Paradise Lost to generate billions of dollars

Event Organisers, Caribbean Trans Media limited and HMRA, NBBL inc., are currently planning Jamaica’s first EDM (electronic dance music) festival titled Paradise Lost.

The festival will be held from March 10-12, 2016. According to the organisers, their main goal is to reclaim EDM as a Jamaican genre. The festival will be held at Grizzly’s Plantation Cove in St Ann.

According to member of the organising team, Jason Newman, Jamaicans regard EDM as a foreign genre. However, the genre was started in Jamaica by King Tubby and rightfully belongs to the Jamaican people. Newman says the festival is called Paradise Lost because the main goal is to reintroduce EDM to its rightful birthplace... Jamaica. He also pointed to a recent Billboard article which also handpicked Jamaica as the birthplace of EDM.

FOREIGN MARKETS

"Some Jamaicans don’t know that the genre started here, and some of the foreign markets don’t know either. This is going to educate them to learn about Jamaica and appreciate our music all over again. Who would think Bob Marley was one of the first EDM artistes? That is something we should think about,” he said. EDM events have become quite popular in Jamaica in recent times through parties like Color Fest, Electric Butterfly Music Festival, the newly launched Paradise Lost Festival, among others, and predominantly attracts working-class Jamaicans.

“Lets reclaim EDM, lets teach our artistes how to put their music out there, too. This is not about closing doors on Jamaican entertainers, this is about restructuring how we look at our music and how we treat it,” he said. EDM music is currently estimated as being worth billions. However, there are no notable Jamaican artistes who practice the genre, aside from collaborations with Major Lazer.

Now that light has been shed on the roots of EDM by Billboard.com, production legend King Jammys, who missed the launch of Paradise Lost due to an emergency, says Jamaican artistes should capitalise on the EDM genre.

He also blames historians for not properly documenting the history of Jamaican music. “I don’t just go out and play, people have to book me, and every year I go out and play this genre. Jamaicans don’t cherish the history of the music and what we did. The historians only cherish politicians and not the hard work we put in – so the people don’t know. I would encourage all youth to spread their wings and experiment. Is experiment I experiment with the Sleng Teng, and it ended up becoming a special thing in the world. EDM is ours, so experiment, man,” he said.

Paradise Lost is expected to pull over 15,000 spring breakers to the island. The festival is expected to provide more than 2,300 jobs and 200 internship opportunities. The organisers also estimated that a successful staging can generate 5 billion Jamaican dollars for the economy in its first year.