Last week I excitedly phoned and cancelled my other commitments because I had been the lucky recipient of a ticket to the 9th Annual Caribbean Hall of Fame Awards for Excellence. I had seen the ads before but was not planning to go, but with ticket in hand I raced home from work to get all dolled up.

Arriving at the Pegasus I was a little confused when told the event was on the 17th floor - seemed like a smallish venue for what should be a huge event. After all they were presenting awards to 25 persons who had made great contributions in the fields of arts, culture, music and sports.

We were greeted at the entrance to the room by an unassuming red carpet. Due to some miscommunication I had arrived a little early for cocktails but even so someone actually had to send to ask whether people could start serving themselves as it neared seven. The 7 p.m. function finally began at 7:35 p.m. with a fanfare from the Jamaica Constabulary Force Band who had been playing a variety of songs during the cocktail period.

The entertainment pieces sprinkled throughout the programme were well received. The drummers heralded what was sure to be an evening filled with pride in culture. The young children who sang included a JCDC Gospel competition winner - their performances were lauded as a sign of good things to come for the Caribbean.

The biggest disappointment of the evening had to be the printed programme. It was riddled with errors of all kinds - grammatical, spelling, structural, formatting. From a confused order of items to the omission of the names of this year’s awardees, the programme did not present a positive image of the committee behind these awards.

The guest speaker for the night was Kwame Boafo, Director of UNESCO, who spent quite a while (as promised) talking about similarities between Ghana and the Caribbean among other things. The list of 17 awardees (somewhat short of the promised 25) included names such as Judy Mowatt, Asafa Powell, and Ernie Smith.

The night closed with a mini-concert from Carol Gonzales, Richie Stephens, and AJ Brown, all of whom performed tremendously. Particular note must be made of AJ Brown who sang ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ in its original language and with all its classical intonations. Rumour has it that he has been doing voice training among other things during his hiatus from the local scene.

The concept of a Caribbean Hall of Fame is admirable but is still under-developed, especially in terms of non-Jamaican representation in the list of awardees. Hopefully a regular schedule can be developed for these awards (the 8th annual was some years ago) and ways of getting the support from the Caribbean cultural community can be identified. The importance of recognizing our ’stars’ cannot be denied.