I love dancehall music. Every Tuesday morning I get to enjoy some good dancehall music on ZIP. I just can't say the same for what obtains today. I have now come to realise that I am not alone in this.

On Monday night, I attended Barrington Levy's album launch at the South Beach Café. Levy, who has been at this thing called dancehall since the mid-1970s released his latest album, Acousticalevy, which contained some of the entertainer's classics and a couple of new songs. To hear Levy on this record is to understand where I am coming from in terms of my love for what used to be considered dancehall and what obtains now.

The album basically features Levy's flawless vocals backed by only a guitar and the occasional supporting vocals, and it is a beautiful thing to hear. There is a reason why Levy is called the Mellow Canary. His vocals, are so distinctive and the supporting instrumentation is first class.

It is why to this day songs like Under Mi Sensi and Here I Come still resonate with the purists and why Levy continues to endure and be relevant in these times.

I asked him about the state of the music today because often you ask an 'old-school' entertainer what they think about Jamaica's music and his response is usually one that gives the impression that he doesn't want to ruffle feathers. Levy's response, however, was honest. "We need help. We definitely need help where the music is concerned. The majority of the real musicians who really know what a G-minor of an A-sharp by just listening to an artiste thing are no more. A man just mek a beat and say me have a riddim you know, and that what the one bag of ray-ray is about," he told me. "It's not you book some studio time and you tell the musicians to come and you say 'sing the song let me hear' and they work out the key. It's not like that anymore."

He puts down the decline of the music to the times, but offered some hope when he said the real music will eventually return. "That is what is happening right now. People don't want to hear no ray. They say records are not selling but they are selling, but people want quality records for their money. People want like a collector's item. These producers and artistes need to take time with their music."

I couldn't have said it better. There have been concerns expressed about the quality of music coming out of Jamaica. There have also been concerns that a number of European countries have established their own reggae industries and have succeeded to a point where on some of the world's popular charts none of the reggae songs that are doing well were done by Jamaicans.

While we plunged into the depths of mediocrity others were raising their standards. Thankfully, because of Barrington Levy I now have a collector's item in my possession. It's something I can listen to when I need to hear some good 'old school dancehall' or I can just tune in to ZIP every Tuesday. Other than that, I will continue to try to drown out the noise.