Jamaica’s Montego Bay To Twin With Brazil’s Reggae Capital, São Luís

The Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment, and Sport (MCGES) and the Ministry of Tourism have proposed twinning Jamaica’s tourism capital, Montego Bay, with the Brazilian city of São Luís.

According to a release from the MCGES, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett announced the proposal after signing a cooperation agreement with Brazil’s Minister of Tourism, Celso Sabino, during his visit to São Luís earlier this week.

The agreement is aimed at bolstering tourism and cultural ties between the two nations.

“After discussions with Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment, and Sport, Olivia Grange, we are proposing to twin the cities of Montego Bay and São Luís as a symbol of musical fraternity and solidarity, recognizing the deep connections between our peoples,” Bartlett said.

São Luís, a major city in the state of Maranhão, is renowned for its deep-rooted love for Reggae music. According to the MCGES release, in 2018, Maranhão established the first museum dedicated to Reggae outside of Jamaica.

Entertainment Minister Olivia Grange has also expressed her anticipation of future collaborations between the Maranhão Reggae Museum and the Jamaica Music Museum in Kingston to promote Reggae music further.

The Maranhão Reggae Museum in São Luís, has had a significant positive impact on the city’s tourism and cultural landscape attracting more than 50,000 between 2018 and 2021.

The museum features five rooms, including the Hall of Immortals, which honours Regae’s greatest icons. The other four pay tribute to the renowned Reggae clubs of São Luís: Pop Som Club, Toque de Amor Club, União do BF Club, and Espaço Aberto Club.

“Reggae in Maranhão is winning. The Brazil Jamaica Cooperation Agreement for Sustainable Tourism is a great ACHIEVEMENT It’s not just a ministerial visit and a flight between countries, but a broad ancestral reunion: the captive and enslaved African brothers are reunited. Congratulations to the governor. the minister, the sec exe. from and everyone who, in one way or another, contributed to this historic advancement and recognition that I, with great honor, also helped provoke. Viva!!!” the museum curators posted on Instagram.

Brazil has had a longstanding love affair with Reggae. The genre was officially introduced to the South American country when Jamaican reggae icon Jimmy Cliff, who hails from Somerton in St James, was invited there in 1978 and built a second home there.

According to a June 2020 Sounds and Colours article, “at the time, Black Brazilians had many reasons to resonate with reggae. As many Jamaican reggae lyrics described the hardships of urban Jamaican life, Black Brazilians living in crowded favelas were able to relate to the themes of inequality in the music”.

“Because of the shift from a military government to civilian rule in the eighties, many Black Brazilians became vocal about the continued mistreatment of Black folks in Brazil under the guise of a “racial democracy”. Out of this frustration with their societies, reggae was received exceptionally well in Brazil, embraced as a pro-Black reprieve from the niceties of Brazil’s ‘cordial racism’,” the article pointed out.

A June 2021 Travel Noire article titled Inside São Luis: Brazil’s Capital Of Reggae Music And Culture Reggae, noted that Reggae is the most popular music genre in São Luís, Maranhão, which resulted in the city earning the title of Brazil’s “Reggae land” since the 1980s.

It noted that while Brazil is famous for Samba, Bossa Nova, Hip-Hop, and Rock music, none of these genres have the same level of popularity in São Luís as Reggae.

This northeastern city has embraced the Jamaican music style, which can be heard on every street corner. Numerous local reggae bands, radio stations, parties, festivals, and the dedicated museum contribute to the vibrant Reggae scene.

This phenomenon it noted, has been attributed to for one, the significant Afro-descendant population in São Luís, which makes it the “second-Blackest city in Brazil after Salvador”.

The second reason is the fact that residents began to tune in to Caribbean radio stations in the late 1960s, and discovered cultural similarities rooted in colonization and slavery, both in Jamaica and São Luís.

Reggae music began to take hold in São Luís in the mid-1970s, the Travel Noire article stated, adding that the genre has become an integral part of São Luís’s tourism industry, with international festivals headlined by Jamaican reggae bands with local parties also contributing to the city’s robust Reggae culture.