Memba Dat? Gyptian Peforms at Soul Train Awards – VIDEO

Its two days before the taping of the 2011 Soul Train Awards and the excitement is in the air. All the reggae and soca heads are curious as to who will snag the award for this year’s “Best Caribbean Performance”. As Caribbeans, we love to debate and the topic of “Best Caribbean Performance” has been no different. Its definitely been a hot topic amongst my colleagues, readers and radio listeners.

Not only were the nominees hotly debated but even the category itself was the subject of debate too! Last year’s category was “Best Reggae Artist” which was not ideal for several reasons. Narrowing all of the music coming out of the Caribbean region to reggae omitted so many other wonder musical genres including soca and calypso.

Our voices were heard and this year Soul Train included other genres as exemplified by Machel Montano’s and Kes the Band’s nominations. That being said, it is just for a “performance” which can be narrowly construed to mean exactly that one performance. This would seemingly exclude an artist’s full complement of music and performances for the entire year. So, what does this all mean? We are making progress but we’re not quite there yet.

Having other forms of Caribbean music recognized at a major awards shows like the Soul Train Awards is great and I love it!!! However, I would love to see the category evolve once again. Maybe next year the category would be “Best Caribbean Artist”. This would mean the best music, best performances and all around best artist coming out of the Caribbean for that year. What say you?

In case you forgot here are this year’s nominees for Best Caribbean Artist Performance are: