Stacious corrects critics who believe Jamaican festival song contest is only for DancehallMag fans

[ad_1]

Dancehall artist and newly crowned 2021 Jamaica Festival song winner Stacious responded to comments from fellow Jamaicans that the contest is for amateurs only and established artists like her should be banned from participating.

Stacious made her comments during an interview about her winning entry Jamaican Spirit, with veteran reporter Dionne Jackson Miller on Friday night, during the talk segment of Beyond The Headlines on Radio Jamaica.

According to the Come Into My Room singer like Jackson Miller, she has seen a flurry of comments from people who mistakenly believe that the competition organized by the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission is exclusively for amateurs and unknown artists, but that it is it was impossible for her to answer and correct everyone individually.

I will now use your platform to remind them. It was never an amateur competition from the start. It was always up to professional artists to find a song to represent us, said Stacious.

When Toots was doing it for how many consecutive years he was a touring artist. He made deh tout ova a performance. He was never an amateur, she added.

According to the Good Life artist, over the past two decades interest in the competition had plummeted, due, among other things, to the lack of participation from professional artists and the fact that all entries were alike.

It’s just that the turnout has decreased a bit. So I think the new acts that came in were linked to mimic what they had heard before. So you find that you get more of the same I think because the festival is seen as a bit old fashioned and not that cool so you find that not everyone jumps at the chance to get involved especially if you are an established artist in quotes, or a known artist, if you basically walk into the nuttn naw gwaan fi yuh festival that’s how it would be seen before last year when Buju walked in, she said. Explain.

During the chat, Jackson Miller pointed out to Stacious that people also say they like the song but it doesn’t sound like a festival.

The certified fitness trainer responded by saying that this mindset stems from the fact that over the decades people have gotten used to festival songs being laid to just one type of beat, that is- ie Mento, with virtually no variation, which was to the detriment of the competition. . As a result, she wanted to bring the most modern Jamaican genre to the competition.

Stace

As I got older and started to understand Reggae and Dancehall, and the transition, I realized that the festival had never changed. So I think where it started to go down, because the first thing that happened was the established records were not sending any more entries. And for the last 10, at 15, we really can’t say that even changed other than last year with Buju. And people had lost interest. And the complaints I’ve heard and what I feel is that every year I hear the same song or someone trying to replicate the song from previous years, Stacious said.

And I think I need something that the young people will listen to and that the old ones like me can hear a sound that they can relate to. Don’t say something’s wrong with the Jamaican sounds, the Ska and Mento sounds. But I’m sure they want to hear something else. And I’m really happy with the variety that this year has presented, because there are traditional sounds; there were the contemporary sounds of Reggae, Roots Reggae, Dancehall they were all there, she added.

Plus, Stacious, in explaining to Miller why she chose to write and record a song that was uplifting and inspiring, instead of doing the theme that has become the norm of songs saying we love Jamaica that mention the word Jamaica more than the national anthem. , said she wanted to celebrate the Jamaican people themselves, their resilience and creativity.

The first thing is: we know our food is good. How many times do you want to know how good our ackee and our salted fish are? How many times do you want to hear how pretty the beach is? Stacious joked.

Personally, for me, I didn’t go this way because I think we have to remember the real spirit; the real energy behind Jamaica. What makes up the Jamaican people. We are the most creative, the most energetic, the most dynamic, the most resilient. Well, you will get the most out of any situation; We are going to make careers in some unexpected situations and we have to celebrate that, she added.

Stacious Suite: I don’t think any other country has people like us. And it’s also a chance for us to congratulate ourselves and say, hey, we’ve been through a very difficult time; we adapted, yes we rebelled in a way, but we celebrated and we survived. So I just wanted to celebrate it and just enjoy the time.

One of her stated goals for entering the contest was to broaden the audience as each sound resonates with a different demographic and popularize the festival song contest, which Stacious told Jackson Miller that she believes she accomplished. .

I think I broadened the audience for several reasons. First of all, people were used to this kind of Mento sound for festivals and I think some people like it, but then there are people who are a little tired of hearing the same kind of songs every year. So I gave them an option. And I love the variety that this year’s competition has given people, she said.

Stacious, whose first name is Stacey Scarlett, also explained that she was not a newcomer to the JCDC competitions, having competed and medaled in the speech and theater categories of the festival, while in elementary school. and that she was also a candidate in the Jamaica Festival Queen parish competition, a few years ago where she beat third.

She also told Jackson Miller that she expected the competition to highlight her versatility as well, as her reggae singer, whom she recorded in the past, is often not featured as people tend to look to his more steamy Dancehall recordings.

I’ve always been a little bit tuned in to the cultural side of things and things that I know that make people show a bit of variation and sometimes my softer side. I’m not as hardened as people would tend to think as all Dancehall artists are. And I think participating in this competition would give me that climax, explained Stacious.

Because I do reggae tracks as a Dancehall artist and I realize that I don’t get the same attention that when I do a hard core song and they complain and say female artist, they don’t sing only one thing. So even though I do give variety, I don’t understand this climax and luckily JCDC was able to give me the platform to come and showcase this side of me on a larger scale, she said.

[ad_2]