Chairman of the Jamaica Festival Song Committee, Orville Hill says they’ve identified three song entries submitted for the Jamaica Festival Song competition that will be apart of Jamaica’s 60th Independence celebration.
This still means there’ll be no competition since at least 10 entries are needed for this to take place.
The announcement comes after Minister of Culture and Entertainment Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange said the competition would not be a part of this year’s 60th independence celebrations due to poor entries.
During a virtual media briefing Saturday afternoon, Mr. Hill, said they’ve selected three songs of the 123 entries that will be used.
Suzell Wray reports.
Some Jamaicans were left disappointed earlier this week when culture minister, Olivia Grange, announced that the anticipated Jamaica Festival Song Competition would not be apart of this year’s independence celebrations.
However, the Festival Song Committee, Chaired by Mr Hill, has agreed to use three of the entries they’ve considered the best based on their guidelines.
He noted that the judges followed a stipulated criteria that governed which songs were eligible to be short-listed for the competition.
In the meantime, one of the judges on the Jamaica Festival Song Committee, Gussie Clarke said not all the songs fell below the acceptable standard.
Minister Grange has since said she’s disappointed that 10 suitable entries were not identified for the competition to take place.
She noted that the competition had seen tremendous growth over the last two years with the songs appearing on several music streaming services across the world.
Meanwhile, Culture Minister Olive ‘Babsy’ Grange says a commemorative album of festival songs is to be published shortly.
She was also addressing the news conference Saturday afternoon.
Culture Minister Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange.
