Sean Nero

Even in the ab­sence of a well con­sti­tut­ed body to rep­re­sent lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers and their in­ter­est, reign­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er and Groovy So­ca Monarch Machel Mon­tano is awash with op­ti­mism about T&T's abil­i­ty to ef­fect long await­ed sys­tems and poli­cies to achieve an en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try.

And de­spite the glar­ing lack of co­he­sion among the prin­ci­pals, who trade their tal­ent to cre­ate a liveli­hood for them­selves and their fam­i­lies, he be­lieves that this coun­try's so­ca mu­sic genre will ul­ti­mate­ly rush past reg­gae and dance­hall to be­come the sound of the Caribbean.

Mon­tano said, "We have been dis­tract­ed by the oil and the gas and we are pri­mar­i­ly an en­er­gy coun­try. Look in the mir­ror. Let us con­stant­ly be our great­est crit­ics. Let us con­stant­ly analyse where we are at and be hon­est. "This is some­thing I want­ed to say be­cause I am a per­son who is al­ways pos­i­tive­ly dis­sat­is­fied, mean­ing that I am con­stant­ly im­prov­ing my prod­uct and I want to do that un­til the day I die, be­cause it is who I am-to be­come a high­er ex­pres­sion of who I am."

Mon­tano was speak­ing dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at Tues­day's Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum 2012 held at the ball­room of the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre lo­cat­ed at La­dy Young Road, St Ann's on the top­ic Cre­ative In­dus­tries: The En­ter­tain­ment In­dus­try.

Sharon Burke, a tal­ent agent from Ja­maica and Tam­sen Reed, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at Celebri­ty Head­lin­ers and CMG in the Unit­ed States joined Mon­tano on the pan­el. He said the peo­ple of T&T, liked to boast about hav­ing the best Car­ni­val and the best mu­sic.

"But have we re­al­ly sat up and won­dered if our mu­sic is the best? If it is the best Car­ni­val? Have we re­al­ly watched the world and sat down as a unit to re­al­ly crit­i­cise our­selves and see where we are at and know where we want to be? "First of all, we don't have a unit. We don't have an artiste body. We don't have a body that could lob­by the Gov­ern­ment. So we have to work to­geth­er.

"I al­so want you all to be mind­ful that this is a young in­dus­try. We are get­ting there. We have many suc­cess­es." He was con­vinced that his ef­forts at mu­sic and on­stage per­for­mance per­fec­tion were be­ing used as an in­cu­ba­tor for many emerg­ing and es­tab­lished en­ter­tain­ers lo­cal­ly.

Mon­tano said present and emerg­ing mu­sic ri­vals had im­proved their man­age­ment struc­tures, strength­ened pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ties, en­vis­aged them­selves as a brand and even added mer­chan­dis­ing to fur­ther the brand, while tak­ing a fan­cy to the so­cial net­work­ing medi­um be­cause of his ad­vances and achieve­ments.

'Record com­pa­nies can't re­strain us'

"So there has been some in­cre­men­tal move­ment, but we need now to em­brace tech­nol­o­gy. We have a plus. We don't need the big record com­pa­nies any­more, be­cause the big record com­pa­nies are a thing of the past. "That works in our favour be­cause the big record com­pa­nies are nowhere near us, so let's use the (cel­lu­lar) phone, let's use the In­ter­net, let's use the apps and em­brace tech­nol­o­gy...so­cial me­dia.

"I think we need to come to­geth­er as a unit. I am push­ing for so­ca to be the Sound of the Caribbean (So­ca)." But ahead of hit­ting the So­ca mark, he said, wran­gling be­tween el­ders in so­ci­ety and younger per­form­ers, which oc­curred when­ev­er (young) artistes made ef­forts to re-work an ex­ist­ing mu­si­cal work, had to stop.

"We have to stop this cul­ture of every time some­body tries some­thing and they change it, the old­er peo­ple say they (are) spoil­ing it. They (are) not spoil­ing it. "They (are) tak­ing it in­to their hands and they adding to it, which is what sprouts growth and we have to em­brace that as a cul­ture."

No hand­outs, please!

"We al­so need to build in­dus­tries around the artistes. Now I'm not say­ing it's all go­ing to be about funds and grants be­cause this is a com­pet­i­tive busi­ness, so we can't wait for the hand­outs. "I think if the artistes im­prove and we make some­thing that is worth sell­ing, some­body will come here look­ing for it, to sell it. So we have to con­stant­ly im­prove that.

"It's not the funds that are go­ing to help us be­come more pop­u­lar. It's go­ing to help us. We need, more than ever-more than funds-qual­i­fied peo­ple will­ing to sit down around us and em­brace us and teach us the right things." In his as­sess­ment of the chron­ic cul­tur­al short­falls that has T&T with­out the req­ui­site struc­tures for nur­tur­ing per­fec­tion and lever­ag­ing suc­cess, Mon­tano said, ed­u­ca­tors and ad­min­is­tra­tors were key stake­hold­ers to­wards achiev­ing in­dus­try sta­tus. "Help us and teach us what works out there in the world. It is a work in progress.

"We have to have a body and we have to have greater fre­quen­cy of con­ver­sa­tions like this and every time we have a con­ver­sa­tion, we must hold our­selves ac­count­able. "We must have some de­liv­er­ables, we must have a time­line. We must set a plan for us to achieve these things. That's how we will make progress."