One and show the pictures on the mural and say this is Sugar Minot etc and tell them how the kinds of connections they had to Studio One and Sir Coxsone Dodd. It will become a kind of access point for many people and visitors to the island and form part of the reggae month activities,” she told BUZZ.
She lauded the Dodd
family for their efforts to revamp Studio One in a forceful way while noting
that it’s a unique method to preserve Jamaica’s rich history.
“I think the mural unveiling is a great initiative. It’s one of the ways that helps us to document Jamaican music, the history of Jamaican music as well as Sir Coxsone Dodd’s contribution to the overall development of the musical genres that have fed into all the ones that we have around us in Jamaica today,” she said.
Echoing similar sentiments, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the UWI Mona, Dr Carolyn Cooper, says Jamaica needs to seek more creative ways to commemorate those who have made significant contributions to the country.
“I think the mural is a beautiful celebration of the artists that passed through Studio One. I think we need to have more of these acts of celebration to recognise the people who really created this huge global music.
“I also think sometimes, Jamaicans, we take each other lightly and the echo we are always creating. We just need to stop and acknowledge and big up what we have accomplished,” she told BUZZ.
