Germaine Smith, Staff Reporter
Bunny Wailer performs at the Natural Mystic Concert in honour of Bob Marley's 60th birthday, Knutsford Boulevard, New Kingston, on February 6. - WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
NEVILLE 'BUNNY Wailer' Livingstone has thrown his musical influence and energy behind a project staged to balance the negative image fathers in Jamaica have earned.
Under his Solomonic Productions company, along with Frutia Productions, the originators of the idea, the project will take the form of an awards ceremony, a stage show, and an essay competition for children and teens geared at sensitising fathers to their roles in the society.
Bunny Wailer told The Gleaner that with the society's heavy emphasis on mothers, he figured why not focus on the good fathers.
"There is an emphasis on mothers, Mother's Day and songs about mothers and elaborations about mothers, so when this was brought to I by a friend Frutia, it really mek I feel like this is something that is an inspiration, so it should have been treated as such," Wailer said.
The essay competition, he noted, was being promoted in the media now. It is for students between ages of eight and 18 and submissions should be between 200 and 400 words. The topic is 'Who An Ideal Father Should Be', for which $50,000 has been allotted for the first, second and third place winners, who will be selected by a panel of judges.
OUTSTANDING FATHER FIGURES
The awards ceremony will be at a stage show scheduled for June 11. There, Bunny Wailer said, the awards for outstanding father figures in reggae music, as well as fathers outside the music industry, will be presented.
"The programme invites the opportunity of elaborating on the father figures in reggae. It's not just an event to celebrate and be left like that; it is a platform on which we can now take it to the level of making sure that fathers understand their true role of what a father should be, who are already fathers, and who are to become fathers. Motivate them to understand their responsibility," he stated.
The list of artistes to be honoured is long. It includes Gregory Isaacs, Alton Ellis, Jimmy Tucker, Derrick Harriott, Dean Fraser and Prince Buster among others. Each honoree will perform as well.
"Fathers need to be honoured ... What I want to do is to create a balance by not just celebrating Father's Day in that sense, but to put fathers in a kind of attitude that they are performing, and fathers should be in the light of mother and child, so that's the aim. That is what we are seeing if we can get, where fathers realise their responsibilities to their children and understand the role they will be playing, instead of the one-sided affair."
Bunny Wailer said he intended to continue with the move next year, but it depends on the response next month.
"We only hope that all father figures, fathers now and fathers to be, respect this move and see it as a platform that they can now come get themselves sorted to create that balance," Bunny Wailer said.
