Cristy Barber: "Dancehall Will Receive Its Own Category at Grammy Awards"

Grammy-nominated music producer and executive producer Cristy Barber maintains that there is a strong possibility that Dancehall will ever win its Grammy Awards, and that the goal should now be used to block the "Best Reggae Album" which captures all Jamaican music. , due to removal.

According to Barber, the request for the two types to be given to different types has been repeated for many years, but has not been considered by the Recording College.

"In the past, people always asked us other forms in our field. In the 90's, when I became involved with the Recording College, and in 2003 when I started this campaign, I applied, and some people applied to the college to try to find another unit," he explained.

"Everyone wanted to make a Reggae unit, a Dancehall unit. Unfortunately, it never happened and I don't see it happening with the fact that the Recording College - head office is located in LA (Los Angeles). "The more fields you put in the more categories, the more work needs to be done. So, you see things being shortened, some names are changed. It is very difficult for a field to find another category," he said.

Regarding the preservation of the category, Barber, who was speaking at a recent conference on Jamaican music, said that the data shows that the number of those approved had decreased by 2021.

"My concern is the preservation of our real domain is what we need to worry about. Right now, we are going through a catastrophe, where all the submissions in all fields were very low. The big issue in our unit this year is that we only had 125 submissions. And a lot of "The presentations were riddim albums, which I really like; I'm a Dancehall fan," he explained.

“Unfortunately, within the Grammy program of things, it is a form of art that is only known to Jamaica, so if we had about 70 presentations of artists this year and others were about 50 albums of one riddim, the way that College of Records "The only thing that can be looked at is that we only had 70 submissions. And that is one of the important things to look for when removing categories and categories. If your submissions are low, you are competing to lose your category," he added.

Grammy Awards are awarded by the College of Recording, an American College of "Learning of musicians, producers, recording engineers, and other music professionals, which through Grammys, recognizes achievements in the music and music industry that are world-renowned, and is considered to be the largest music award voted by friends in the world.

The 64th edition of the Grammys will take place on April 3, instead of the original date of January 31. This year's festival will also be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, for the first time, with ten Jamaican artists nominated for one or more awards in four categories.

Five of these artists are vying for a Grammy Award in the Best Reggae Album category, which is a Dancehall Spice artist for his 10 albums; Sean Paul for Live N Livin; singer Etana for Pajoma; Jesse Royal for Royal; Gramps Morgan for Positive Vibration. The US Army Band has also been nominated in the Beauty in the Silence unit.

In February 2019, during Reggae Month, the interim chairman of the Jamaican Reggae Music Community (JaRIA), Michael 'Ibo' Cooper, stated that Reggae and Dancehall should not be separated from the Grammys.

In his speech at the Open Reggae University of JaRIA, Cooper said that influencing Dancehall as a unit would "set back" Jamaican music.

"We don't need a Dancehall unit at Grammys; that would set us back," Cooper had said at the time, according to a Gleaner report.

"Dancehall people are being deceived about separating dancehall from reggae. Dem seh, 'Oh, that (reggae) style of the ancients'. They did not stand on what they used to be. than trying to build it from scratch, ”he said.

Cooper had also claimed that the inclusion of a new unit would spark controversy over what was considered Dancehall.

"We always try to create something instead of focusing on what we have and building it. Do you know how long the rocksteady lasted? Three years. Because in those days, we were trying to create something else," he said.

"For Dancehall, people feel like it should be heard in a certain way, so it won't be long before people say, 'Well, this is not Dancehall because it doesn't sound like this or that'," he added.