Trinidad-born international musician Roger Ryan says more must be done to take local creatives to the following level.
Ryan recently held a meet and greet with several local musicians, who will likely be a part of an Indie Music Project being supported by the NCF.
“There are numerous sensible singers here [but] I discovered most of them at hotels singing, but they don’t have a profession,” Ryan said.
“They sing on the hotel every weekend, paid x amount of dollars but they don’t have their very own projects, there is no such thing as a showcase for them and once they sing for 10 or 20 years it’s over, and another person will fill their spot.”
Based on Ryan, too often within the Caribbean, music and other creative subjects are still being highly influenced from a European perspective, somewhat than the wealthy history ingrained in West Indian and African culture.
“My whole idea of coming to the Caribbean is to allow us to show the world how great our talent is here. The entire pop music that you just guys are consuming immediately, all of them have Caribbean undertones, all of them. [However] none of them [is] from Barbados or Trinidad. Like, what’s the problem? We’ve to begin pondering in another way, so that’s the reason I’m here.”
While acknowledging the key worldwide success Rihanna has had over time along with her music and fashion brand, Ryan says the island could have missed a serious opportunity to capitalize on the additional attention the island was getting by way of providing more avenues for local performers to grow their craft.
“Rihanna is considered one of possibly 5, 000 or 10, 000 kids here which have the identical potential but they didn’t get lucky. We aren’t fostering them – a few of the other folks that have potential, we must always have a media centre here already. From the time [Rihanna] hit, we must always have began constructing a media centre here with a studio, a small rehearsal room, a video room in order that now we have videography [and] people learn the way to do media and begin fostering, versus waiting to see who gets lucky.”
Artists involved within the indie project are John Yarde, Shadia Marshall, Trinity Clarke, Ruby Tech, Ki’Ann Browne, Judah Goddard and SugaRhe, and though no completion date has been set, the project is predicted to be released a while before the top of 2022. (SB)
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