THE venerable Bank of Nova Scotia is showing itself as part of the vanguard in resuscitating live music in Jamaica by partnering with Global Battle of the Bands (GBoB) as the main sponsor of the Jamaican eliminations, scheduled for December 22 at Red Bones, the Blues Café.

GBoB Jamaica licence holder Seretse Small, himself an accomplished musician and advocate for live music, recounted the process of securing the support of the financial services giant.

“After a brief introduction to Joylene Griffiths-Irving, the director of communications for the Bank, I began to speak about the Global Battle of the Bands 2010 and what it meant to me, Jamaica and the participants. As soon as I had finished my summary of the event she asked, “How much will this cost?” I handed her the summary one-page document that was quoted in US dollars and as soon as she had computed the Jamaican equivalent she slammed the desk with conviction and said, “Sold!”

Small reiterated his gratitude to BNS for coming on board, citing it as a marked difference to his prior experiences seeking support for the project, which initially ran in 2005.

“In 2005, when we first tried to mount the Global Battle of the Bands Competition in Jamaica, it was a lesson in the challenges of getting sponsorship for live music… one marketing executive kept asking me, who is the artiste? I explained that the artiste was the band. She looked at me with a blank expression and reiterated her question, but who is the artiste?

For their part, BNS, through Griffith-Irving, said, “At Scotia Bank our love of music, and thus of projects like this, is born out of our realisation of what music can do for young people.

“Learning to play and appreciating music can help give them the life skills to meet the challenges that face them.”

Griffiths-Irving further outlined that the bank had also supported the legendary Alpha Boys’ Band, and encouraged musical exposition within its own ranks through its Scotia singers group. Their recent advertising campaigns have featured several musicians and the bank has even adopted the band C-Sharp as a project.

The Global Battle of the Bands was developed and initiated in Europe by a group of European live music promoters led by live music (and football) uber-fan,Tore Lande.

These promoters put on what is known in the USA and Europe as Battle of the Bands events where bands would compete against one another for a prize. Over the years, this live music event format has been very effective in showcasing new undiscovered talent, music business networking and the nurturing and promotion of live music.

Lande and his colleagues decided to take things a step further in 2004 to make the competition global by combining all their events and inviting promoters from other countries to join in the establishing the first Global Battle of the Bands (GBOB) with the World Finals held at the famed Astoria in London.

The World Finals for 2010 will take place in the Malyasian capital of Kuala Lumpur on February 26, with bands from over 40 countries expected to compete.