The JaRIA (Jamaica Reggae Industry Association) awards the international festival Rototom Sunsplash for its impact on the promotion and development of the reggae music industry. The award ceremony was held this Monday in Kingston, where Sabrina Trovant, artistic director of the festival, collected the award.

“Reggae has become a global music, with creators and performers in all countries, but there is no place like Jamaica to understand the true culture of reggae,” said Trovant, who “on behalf of the entire Rototom Sunsplash family” thanked JaRIA, the artists who have passed through the festival, academics, the public and “Jamaica for giving reggae music to the world!”

The JaRIA Honor Awards were created in 2009 with the aim of recognizing individuals, bands, institutions, companies and entities that contribute to the development of the reggae music industry.

‘Extraordinary Impact on the Reggae Industry Promoter Award 2023’, the category in which the festival received the award, recognizes the contribution and positive impact that Rototom Sunsplash has had on the promotion of reggae, “the musical root of our nation”, as stated by JaRIA.

Reggae is the engine of the Rototom Sunsplash project, and the umbrella that covers the global family that has become the audience of the festival, which originated in Italy and since 2010 is based in Benicàssim (Spain).

The festival is an amazing projection of reggae music and culture. In its almost three decades of life it has become a common ground for virtually all the names of Jamaican and world reggae: legends of the genre such as those who make up the Marley saga or Burning Spear, who closed the 2022 edition, have shared the stage with emerging talents from the international scene.

More than 3,000 artists have written the musical history of the festival giving life to shows that branch out through the multiple stages that pulsate in this reggae city, converted into platforms for the dissemination of Jamaican music and the variety of styles that originate directly from the music with black roots. Shows that overcome the ‘borders’ of the physical space of the Benicàssim concert venue and are projected to the world for free through streaming channels activated in each edition.

The Rototom Sunsplash’s promotion of reggae culture of goes beyond the purely musical. Since 2007, the festival hosts the Reggae University, a space for dialogue between academics, artists, journalists and other music industry professionals to analyze key moments and issues related to reggae music. Furthermore, the House of Rastafari, serves as a meeting and reflection point around ‘livity’.

These scenic logistics sculpt the idiosyncrasy of a festival that is unique for nurturing its programming and its venue with extra-musical areas of social and cultural ilk that open the Rototom Sunsplash to all kinds of audiences; for its social and environmental commitment, and for the actions it promotes to change the world, as will be the case once again this year in Benicàssim (from August 16 to 22, 2023) with the theme that guides its 28th edition, United for Peace. The festival also stands out for its inclusive and independent profile, which endorses a self-financed management model without sponsors that it has maintained since its inception.

Identity traits that have made Rototom Sunsplash a benchmark for the international reggae scene, and that from today includes the international recognition awarded by the Jamaican collective JaRIA.