At last Thursday’s Independence Grand Gala, Busy Signal and Wayne Wonder joined Sizzla Kalonji, Capleton, Beres Hammond, Leroy Sibbles, Derrick Morgan, Rita Marley, Morgan Heritage, Third World, Ken Boothe, Toots Hibbert, Dawn Penn, Melody Makers, Byron Lee and the Dragonnaires, Shaggy, Grub Cooper, and Sanchez, as recipients of the culture ministry’s Reggae Icon Award.

In this article shared with the Jamaica Observer, Dr Leo Gilling, criminologist, Diaspora strategist, journalist, philanthropist and policy analyst, questions what exactly does the award measure and why a slew of apparently deserving artistes were leapfrogged by some of the current recipients.

Following is part one of a lightly edited version of the article:

Let me begin with what this article is not.

This is not an argument that Sanchez, Wayne Wonder, Busy Signal, Sizzla Kalonji, Capleton, Beres Hammond, Leroy Sibbles, Derrick Morgan, Rita Marley, Morgan Heritage, or Third World et al are undeserving of national recognition.

They are accomplished artistes who have made significant contributions to Jamaican music. My question is different.

If Jamaica has established qualifications for determining who should receive the Reggae Icon Award, do those qualifications adequately explain who is selected — and, just as importantly, who is selected first? That distinction matters.

An award does more than recognise achievement. A national award helps establish a standard. It tells younger artistes, the music industry, Jamaicans and the wider world: This is what we mean when we call someone a Jamaican music icon.

If Jamaica creates a national award intended to represent the highest standard of musical excellence, then the first recipients should help define that standard. The pioneers should establish the benchmark.
Subsequent generations should have something meaningful toward which to aspire. If you create a benchmark, you should begin with the benchmark.

The five qualifications

The qualifications publicly associated with selection for the Reggae Icon Award can be summarised in five broad areas:
1. Pioneering Foundation & Evolution
The artiste should have played a foundational role in originating, developing, or evolving Jamaican genres such as ska, rocksteady, reggae, dancehall, or dub.
2. Authenticity & Conscious Message
The artiste’s work should demonstrate cultural grounding, positive or uplifting messages, social consciousness, spirituality, national pride, or advocacy for social justice.
3. Global Ambassadorship
The artiste should demonstrate sustained international impact and help expand the global footprint of Jamaican music.
4. Longevity & Artistic Consistency
The artiste should demonstrate decades of artistic excellence, influential recordings and resonance across generations.
5. Community & Nation-Building Impact
Consideration is also given to mentorship, charitable activity, youth development and other contributions to Jamaican communities.
At first glance, these appear to be reasonable qualifications. But something interesting happens when we actually apply them.
For purposes of analysis, I assigned each qualification a maximum of 10 points, producing a possible total of 50.
These are not Government of Jamaica scores. They are my analytical application of the qualifications and are intended to encourage discussion about how the criteria operate when applied consistently.

Artiste Pioneer / Evolution Cultural / Conscious Global Longevity Community Total /50

Rita Marley – 9 10 10 9 10 48
Leroy Sibbles – 10 9 9 10 8 46
Beres Hammond – 8 9 10 10 9 46
Derrick Morgan – 10 8 9 10 8 45
Sizzla Kalonji – 8 10 9 9 9 45
Capleton – 8 10 9 9 8 44
Peetah Morgan / Morgan Heritage – 8 9 10 9 8 44
AJ Brown / Third World – 7 9 10 9 7 42
Busy Signal – 8 8 8 8 7 39
Sanchez – 4 7 8 10 7 36
Wayne Wonder – 6 6 9 9 6 36

Reasonable people will disagree with individual scores. That is expected. But the numbers themselves are not the central argument. They simply force us to examine what the qualifications actually mean.
When viewed against those qualifications, the pattern of selections can appear erratic and inconsistent, particularly when artistes with demonstrably stronger claims to pioneering influence, historical importance and global impact remain outside the list.
And perhaps nowhere is the difficulty clearer than with the word “pioneering”. What exactly is a pioneer?
A pioneer is not simply someone who became successful, popular, or enduring. A pioneer changes the architecture of the music; introduces something; transforms something; opens a previously closed door, or creates an approach upon which subsequent generations build.
That distinction matters because if “pioneering” is one of the measures of icon status, it cannot simply become another word for longevity or popularity.
Derrick Morgan has a genuine pioneering claim because his career reaches into the formative development of ska, rocksteady and reggae.
Leroy Sibbles has one because his work as vocalist, musician and arranger intersects directly with the development of Jamaica’s early reggae sound.
But consider Sanchez.
Sanchez is unquestionably one of Jamaica’s great vocalists. His voice is distinctive. His longevity is extraordinary. Generations of Jamaicans know his recordings. But a substantial part of his career has involved interpreting songs written and previously recorded by others.
That is an artistic accomplishment. It can even be an extraordinary artistic accomplishment. But it is not necessarily pioneering. If pioneering means originating, developing, or substantially evolving Jamaican music, longevity cannot simply be substituted for innovation.
The same question arises, although differently, with Wayne Wonder.
Wayne Wonder became an important participant in modern dancehall and reggae crossover and achieved significant international success. But was he a pioneer of that evolution, or an exceptionally successful participant within it? Those are not the same things.
This distinction is important because otherwise every successful artiste eventually becomes a “pioneer”. That empties the word of meaning.
A great singer can be an icon without being a pioneer. A great songwriter can be an icon without being an international superstar. An artiste can revolutionise Jamaican music without operating a charitable foundation. And an artiste can achieve enormous international commercial success without having created a new musical form. These are different kinds of achievement. A credible national recognition system should be capable of distinguishing among them.

The historical question
Now consider something else.
The Reggae Icon Award was introduced in 2019. Reggae was not. Neither was Jamaican popular music. By the time this award was created, Jamaica already possessed more than half a century of extraordinary musical history. There was therefore already a historical backlog of giants.
Artistes had helped create ska. Others had shaped rocksteady.
Others had helped create reggae. Some revolutionised the Jamaican deejay tradition. Others developed dub. Others helped establish dancehall.
Some carried these musical forms around the world. Others influenced musical genres far beyond Jamaica. So when Jamaica established a new national award bearing the word “Icon”, there was an important question to answer from the beginning: Who establishes the benchmark?
If the qualifications emphasise pioneering, longevity, international impact, cultural authenticity and national contribution, one would reasonably expect the earliest recipients to include the artistes whose careers most completely embody those qualities.
This is why the sequence matters. It is not enough to ask whether an individual recipient qualifies. We must also ask: Who else qualifies more strongly? And: Why did one qualifying artiste receive recognition before another?
Those questions do not diminish anyone who has already received the award. They test the integrity of the selection architecture.
The fairest way to examine this is simple. Take exactly the same qualifications. Do not change them. Do not create special rules for anyone. Apply them to Jamaican-born artistes who have not received the award.
What happens when Bob Marley, Toots Hibbert, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Burning Spear, Marcia Griffiths, Dennis Brown, U-Roy, Gregory Isaacs, Shabba Ranks, Ini Kamoze, Eek-A-Mouse, and others are placed beside the existing recipients?
If the qualifications are sound, they should help us understand the hierarchy. If they cannot, perhaps the problem is not the artistes. Perhaps the problem is the criteria.
That is where Part II begins.
Tomorrow: Jamaica’s Reggae Icon Award – when the same test is applied to the giants