Gyasi Mer­rique

Se­nior Re­porter

Hail­ing from the rur­al vil­lage of Madeys, St Patrick’s, in the north of Grena­da, Sab­ri­na Fran­cis pos­sess­es a sound that she thinks is ready for a glob­al au­di­ence. Soul­ful, sen­su­ous, and sil­very, she de­liv­ers a sound she dubs Afro-Caribbean pop. Equal­ly as in­ter­est­ing as her unique fu­sion of sounds is the sto­ry of how the daugh­ter of one of Grena­da’s most pop­u­lar ca­lyp­so­ni­ans set­tled with­in this niche.

The Sun­day Guardian in­ter­viewed her at the home stu­dio of her pro­duc­er, man­ag­er, and long-time col­lab­o­ra­tor, Di­eter Burkhal­ter, lo­cat­ed in the tran­quil hills of Pomme Rose, Grena­da, in April.

“Her (my moth­er) name was La­dy Em­press. They still play a lot of her songs, es­pe­cial­ly around Christ­mas time here, year af­ter year with­out fail. She’s still on the ra­dio,” Fran­cis gushed.

So why not ca­lyp­so af­ter grow­ing up in a house­hold with a ca­lyp­son­ian moth­er? Or even more so in a coun­try al­ready known for its dis­tinct sub-genre of so­ca called jab mu­sic.

“It’s hard to ex­plain. The mu­sic that I write is just the mu­sic that comes nat­u­ral­ly to me. And I think that even though my moth­er sang ca­lyp­so when she was on stage and she wrote ca­lyp­so be­cause that’s what was play­ing on the ra­dio, at home she made it a point to en­rich us with dif­fer­ent types of mu­sic. We lis­tened to all kinds of mu­sic.

“That’s why my mu­sic sounds like it does and not like what would be play­ing on the ra­dio in Grena­da. It prob­a­bly would have been eas­i­er if I de­cid­ed to do so­ca or ca­lyp­so, but it just didn’t come nat­u­ral­ly to me. I en­joy it like every oth­er Grena­di­an. I con­sume the mu­sic, and I en­joy it. It’s a huge part of my cul­ture.”

Dur­ing our in­ter­view, Fran­cis and Burkhal­ter were in the process of plan­ning to bring their Meet Me At The Man­go Tree con­cert to T&T to gauge the in­ter­est of a broad­er au­di­ence in Eu­rope, specif­i­cal­ly the Unit­ed King­dom. 

“I want to take it on tour in the UK, just to give our­selves a dif­fer­ent space to per­form in. And I plan to take it to Trinidad,” de­clared the 27-year-old songstress.

But why Trinidad, out of the nu­mer­ous oth­er is­lands in the Caribbean? Fran­cis’ re­sponse was quick, as­sured, and some­what flat­ter­ing.

She said, “Some­how I feel like Trinidad has sim­i­lar sto­ries or a sim­i­lar feel to Grena­da. I don’t know if you feel it, but every time I go, it doesn’t feel much dif­fer­ent from Grena­da. The peo­ple seem to con­nect to the same things that we con­nect to here in Grena­da.

“I’m not tak­ing it for grant­ed. I’m still go­ing to test to see if Trinida­di­an peo­ple are even in­ter­est­ed in my mu­sic. I have a feel­ing that they are (in­ter­est­ed) be­cause, I mean, Trinidad is ba­si­cal­ly Grena­da. Don’t take that as an of­fence. Grena­da is re­al­ly nice. It’s a com­pli­ment, al­right,” she added with a play­ful gig­gle.

 That test run hap­pens on Sat­ur­day (May 25), at the Big Black Box, 33 Mur­ray Street, Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain, at 8 pm. Once suc­cess­ful, Fran­cis and Burkhal­ter plan to roll out a much more elab­o­rate pro­duc­tion, which they have been work­ing on for sev­er­al months.

It in­cludes the ship­ping and erec­tion of a mo­bile per­for­mance space at their de­sired des­ti­na­tions. The pro­to­type, small enough to fit in­to the palm of Fran­cis’ hand, il­lus­trates a 200-seater 360-de­gree are­na out­fit­ted with light­ing, acoustics, and even the re­al-life trunk of a man­go tree, de­signed to bring her show to life.

 “We start­ed this Meet Me At The Man­go Tree se­ries in Feb­ru­ary of this year. And we’ve been hav­ing two shows a month, and so far it’s been quite a suc­cess.

“So it’s about how a young la­dy us­es mu­sic to help her over­come a lot of hard­ships. The most sig­nif­i­cant hard­ship was that her mom left to pur­sue a bet­ter life for her, but her be­ing a child, she didn’t un­der­stand what was hap­pen­ing and grew up with a lot of re­sent­ment.”

 “We’re go­ing to have this space that we cre­at­ed with about 200 seats ca­pac­i­ty. And then I’m go­ing to be per­form­ing around my mo­bile tree. And this is all sup­posed to be able to break down and build up when nec­es­sary.”

Ad­mit­ted­ly, they are still some way off from bring­ing that vi­sion in­to re­al­i­ty. How­ev­er, Sat­ur­day’s scaled-down show will in­tro­duce a lo­cal au­di­ence to a star in the mak­ing who, at such a young age, has al­ready made quite an im­pact on her coun­try’s mu­si­cal land­scape.

Fran­cis tells the sto­ry of her jour­ney with un­shak­able con­fi­dence and pas­sion. Her mu­sic trans­mits the same. And it is pre­cise­ly why she be­lieves she’s ready to com­mand the at­ten­tion of a wider au­di­ence.

She trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly, thanks in no small part to her man­ag­er and pro­duc­er, a ho­tel own­er and op­er­a­tor of the pop­u­lar ma­ri­na in Grena­da called Le Phare Bleu, orig­i­nal­ly from Switzer­land.

Fran­cis cred­its Di­eter for his mu­si­cal and busi­ness guid­ance, but for lit­er­al­ly find­ing her af­ter a chance en­counter at his ho­tel in 2014.

 “When I was 18, I was in­vit­ed to sing a cou­ple of songs with a gospel band at said ho­tel. And the own­er heard me, liked what I did, and spent the next year of his life look­ing for me,” she said.

“Be­cause I’m from the coun­try, it was very hard for him to find me. But af­ter a year, he found me and then en­cour­aged me to sing.”

The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.

The pair would spend the bet­ter part of a decade hon­ing their col­lec­tive song­writ­ing skills and craft­ing Fran­cis’ sound. And while they grad­u­al­ly in­tro­duced them­selves to the Grena­di­an pub­lic, they did not hes­i­tate to ex­plore wider bound­aries.

To­geth­er with a small team of man­age­ment and per­form­ers, they vis­it­ed, record­ed, and per­formed in South Africa, Spain, Ger­many, the UK, and, of course, Switzer­land.

Two al­bums were re­leased: 2016’s Think in Col­or, which Fran­cis de­scribes as in­flu­enced by R&B, funk, and soul mu­sic, and 2019’s I Feel which had more of a root­sy, em­pha­sis, in­flu­enced by a trip to South Africa to add some tra­di­tion­al African sounds.

It was this al­bum and its new in­flu­ences that mould­ed Fran­cis’ mu­sic as it is known to­day, she said.

“I worked with some South African singers and per­cus­sion­ists from Mozam­bique and just added some re­al­ly root­sy vibes. And from then on, I knew that my mu­sic had to some­how in­cor­po­rate my tra­di­tion­al her­itage. So it’s a blend be­tween the pop that I lis­tened to, the con­tem­po­rary mu­sic that I lis­tened to grow­ing up, and then my African roots and my Caribbean roots.”

 With her sound now well-de­fined, a trip to Austin, Texas, in 2019 for a mu­sic work­shop was the cat­a­lyst for their en­tire op­er­a­tion, un­lock­ing their un­der­stand­ing of the mu­sic in­dus­try from its busi­ness side.

Mar­ket­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and the pow­er of rapid ad­vance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy—and how it could all work for Fran­cis as an in­de­pen­dent artist—be­came much clear­er.

“We start­ed re­al­ly push­ing and do­ing things with an in­ten­tion and a strat­e­gy to try and re­al­ly cre­ate or carve out a space for me. Be­cause the type of mu­sic that I did, re­al­ly wasn’t main­stream. It wasn’t any­thing that Grena­di­ans were lis­ten­ing to or even in­ter­est­ed in at the time.”

 The work­shop at US-based on­line mu­sic dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny CD Ba­by came at an op­por­tune time, as a few short months lat­er, the mu­sic in­dus­try in Grena­da and abroad was shut down by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Fran­cis and Burkhal­ter need­ed to be re­source­ful to sat­is­fy their re­spec­tive yearn­ings for a plat­form to con­tin­ue to craft and ex­press. It was through this de­sire that the con­cept and the venue for what is now known as Sab­ri­na’s Tree­house were born. They built an on­line show­case for Sab­ri­na’s mu­sic and that of var­i­ous Grena­di­an artistes.

“Mu­si­cians just couldn’t earn (mon­ey). And so we thought that we would get per­mis­sion from the Gov­ern­ment to do a se­ries of con­certs called Keep Greens Mu­sic Alive. We streamed some con­certs, and peo­ple do­nat­ed to the cause. We raised over $10,000, and we want­ed to keep it go­ing.

“Even af­ter the whole lock­down pe­ri­od, peo­ple start­ed com­ing out; you still couldn’t gath­er in large groups, all you could do was 16 peo­ple at a time, and so we thought, okay, what could we do? How could we tran­si­tion Keep Greens Mu­sic Alive to a show? And that’s how we birthed Sab­ri­na’s Tree­house Con­cert in 2020.

“We put a tree in the mid­dle of a chick­en coop, added in all of the tech­ni­cal things that we need­ed, and cre­at­ed a space for mu­sic lovers. It’s for peo­ple who en­joy com­ing and sit­ting down and lis­ten­ing to mu­sic, and sur­pris­ing­ly, there were a lot of peo­ple like that in Grena­da be­cause from 2020 to now, we’ve been sold out at al­most every sin­gle show. They’re shar­ing the word, and we’ve been try­ing to do some­thing re­al­ly great.”

 It is said that word-of-mouth is the most pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing tool. Fran­cis can at­test be­cause soon her fan base evolved from al­most ex­clu­sive­ly Grena­di­an to in­clude ex­pats and oth­er vis­i­tors from near and far, in­clud­ing a loy­al fol­low­ing of fans from T&T who trav­el to Grena­da ever so of­ten to en­joy the shows that are put on al­most twice month­ly at their in­ti­mate venue in the back­yard of Burkhal­ter’s es­tate prop­er­ty.

So, from its be­gin­nings in the foothills of Grena­da’s Mt Agnes, Sab­ri­na’s Tree House con­cert has stood the test of time, evolved in­to Meet Me At the Man­go Tree, and is now ready to be in­tro­duced to Trinidad.