Jamaica Music Museum Update: Controversial but contemporary collection

Author: Mel Cooke
Title: Non-exclusionary approach taken to museum, Dermott Hussey donates entire collection
Date Published: Sunday | January 17, 2010

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100117/ent/ent7.html


Abstract:

The article reports on some of the comments made by the curator, and Jamaica Music Museum director, Herbie Miller during a tour of the Jamaica Music Museum exhibition. Miller shares in this article's report the mission of the museum and how controversial some of its collections and items are. The article reports on some of the items that were donated to the music museum and its donors. It also documents some of the comments and reactions made by visitors to the museum.


Excerpt:

The last and latest Jamaican music genre in the mini-exhibition on Jamaican music is dancehall. It is written that "perhaps the most controversial and polarising genre of Jamaican music, dancehall, currently dominates the island's musical landscape".

While walking through with The Sunday Gleaner, Jamaica Music Museum director Herbie Miller said, "that's why a museum is so important. We are not just looking at the past. We are looking at the present and the future." At this dancehall stop, he points out to The Sunday Gleaner that many people did not like ska, which is now considered classic. Similarly, many people did not like reggae, which is now called the golden age of Jamaican music.

"Our duty as a museum is to collect it all, whether we like it or not. Let future scholars look at it and figure out what it means. Who knows? The world may develop in a way that what is seen as negative now will be seen as positive," Miller said, singing a few lines from Cole Porter's Anything Goes.

Jamaica Music Museum update

Author: Mel Cooke
Title:Jamaica Music Museum - a sample of what can be
Date Published: Sunday, January 17, 2010
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
URL: http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100117/ent/ent1.html

Abstract
Article reports on the state of the Jamaica Music Museum. Its mission is described. According to its main curator, the museum will contain sections that will chronicle the technological changes in instrument construction and music production and the changes in Jamaican music genres (thereby containing information on Jamaica's social history, technology and specifically about music history.


Excerpt

Herbie Miller stands near the middle of Jamaica's musical chronology in words, images and artefacts along the side of a partition at the Institute of Jamaica, downtown Kingston, and said "I like to call this our 22 yards of Jamaican music history."

That distance is, of course, the length of a cricket pitch, and the sport has its own rhythm. But the director of the Jamaica Music Museum is referring to another kind of rhythm, the music that is woven into the tapestry of Jamaican life.

Jamaica Music Museum being revitalised

Author: Mel Cooke
Title: Jamaica Music Museum being revitalised
Date Published: Wednesday | April 22, 2009
Source: The Jamaican Gleaner
URL: http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090422/ent/ent1.html

Excerpt:

At last Thursday evening's symposium to announce a list of top 100 Jamaican popular songs at the University of the West Indies, Mona's Undercroft, Herbie Miller brought the large audience "peace, love and harmonious greetings from the revitalised Jamaica Music Museum (JAMM)".

JAMM's mission is to "collect, conserve, exhibit and raise awareness of the history of Jamaican music, covering the range of our diverse heritage and to strengthen the public's sense of identity within the context of the nation's history".

Miller said that "in order to achieve these objectives, the museum is to encourage and organise activities (such as last Thursday's symposium), to raise awareness of the historic breadth of all genres of Jamaican music, including both ritual and secular, to highlight its social implications and to cooperate with others to increase the study and dissemination of our music".

Abstract:

The article reports on Jamaica Music Museum (JAMM), its history, it mission and objectives. The article also reveals future plans for the museum and the overall work that it will be doing in documenting Jamaica's musical history.