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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Shaggy - Time for Caribbean-styled Grammy awards

by

Ryan Bachoo
758 days ago
20230215
Shaggy addresses the audience at the 61st annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in February 2019.

Shaggy addresses the audience at the 61st annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in February 2019.

RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Ja­maican reg­gae and rap star, Shag­gy, be­lieves the Caribbean must build its own Gram­my awards to ho­n­our and recog­nise re­gion­al artistes. In a one-on-one in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Orville Richard Bur­rell, who is pop­u­lar­ly known by his stage name, Shag­gy, al­so said the time has come for so­ca to no longer be a sea­son­al genre of mu­sic.

Last week, so­ca artiste Machel Mon­tano said he be­lieves he has the key to tak­ing so­ca to the Gram­mys and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al award shows. When asked about the po­ten­tial of such an un­der­tak­ing, Shag­gy told Guardian Me­dia it is cer­tain­ly not im­pos­si­ble but pushed the idea of the Caribbean ho­n­our­ing its own artistes.

He said, "We should get to a point where we start do­ing our own Caribbean-type Gram­my fol­low­ing in the same foot­steps as the Latin guys where they cre­at­ed what is known as a Latin Gram­my. With­in the Latin cul­ture, there are dif­fer­ent styles. There is reg­gae­ton, bacha­ta and all these dif­fer­ent styles of mu­sic. I think if we come with a Caribbean-style Gram­my in­stead of a dance­hall Gram­my, reg­gae Gram­my or so­ca Gram­my and in­stead just cre­ate a Caribbean Gram­my where our mu­sic will be able to com­pete in­stead of just one style of mu­sic."

As so­ca re­turned in scin­til­lat­ing style this year fol­low­ing two years of no car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Shag­gy warned the lo­cal in­dus­try the genre must trans­form from some­thing that is right now too sea­son­al.

Shag­gy, who was award­ed the Or­der of Dis­tinc­tion in Ja­maica in 2007, said, "I think one of the big things that has be­come a ceil­ing for so­ca mu­sic is that sea­son­al type of thing where they feel it's on­ly in a sea­son. So when we did Mood with me and Kes, I was in that feel good mood cause this is the land and the cul­ture of feel good and that should not be a sea­son, it should be year-round. You don't have to feel good just for a sea­son, and the minute we move that whole sea­son­al thing from so­ca, I think you def­i­nite­ly have a shot of do­ing crossover suc­cess."

He em­pha­sised that Caribbean artistes have to work hard­er than those in de­vel­oped coun­tries to make it in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and that is some­thing not to be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

Shag­gy ex­plained, "These ma­jors are spend­ing around $100k or $5m, so to speak, on a roll out on any one par­tic­u­lar act. We don't have that priv­i­lege so we have to make up our mind as Ja­maican and Caribbean artistes to re­al­ly re­alise if we re­al­ly want our mu­sic to go we have to work 10 times hard­er with 10 times less and get 10 times less sleep and make mu­sic 10 times bet­ter, just to even have a shot. And once we have that mind­set then we're cer­tain­ly on our way."

Shag­gy fea­tured as part of Kes' IzWE con­cert that took place on Tues­day night at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my. Hav­ing en­joyed his per­for­mance in the south­lands, Shag­gy is now look­ing for­ward to re­lax­ing in the twin-is­land a bit be­fore leav­ing.

InstagramShaggy


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