On Saturday night when the winner in the Reggae Recording of the Year category of the JUNO Awards (Canada\u2019s equivalent to the Grammy) was announced, winner Exco Levi was nowhere in sight. The singjay, who resides in Canada and who is originally from Manchester, did not attend the event, which took place at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver.<\/p>\n
Exco Levi won for the album\u00a0\u2018Born to Be Free<\/em>,\u2019<\/strong> which was produced by Penthouse Records and released in March last year. The other nominees in the category are\u00a0\u2018Fallback\u2019<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>by King Cruff and Runkus,\u00a0\u2018Destiny\u2019<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>by Lee Scratch Perry and Bob Riddim,\u00a0\u2018Sky\u2019s the Limit\u2019<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Skystar, and\u00a0\u2018Rise\u2019<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Tonya P.<\/p>\n This is Exco Levi\u2019s 12th nomination and sixth win. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect to win because it\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve won. There were a lot of great songs nominated this year,\u201d Exco Levi told the\u00a0Jamaica Observer<\/strong>\u00a0on Saturday night.<\/p>\n The artiste, whose real name is Wayne Ford Levy, says he yearns for recognition in the land of his birth.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought the album didn\u2019t get enough justice or traction and then\u2026 For it to win the JUNO it means a lot to me. The lack of airplay and support, I mean Canada was OK, and in Europe the support wasn\u2019t bad, but in my birth land, I think it\u2019s time Jamaica should finally recognize the great work that I have been doing abroad and representing for the genre,\u201d Exco Levi reasoned.<\/p>\n \u2018Born to Be Free\u2019<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0has 15 tracks including collaborations with Duane Stephenson and Charly Black.\u00a0 \u201cMost of the songs were recorded in Canada with my band and then I brought it to Penthouse Records to finish up and finalise. So, most of these songs were produced by my team here in Canada,\u201d said Exco Levi.<\/p>\n The artiste placed third in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) Festival Song competition in 2023 with his song\u00a0Feels Like Home.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Saturday night when the winner in the Reggae Recording of the Year category of the JUNO Awards (Canada\u2019s equivalent to the Grammy) was announced, winner Exco Levi was nowhere in sight. The singjay, who resides in Canada and who is originally from Manchester, did not attend the event, which took place at the Rogers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":10490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[240,239],"tags":[82],"class_list":["post-10496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canadian-news","category-international-news","tag-featured"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10497,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10496\/revisions\/10497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}