The panel includes Dr Omar Davies, former finance minister and Opposition spokesman on finance, who has an immense cultural and intellectual interest in Jamaican popular music; Bunny Goodison, founder of the Soul Shack Disco and creator and host of the popular radio show, Rhythms; Frankie Campbell of the Fab 5 Band and president of the Jamaica Vintage Artistes Association; Francois St Juste, radio personality and general manager for Radio at RJR; and Wayne Chen, patron of the arts, author and Chairman of the National Gallery of Jamaica. They will be presenting a set of criteria and arguments for selecting and recommending the songs or instrumentals that should be included in the top 100.

Members of the public attending the symposium will have the opportunity to shape the criteria and arguments for the selection, as well as to vote on the compositions to be included in the top 100.

A release from the university's department of government stated: "Since the last half of the 20th century, Jamaica has become a powerhouse of global popular music. Its impact on the aesthetic and ontological development and expression of global popular music is phenomenal. Jamaican lyricists, singers, players of instruments, sound technologists and producers have created and recreated some of the best songs/instrumentals in the last 50 years. By so doing, they have created a range of global soundscapes rooted in the rhythmic, linguistic, poetic language and imaginative culture and ritualised artistic movements of the Jamaican body to inspire the world."

The organisers said the symposium would create "another path to the expansion of the intellectual bases, scholarship and knowledge of Jamaican popular music, to celebrate excellence, as well as to strengthen the basis for its economic enhancement."