The
Jamaica Music Society (JAMMS) recently made a generous donation of $250,000 to the University Hospital of the West Indies’ Montefiore Cardiac Mission 2025 to assist patients who are unable to cover the cost of life-saving heart surgeries.

The official donation was made on March 10 by representatives from JAMMS. Seen here are (from left) Director Craig “Craigy T” Thompson, who is also the chairman of JAMMS’ Benevolence Committee; JAMMS director Tommy Cowan; Dr Sunil Stephenson, cardiothoracic surgeon at the UHWI; and general manager of JAMMS Evon Mullings, who said the initiative will save lives and improve the quality of living for many, some of whom are from the music industry itself.

“JAMMS’ involvement, by way of a donation felt duty bound, as our mission in serving the music industry takes on a wider dimension of being [about] more than just royalties. We have witnessed a number of our own members having to undergo this critical life-saving surgery, and so it was not difficult to support an initiative that is making this otherwise very expensive surgery available at no cost to needy Jamaicans. It is not difficult to see that the life we help in saving may be our very own from the industry,” he said.

For the past five years UHWI’s cardiothoracic surgeons have been collaborating with a team from the Montefiore Hospital in New York to host a yearly cardiac mission.

Dr Stephenson offered that the JAMMS donation “will go quite a far way in helping us to get some of the necessary supplies that we need for the patients”, as he thanked the organisation.

JAMMS functions as a performance rights organisation and as a copyright licensing body, thereby providing legal access to recorded music owned by its members for broadcasting and public performance, and in turn delivering royalties to its producer and performer members for the use of their works.

— Kediesha Perry