Has Reggae Found Its Place At The Grammy Awards Show?

The Recording Academy is notable the premier organization for music, worldwide and the Grammy Awards is no different. The Best Reggae Album category started back in 1985 and since then many reggae artists have been nominated in this category. To date there has been twenty-eight awards won in this category. This year’s winner is legendary reggae artist Jimmy Cliff who is winning for the second time.

Some of us were pleasantly surprised to learn that at the 55^th Grammy Awards show there would be a tribute to reggae legend the Honorable Robert Nesta Marley, OM. I think the question on many minds is, did they deliver? Now I have mixed emotions about what was supposed to be a tribute to Bob Marley. For one I thought it was poorly planned and two, how can you have a tribute to an artist and only one song from their catalog was performed? On the other had I thought even though it was poorly planned, has reggae found a place at the Grammy Award show? Who benefited the most from this, was it Bruno Mars, Rihanna, Sting, Ziggy and Damien Marley, The Academy, or did reggae just get an adrenaline boost?

Now many of my fellow Jamaican and reggae lovers all over the world are disgruntled. Matt Wilstein of Mediaite sums it up quite nicely in his article, “Bob Marley Tribute At Grammy Awards Failed to Pay Tribute To Bob Marley” and I must say I agree with the points Wilstein makes. However, there are other folks as myself who believe that this was a great entry point for reggae. I am certainly one of those persons who would love to see reggae take a permanent place at the Grammy Awards, could this be the beginning of what is to come? Your guess is as good as mine.

We also learned that this tribute came about as a result to lure Bruno Mars back to performing at the Grammys this year. Was Bob Marley not deserving od a decent tribute, after all he has paved the way for many hip-hop and rap artists and not to mention the influence he has had on so many more including Sting who was part of the tribute line up. As you can see there are many unanswered question, one will never know or we will just have to wait and see what the Grammy Awards producers have in store of this genre in the future.