Lynch, who was speaking at a Barbados Tourism Authority Press conference for overseas journalists, said the Crop-Over Festival contributed significantly to the development of the island's tourism.

He said wherever tourism promoters went they took the music with them, but added: "I don't think we do as much as we should for tourism through the promotion of our music."

The tourism minister said overseas DJ's and radio stations should also be targeted, but noted it would call for a lot more creativity and ingenuity in the way Barbados marketed the festival.

"The music has got to become much more fundamental in the way we market Crop-Over, particularly when we market it regionally," he said.

Meanwhile, executive vice-president of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association, Sue Springer, said the talents of local artistes would be wasted if foreign journalists did not expose them.

She said they were creative in their own right, and just as poets like Keats were revered, so too should Barbadian calypsonians be.

"We have poets in our midst now because they take all the local social issues and create marvellous music, marvellous lyrics and we need to applaud our own. I want you as journalists to take that on board," she said. (WB)