Aba A Luke

Ken Mar­lon Charles, or KMC as he is more pop­u­lar­ly known, is no longer a so­ca artiste. In fact, he cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly stat­ed that he will no longer be in­volved in the fes­ti­val that is Car­ni­val. On Sep­tem­ber 7, the T&T Guardian spoke with KMC, quite co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, and he hes­i­tat­ing­ly re­vealed that he had been in Eu­rope, where for the past few months, he has been signed to 2101 Records-a sub­sidiary of the Uni­ver­sal Mu­sic la­bel. The for­mer lead vo­cal­ist of Red White and Black here in T&T said he was quite se­ri­ous when he stat­ed that he would no longer be a part of Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties af­ter the 2011 sea­son.

KMC has been do­ing pret­ty well in Eu­ro­pean ter­ri­to­ries, claim­ing that he was now the cen­tre of at­trac­tion among lead­ing mu­si­cal minds who are bent on pro­mot­ing and mar­ket­ing him to au­di­ences who en­joy the elec­tro sound that has tak­en the world by storm.

KMC's sin­gle, Every­body Jump was num­ber 13 on the UK Ur­ban Club charts in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber. It was some­thing worth cel­e­brat­ing and that was cer­tain­ly the feel­ing when 2101 Records pro­duc­er Re­dOne, tweet­ed, "I'm hear­ing the record all over Eu­rope!!!!!! @km­c­trinidad: Every­body jump #13 on the UK ur­ban club chart let's go." For KMC, how­ev­er, the jour­ney to where he's found him­self has been bit­ter­sweet. In T&T, he said he'd suf­fered at the hands of ra­dio sta­tions he claimed played the mu­sic of one artiste more than any oth­er, and for that rea­son, with lit­tle to no apol­o­gy, Charles told the T&T Guardian, "I not try­ing to big up Trinidad in­dus­try-they nev­er sup­port­ed me.

"I am do­ing this for me, and my mu­sic. I ask God to take me out of that Car­ni­val thing when I re­alise is so much ah fight down. I re­alise that Car­ni­val thing is like a war zone, so I ask God for that and I give him all the glo­ry cause I nev­er ex­pect any­thing like this to hap­pen, and right now my busi­ness fix. "I am not do­ing no so­ca. Most of the mu­sic is pop with a kind of elec­tro sound. That's the kind of mu­sic-and it is run­ning the whole world."

Ex­plain­ing that he has cho­sen to be qui­et in the wake of his emerg­ing mu­si­cal suc­cess, the Ch­agua­nas na­tive high­light­ed that with­in that week alone he was sched­uled to trav­el be­tween Swe­den, Den­mark, Nor­way and Fin­land. He said the track was pro­mot­ed in a buzz pro­mo­tion, which is ba­si­cal­ly a strate­gi­cal­ly tar­get­ed word of mouth pro­mo­tion, whether via vi­ral videos or oth­er sim­i­lar cam­paigns. "T&T has been sleep­ing but they will catch on even­tu­al­ly.

My project is one of the main projects at the record la­bel right now. These big record la­bel ex­ecs sit and have meet­ings about KMC," he said. With Re­dOne do­ing his pro­duc­tion, KMC is cer­tain­ly priv­i­leged to be a part of the cir­cle of artistes, among them La­dy Gaga, who's mu­sic is pack­aged by the es­teemed Re­dOne. An­gered by the state of the so­ca in­dus­try here at home home, Charles de­clared, "So­ca mu­sic is not go­ing to reach nowhere, I sure 'bout that now cause I around the world. What we do­ing is fool­ing 'we self'-our vo­cab­u­lary is too small. "We have no idea what we do­ing and we have no idea what the world wants.

"What hap­pen with me is that I have been chang­ing my mu­sic for so long that when I reach out in Eu­rope I was fix." Ex­plain­ing that the Tri­ni ac­cent had noth­ing to do with his deal, KMC said the la­bel loved the tone of his voice and the en­er­gy it evoked. "That sends the crowd mad and when they hear that I write and how I write, they couldn't be­lieve it," he af­firmed. Ex­plain­ing that he would be drop­ping two ad­di­tion­al tracks be­fore an al­bum is cre­at­ed and re­leased next year, Charles humbly said, "The song has al­ready tak­en off-it has even been play­ing in Mo­roc­co."

His band, Red White and Black is now de­funct, but he as­sured that the mem­bers would­soon join him to play mu­sic for him. "There will be no Red, White and Black. They will just be my band play­ing mu­sic for me," said the artiste.In the mean­time, how­ev­er, KMC is do­ing what he must to en­sure suc­cess. He is grate­ful for God's in­ter­ven­tion, as he put it, and with strides to el­e­vate him­self and his mu­sic, he has tak­en off faster than many have had the chance to re­alise.