Sabrina Barnes | Cultural retention in Jamaica

There is an uncomfortable habit in Jamaica: we mourn loudly, memorialise briefly, and then move on until the next cultural giant dies. Each passing reignites the same questions about legacy, education, and preservation, yet little changes in how we actively retain, teach, and live our culture.

We have lost too many giants - Dennis Brown, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, and countless others - whose contributions shaped not just reggae but global black consciousness. These are not just musicians. They are cultural architects. Yet for many young Jamaicans, their names surface only in death tributes, state funerals, or social media posts, not in classrooms, not in structured cultural education, and not as living parts of our national curriculum.

Let’s be honest. Keeping a memorial is not enough.The Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) alone won’t cut it. They have played an important historical role, but it cannot continue to be positioned as the measurement of cultural engagement. It is predictable, competitive, seasonal, and if we’re honest, played out. How many students actually participate in JCDC programmes each year? And when we compare that number to the total population of Jamaican youth, is this truly an effective gauge of cultural retention? Culture is not an annual competition. It is lived, taught, shared, and evolved.

TOO DULL

Our education system is too dull for people this creative. Jamaicans are among the most creative people in the world, yet our schools often feel stripped of imagination. Culture is treated as extracurricular, optional, rather than essential. Many students can graduate knowing foreign composers, poets, and philosophers, yet barely understand, the social impact of reggae and dancehall, the political resistance embedded in roots music, the innovation of Jamaican producers and sound system culture, or how Dennis Brown became global voices of dignity, love, and resistance.

It should not be easier to learn about these figures after they die than while they are alive or through school at all. Cultural retention requires policy not just passion. If Jamaica is serious about cultural retention, it must move beyond symbolism into policy, curriculum reform, and coordinated national action.

This will require intentional collaboration between the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology, and cultural institutions, creatives, and community leaders.

Further, technology and culture are not enemies. They are natural partners.

We must ask uncomfortable but necessary questions:

• Where are the creative community-building programmes that exist outside of competitions?

Where are the institutions and programmes for cultural continuity?

• Where are the digital archives, storytelling platforms, and interactive learning tools for Jamaican culture?

• How are we engaging the diaspora, who remain deeply connected and influential in preserving and evolving Jamaican identity?

CULTURAL CARRIERS

The diaspora is not separate from us. They are cultural carriers. Any national cultural strategy that ignores them is incomplete campaigns, not commemorations! What we need are living campaigns, not death-triggered remembrance.

There is a need for:

– School-based cultural campaigns where each term highlights a Jamaican creative, musicians, poets, dancers, film-makers, producers, using music, visuals, storytelling, and performance.

– Edutainment on social media: short videos, reels, challenges, and interactive content that teach history through rhythm, language, and story.

– Cultural tool kits for parents, helping families play Jamaican music at home, discuss lyrics, and pass down stories.

– Faith-based and community involvement, pastors referencing cultural history in sermons, music played intentionally in taxis, bars, and corner shops as acts of preservation, not nostalgia.

– Creative-in-residence programmes in schools, where artists teach, mentor, and collaborate with students.

What is missing most is intentionality. Culture in Jamaica survives largely by accident, through memory, nostalgia, and individual passion rather than by design. We rely on elders to remember, artists to sacrifice, and communities to “keep it alive” without providing the structural support to make that survival sustainable. This is not preservation. It is endurance.

True cultural retention demands investment and sustained funding models that treat culture as infrastructure. Just as we budget for roads, technology, and security, we must budget for archives, training, documentation, and creative education. Culture is economic power, diplomatic power, and psychological grounding. Jamaica’s global influence was built by those who understood identity as currency long before policymakers did.

We must also confront the reality that young people are not disengaged from culture. They are simply engaging it differently. They live online, remixing sound, language, fashion, and story at lightning speed. Any serious cultural strategy must meet them where they are, using digital platforms not as afterthoughts but as primary spaces of transmission. If we do not tell our stories with intention, others will tell them for us, or worse, distort them.

Cultural loss is slow, quiet, and cumulative. Unless we act now, the next generation will inherit fragments instead of foundations.

Let culture breathe not suffocate under inaction. It weighs heavily that as we rush towards technological advancement, we risk leaving culture behind when the truth is that they can and must harmonise. Cultural infusion is necessary not decorative. It belongs in our curriculum, our policies, and our everyday spaces.

We cannot allow the work of our creatives to die with them. We cannot let remembrance replace responsibility. We cannot continue to act surprised every time a legend passes, asking, “How do we preserve our culture?” The answer is simple but not easy: We must teach it, fund it, live it, digitise it, and build community around it now. Let the life of Jamaican culture breathe. Let it evolve. Let it never again be remembered only at funerals.

Sabrina Barnes is a youth advocate and student of bachelor of laws. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.