Jamaica to the World

It is the thirteenth session of the UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The inscription of the Reggae Music of Jamaica on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Heritage of Mankind creates a clear and identifiable link between Jamaica, on the one hand, and Reggae Music which it created, on the other. The Jamaican manoeuvre functions as a means of blocking appropriation and ensuring that all makers of reggae music function as imitators of Jamaican genres or adopters/adapters of the genre, but never as owners or originators of the music. This attempt by the Jamaican state to get a birth certificate and declaration of paternity for reggae is very well thought through.