By: Staff Writer
March 2, 2021
The 25th annual Jamaican Jazz and Blues festival has Grammy Award winning artist Jon Secada headlining this year’s event, which promises to showcase much more Caribbean talent.
Marcia Mcdonough, organiser of the Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival, told Caribbean Magazine Plus about this year’s virtual festival that: “Once we figured out who we wanted to approach we found the artists to be very cooperative and interested in performing on the show.”
Artists performing this year are the likes of Grammy award winning Cuban-American singer, Jon Secada who will be headlining the event and Jamaican artists like Richie Stephens, Lila Ike and Janine Jkuhl. Other artists like Bunny Rose, Earth and Fullness, Beky Glacier and Zia, just to name some, will also be performing. “We have three non-Jamaican acts. Inclcuding Jon Secada from the USA, Freetown Collective from Trinidad and Tobago and Teddyson John from St Lucia, said Ms McDonough.
A full listing of the line-up is on the festival’s website: https://jamaicajazzandblues.com/jamaica-jazz-lineup/
This year’s festival is obviously being affected by the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, where Ms McDonough said COVID-19, “Affected the event in that we had to always be aware and concerned with making sure we observed all the protocols for any activities where we had to bring the artists and others together.
“So there was more we had to do with sanitizing, health checks etc…, of course that added to our costs. We also had to get approvals and inspections from various government bodies so that we could to bring people together to produce the shows and remain compliant with the COVID-19 protocols.”
This is the first time in its 25 year history that the festival will not be held live, something that the organisers and participants will greatly miss. However, this virtual festival allows for lower costs and more streaming revenue. This year’s event will be held on March 4 and 5.
Ms McDonough also said: “The festival will be streamed on Jamaicajazzandblues.com, Facebook.com/jamaicajazzandblues, Youttube.com/jamaicajazzandblues and Youtube.com/vprecords. Showtime Thursday and Friday – 7:00 PM and Saturday- 6PM.”
Ms McDonough added that marketing this year’s festival was quite easy, “Marketing Jazz is quite easy. Jamaicans have an extremely wide taste and strong appreciation of all types of music. That’s why the festival has been so successful. It’s a mistake to think that we only know and want to listen to Reggae and Soca… And the Jazz festival is appreciated by all, in fact a lot of the musical influences for our musicians even from way back was form jazz, R&B, soul etc…
“Sometimes they redid them as covers and added a reggae sound to it…but all in all we just love music. That’s why Kenny Rogers was so amazed when he performed at the Jamaica Jazz festival and the entire audience sang every single word of his songs with him. The same for Air Supply, Lionel Richie and so many others.”