Jamaica Reggae Industry Association

The industry's own representative body, established on 3 February 2009 as a non-profit, non-governmental umbrella for everyone who works in Jamaican music: performers, producers, promoters, engineers, managers and the trades around them. Its stated objects are to unite those stakeholders, to open access to training, networking and finance, to lobby government on the sector's behalf, and to hold Jamaica at the centre of a music the rest of the world now makes too.

The public face of that work is Reggae Month, which JaRIA has led every February since its founding year, along with the programme it carries: the free Reggae Wednesdays concerts, the Reggae Open University seminars, the monthly JaRIA JaMz sessions, One Drop of Harmony in Montego Bay, Reggae CyaA Dunn in Ocho Rios, and the JaRIA Honour Awards, which matter mainly because they are decided inside the industry rather than abroad.

The association also counts reggae's inscription on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage and Kingston's designation as a UNESCO Creative City of Music among the campaigns it worked on, and it has pressed government on intellectual property and on entertainment zone legislation. Michael "Ibo" Cooper, the Third World keyboardist, was its first chairman and stayed on as its Legacy Director; the attorney and musician Ewan Simpson has chaired it through the 2020s.