Crawford Says Grange Has Reduced Culture Ministry To The ‘Ministry of Events’
In the aftermath of Government Minister Olivia “Babsy” Grange’s decision to scrap the National Festival Song Competition this year, self-proclaimed ‘Dancehall Defender’ Senator Damion Crawford has asserted that the “main focus relating to the Culture portfolio”, which is held by her, has been lost.
Crawford, who is Opposition spokesman on Culture and Entertainment, says the Ministry, under which the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission falls, appears to be nothing short of an event-planning agency.
“The Ministry of Culture has been reduced to the ‘Ministry of Events’. That is not what culture is,” Crawford declared, during a Peoples National Party (PNP) divisional conference at the Bridgeport High School in St. Catherine.
“What we are seeing now with this embarrassing situation of not having festival songs for our 60th anniversary, is the chickens coming home to roost. The chickens have come home to roost because we have not recognised a problem,” Crawford stated.
He added: “Culture is the morals and the values of the society… it is the beliefs and how we act as a society. So when dem seh a value and attitudes campaign, this should be coming out of the Ministry of Culture. When yuh seh ‘festival’, is because we celebrate what we want to keep and we don’t celebrate what we don’t want to keep. What is happening now is that our culture has been lost; our morals have been trampled on and our values are nothing.”
On Wednesday, Grange had disclosed during her 2022/23 Sectoral presentation in Parliament, that a panel, which was established to select the finalists of this year’s competition, advised that it was unable to choose 10 suitable songs from among the entries despite extending the deadline.
In expressing disappointment about the entries, Grange had also said that the JCDC has taken a professional approach toward the competition, and had recommended that the competition be shelved this year.
“And I really want the country to understand that, and for everyone to understand that we do not go on over 30 digital platforms across the world if we have inferior productions. And we do not have the time to take a production from scratch to completion and then select the winning song,” she said.
“So what comes in as an entry, must be the finished product. It must be well-produced; the musicians the instrumentation, the arrangements must be proper. These are the criteria that has been established for the entries. If they are not up to that standard, they can’t be selected. Jamaica is now a global brand,” she added.
Some critics like veteran producer and arranger Grub Cooper have, since the announcement, called for the JCDC to be stripped of the responsibility for holding the competition.
However, chairman of the song selection panel Gussie Clarke has insisted that the quality of the entries did not meet standards set by the JCDC, and so the only option was to recommend that the festival song competition be shelved this year.
“The criteria that we are looking at, a whole lot of them were songs that were interpolation of other songs. They were not mixed properly; they did not sound proper; some were just acapella. It was so poor in terms of lyrical content, the delivery, artistry of the singer, the quality of the music. It was many different elements,” he said.
“The criteria clearly started that there should be recordings that were properly recorded and mixed and are not elements or interpolations of any other existing recording. And a lot of them fell in that and could not even be listened to,” he added.
The Rules and Regulations of the Jamaica Festival Song Competition note that it is open to citizens and all other persons residing in Jamaica for a period of not less than two years prior to the closing date of entry in the Competition, and that entrants should be 18 years and older.
It also asks that each song be four minutes or less in duration, may be “based on any subject, but should be one that can rally the nation, stir a spirit of togetherness, is inspirational and engenders national pride, and the music must be of Jamaican Rhythms”, be memorable and able to “stimulate the audience to sing along and/or to dance to its catchy beat”.
It also says that all entries submitted must be unpublished, original songs and shall not infringe on any copyrights or any other rights of a third party.
The rules also emphasize that the Jamaica Festival Song Competition is a Professional Song Competition and so all entrants must be members of at least one Professional Music Industry Organization, such as JACAP for example.