Voting by a worldwide audience to choose the winners in the 40th anniversary staging of the International Reggae and World Music Awards (IRAWMA), which returns to Kingston early in May, has ended.

The event, regarded as reggae music’s next best to the Grammys is scheduled for May 7 at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston and, apart from a star-studded list of entertainers, will be honouring numerous contributors to the growth and development of Jamaican music, especially the reggae genre, and some 50 years of dancehall.

“Coming back to Jamaica, I have been speaking with the Minister of Culture [Olivia “Babsy” Grange] and she had been encouraging me to say, ‘make it Jamaica’, because Jamaica is the place for these kinds of awards. Well, the people who have been attending are primarily Jamaicans and they accept reggae as their music and we agreed that we would have it for a few years, or indefinitely,” he pointed out.

“We had things planned for May 1 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of IRAWMA in Kingston. Our directors and advisors decided to advance it to May 7, 2023. All reservations will be honoured,” he said.

Full disclosure of the plans for the return of the event to Kingston, where it was last held in 2019, will be made by Martin, a former news photographer in Jamaica before moving to Chicago, where he has built a solid reputation for producing events, will be given at a press briefing schedule for the Jamaica Pegasus on May 3.

Prominent among the individuals who have been nominated for special treatment when the multi-national event is staged are the late reggae music maestro Peter Tosh and the founding duo of Jamaica’s major recording label distributor, New York-based VP Records’ founders Pat Chin and her late husband, Vincent.

“We are honouring the best in the industry, and respect and honour are what we are about,” said the St Thomas-born show promoter/producer, who is also the head of Martin’s International, executive producer of the Chicago Music Awards, and chair of the Chicago-based Black Heroes Matter coalition.

“You will see some of the people who have contributed, not just as entertainers, but also the people behind the scenes, and those in the media all of whom we will be there on May 7,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

Martin reiterated that Pat Chin, who has been in the business for the past 60 years, is “one of those who have contributed so much to the industry”.

“Just about all the [Jamaican[ entertainers have passed through VP Records, and have been supported by VP Records over the years. They have done a whole lot for the industry, and that was a wonderful thing to do,” Martin pointed out.

A contest for the best IRAWMA song for this year is also included in the package, as entries for the poll to select this year’s winning song folded more than a week ago to enable the promoters to have it ready as the anthem for this year’s staging of the show.

“When we started the awards there was no form of recognition for reggae entertainers, Caribbean entertainers, or even Chicago entertainers. We saw the need to do something about it at that time and, with the support of people like Peter Tosh, Dennis Brown, Freddy McGregor, and Mutabaruka, just to name a few, we decided to make it happen so that we could have something to show our respect and honour for our entertainers in Jamaica and the world music artistes,” he stated.

“We have taken the awards from city to city and country to country over those 40 years. We spent some good times at the Apollo Theater in New York, and we have been to Trinidad and Tobago, and we will be having our sixth hosting of the event in Jamaica this year. So it will be a great privilege to be there,” he noted.

“We have seen just about all major entertainers taking the stage over those years, but this one will be the one no one can afford to miss, because it is going to be outstanding. It is going to be something that you cannot afford to miss, especially using the red carpet,” he added.

Among the leaders in the current poll to decide the Entertainer of the Year are the very talented Koffee (Mikayla Victoria Simpson), the prominent singer, songwriter, rapper and guitarist from Spanish Town, as well as this year’s Reggae Grammy winner, Kabaka Pyramid, Popcaan, Sean Paul, and Shaggy. Spice, the reigning “Queen of the Dancehall”, has emerged as Koffee’s closest female rival.

Nominations started on March 9.

Tosh will be receiving a posthumous award “for championing the use of marijuana…where it is accepted now in several US states”, Martin revealed.

He said that dancehall will also have an exceptional night, with Stone Love and several other top sound systems being honoured for their contribution to the expansion of the genre. In fact, Martin says that the weekend which includes May 7 will be dedicated to “50 years of real dancehall”.