Jemere Morgan wants year-long focus on reggae

Reggae artiste Jemere Morgan stresses that reggae artistes must preserve and celebrate the legacy and impact of reggae music and black empowerment all year round, and not just in February.

"To me, every day is Reggae Day and I'm glad that Reggae Month is being celebrated in the same time as Black History Month where we get to highlight certain people that's important to our black history such as Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley, Morgan Heritage and Haile Selassie and black entrepreneurs. It's very important to have a month to highlight that and I'm glad that I'm a part of that as reggae is also the people's music," Morgan told THE STAR.

"As the next generation of artiste who is responsible to take care of the music that the artistes before us created and held on to and reinvent over time, we have the responsibility to keep up the quality and the legacy of that. So we are ambassadors of the next generation to ensure that the teachings and the message and the feeling of the music carry on; and even credit the ones that came before us," he added.

Being the son of musical powerhouse, Gramps of Morgan Heritage, Morgan believes more can be done to preserve a genre his family and other artistes worked hard to build.

"If persons want to be deejays, there should be certain programmes by for example, Stone Love [sound system], you can go and learn how to mix or be a sound clash deejay. And if you want to learn how to be a proper artiste, yuh can go down by Tuff Gong/Heritage [studio] and learn how to. We need more programmes like dat to help the next generation of artistes to be more advanced than we were or the past generation. The only thing reggae needs is more opportunities for artistes," Morgan reasoned. He also suggested that musical representatives can join as executives on international musical platforms such as Spotify and Apple music "in order for our songs and the next generation's songs to be put in the mainstream mix".

"So more reggae artistes can get more opportunities to be at the Grammys and on Billboard - that's all reggae needs," he said.

The Higher We Go artiste who recently assumed the lead role for Morgan Heritage, made these statements following his performance of the inaugural 'Young Reggae Ambassadors' concert held on Saturday at Emancipation Park in New Kingston.

"I'm glad to be a part of a collective of artistes who represent a movement that wants to be a part of the next generation of reggae...For me, the show was excellent. It was a short set but it was lovely. I delivered so many songs from my catalogue along with my latest single - Sweet Love. I also got to pay tribute to my [late] uncle Peetah alongside my uncles Mojo and Laza Morgan; so it was a great experience," the singer stated.

"I'm just happy to see that Jamaicans have highlighted and appreciated our music and I'm glad that we as the next generation has the opportunity to carry on the legacy of our family music and to be performing it," he said.

The event featured several other sons and daughters of reggae icons such as Christopher Ellis, Janeel Mills and Chris Malachi, with Sizzla as a special guest act.

This show marks the US-based artiste's first solo performance in Jamaica and he promised to give more to the local fans as well as more unreleased collaborations with his father, along with a plethora of singles. Morgan is also working on releasing his 10-track R&B/reggae album, produced by Damian Marley.

"I'm going more for a R&B/reggae-lover vibe, more of a crossover vibes - a good feeling album - touching on bringing back the concept of love in music. I feel like music from our culture is very dark, especially when it comes to dancehall, suh wi need more major cards in the music again to make the music more happy. Let's make some celebration music because life is good," Morgan shared.