After a two-year absence, the competition to decide the nation’s top school band will culminate this Sunday with the grand finals set for the Vera Moody Concert Hall at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in St Andrew.

The competition, which is known as Jamaica’s Best School Band, will see six schools squaring off for the $250,000 top prize and title. The schools competing are St Catherine High, Dinthill Technical High, Denbigh High, Belair High, Papine High and the Alpha Vocational Training Centre.

Founder and creative producer of the competition Rayven Amani noted that this year was particularly problematic since the students were not in school and, therefore, this impacted preparation and rehearsals. In addition, the restrictions posed by the novel coronavirus pandemic also impacted the judging process in the early rounds.

“This year was tricky at first and there were times when we thought a competition would not have been possible this year. Initially, what we asked the schools to send us their submissions for round one on video so we could do it virtually. This was done and as we were about to move into round two the opening up of the country was announced.

“So what we did was just make all the schools from round two come back for the finals. Two schools forfeited their place, so now we have six in the finals,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

Jamaica’s Best School Band is now in its ninth season. In 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, Amani and her team had to shelve its plans for that year’s staging. This was also done in 2021.

Come Sunday, the six bands will present an eight-to-10-minute set based on the theme Remix and Fusion, in front of a four-member panel of adjudicators comprising music insider Stephen Stewart, vocalist Sherita Lewis, and music executive Abishai Hoilett.

The competitors will be judged based on an established set of criteria which includes musicianship, and stage presence.

For Amani this competition aims to nurture the next set of Jamaican musicians and continue a legacy of great music coming out of Jamaica.

“We aim to provide that platform to nurture and mentor these young musicians. That’s why we have persons in the music industry as judges, so they can share insights with them,” she said.

The last winner of the competition was Alpha Vocational Training Centre which took home the title in 2019.