Artistes urged to slow music

A regional music industry executive has said that soca artistes need to slow down their music if it is to be more successful internationally.
Her comments come after the announcement that there will be a Best Soca Recording category in the Grammy Awards from 2006. {{more}}
Trinidad-based Lisa Wickham who produces and hosts the entertainment television programme E-Zone that is broadcast throughout the region, has pointed to the international success of Kevin Lyttle’s Turn Me On and Rupee’s Tempted To Touch as examples of what non-Caribbean listeners are looking for.
“I think for soca music to make it the artistes have to look at their work and realise it has been said the speed of the music is keeping back the artistes who are popular in the Caribbean but the ones that make it outside, especially in the UK and Europe are those who slow down the beat so it can be more appealing to a wider cross-section of people,” she told BBC Caribbean.com.
“It’s not to compromise too much on what they do but certainly to work with a variety of artforms because it seems as though the music that’s making out there is the crossover music.”
She said the decision by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), the body which runs the annual award show to give soca music its own category is long overdue but is glad “the immense amount of work that is done on an annual basis by soca artistes throughout the Caribbean” will be recognised.
Wickham also urged the younger artistes who will benefit from the Grammy recognition to pay tribute to the pioneers of calypso and soca, some of whom may never benefited from the success of the genre.
“Those who will receive the Grammy Awards are reaping the benefits and the rewards of work done by people who probably would never get Grammys and probably had more suitable music,” she said.
“People like Sparrow, Kitchener, the Roaring Lion – the people who laid the foundation but who are not in the right time to receive the recognition and I think that’s an important point to make.”