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ENTITY · CONCEPT / TERM

Jamaican music heritage programming

Well supported

The turn towards treating Jamaican music as heritage — Reggae Month, the UNESCO inscription, museum exhibitions, school curricula and state-backed festivals. It brings funding and standing, and it brings the usual risk: heritage tends to prefer the settled and respectable part of a tradition, and much of what made this music matter was neither.

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At a glance

Confidence
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Connections

In stories

Story · Well supportedReggae Month as heritage and industry calendar

February in Jamaica is an official music month — part commemoration, part trade fair, part argument about what the state owes the culture it now celebrates.

Story · Well supportedReggae becomes 'heritage'

UNESCO's 2018 listing dignified the music worldwide - and started an argument about freezing a living culture.

Debate & reception

What people argued about this record — two documented positions each time, kept apart from verified fact. Browse every argument in the archive →

Debate

Heritage or tourism brand? Who owns 'official' reggae

One side

Profile-raising heritage branding

The other

A sanitised, marketable official reggae

A neutral framing: state heritage-branding, Reggae Month and related programming are credited with raising reggae's global profile and tourism value; critics fear the official frame favours a sanitised, marketable reggae over dancehall and living street practice, and ask who gets to define the 'official' music.

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Compiled and researched by The Jamaica Music Atlas music desk. The sources that informed it are credited above.

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