Er­line An­drews

Far­ley Flex, in the decades he's been in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, has tak­en on and over­come many chal­lenges. He may cur­rent­ly be in the midst of his biggest chal­lenge yet.

Flex was born Far­ley Fridal to Trinida­di­an par­ents in Eng­land. They moved back to Trinidad short­ly af­ter, and then moved to Cana­da when he was six. His un­cle was Austin Fridal, the en­gi­neer known for his work on the first air­port at Pi­ar­co and oth­er his­toric build­ings in T&T.

Flex may be best known for be­ing a judge on Cana­di­an Idol, which–like its Amer­i­can coun­ter­part–was huge­ly suc­cess­ful from its in­cep­tion in 2003 un­til its fi­nal show in 2008.

But it was be­hind the scenes in en­ter­tain­ment that Flex re­al­ly made his mark. "One could re­call every sin­gle mile­stone made by the ur­ban mu­sic in­dus­try in Cana­da, and Flex was prob­a­bly a part of it," wrote one jour­nal­ist.

Flex man­aged the ca­reer of Mae­stro Fresh-Wes, Cana­da's first suc­cess­ful so­lo rap­per. At the time, the late 80s- ear­ly 90s, suc­cess as a Cana­di­an rap­per didn't seem pos­si­ble.

Flex was al­so part of the team be­hind the launch of Cana­da's first black-owned and -op­er­at­ed ra­dio sta­tion in 2000. It took 12 years to get the li­cense for FLOW 93.5 FM.

"The CRTC (Cana­di­an Ra­dio-tele­vi­sion and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion), the gov­ern­ing body for com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has his­tor­i­cal­ly li­censed on lan­guage not cul­ture. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, be­cause the li­on's share of peo­ple of African de­scent speak Eng­lish, we fell in­to a larg­er group of [Eng­lish-speak­ers]," Flex ex­plained.

He and his part­ners thought dif­fer­ent­ly.

"The gov­ern­ing body should li­cense by cul­ture, be­cause our cul­ture is dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent than oth­er Eng­lish-speak­ing com­mu­ni­ties," he said.

It took three at­tempts, led by Flex, to con­vince the CRTC.

Now Flex is pro­mot­ing a new ven­ture, a tele­vi­sion net­work called FE­VA TV (First En­ter­tain­ment Voice of Africa Tele­vi­sion). Like FLOW 93.5, FE­VA is a first for Cana­da. FE­VA shows black tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming and films from Africa, the US, the UK, Cana­da and the Caribbean.

Now it's on ca­ble reach­ing au­di­ences in se­lect re­gions of Cana­da.

The team plans to ex­tend their reach to oth­er parts of Cana­da, the US, the UK, Africa and the Caribbean. This is why Flex was in T&T re­cent­ly. He's in talks with ca­ble provider Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and is push­ing to have FE­VA TV avail­able to Caribbean au­di­ences by April. He's hop­ing to get some T&T con­tent.

Right now T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tion on FE­VA is in the form of mu­sic videos from Machel Mon­tano, Bun­ji Gar­lin and oth­er so­ca stars. But FE­VA TV is look­ing for more tele­vi­sion shows and films from the Caribbean. They're cur­rent­ly show­ing the Ja­maican com­e­dy-dra­ma se­ries Me and Mi Kru. But much of their con­tent is from Africa, par­tic­u­lar­ly the prodi­gious­ly pro­duc­tive Nige­ria.

FE­VA TV presents a rare op­por­tu­ni­ty for Caribbean tele­vi­sion and film pro­duc­ers.

"Many of them still don't have an out­let in their own coun­try, many of them have even less of an out­let through­out the Caribbean, and most of them have no out­let out­side of the Caribbean," said Flex.

"As a tele­vi­sion net­work we (at FE­VA TV) al­so have this dual role as a po­ten­tial dis­trib­u­tor of con­tent to the places where we ex­ist," he said.

"We think that that is go­ing to be of great val­ue to the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty here," he said. "I think it's go­ing to in­spire young peo­ple who are think­ing of get­ting in­to the cre­ative in­dus­tries to do so with a lit­tle more of a clear vi­sion as to their own po­ten­tial.

"'Cause that's what's re­al­ly im­por­tant at the end of the day: hav­ing a vi­sion and a path that you can fol­low," he said.

Africans and the African di­as­po­ra are an au­di­ence with still un­tapped po­ten­tial. There are one bil­lion Africans and count­ing, 45 mil­lion African Amer­i­cans, al­most 4.5 mil­lion peo­ple of African de­scent in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, al­most two mil­lion in the UK and al­most one mil­lion in Cana­da. FE­VA TV sees this po­ten­tial.

For Flex, con­nect­ing black pro­gramme pro­duc­ers and film­mak­ers with black au­di­ences around the world would have an im­pact that goes be­yond mak­ing mon­ey.

"It's show­ing us each oth­er and talk­ing about each oth­er and with each oth­er," he said. "I think this is a crit­i­cal part of the evo­lu­tion of black peo­ple on this plan­et.

It would even­tu­al­ly "en­hance the op­por­tu­ni­ty for com­merce and for trade," he said.

Nol­ly­wood films have be­come as pop­u­lar as they are in the Caribbean and oth­er ar­eas with peo­ple of African de­scent be­cause they see the sim­i­lar­i­ties and iden­ti­fy with the ac­tors.

"I don't have to look like She­mar Moore to get a lead role in Nol­ly­wood," said Flex, re­fer­ring to the Crim­i­nal Minds heart­throb who al­so used to star on The Young and the Rest­less. "Ac­tu­al­ly I'm prob­a­bly bet­ter suit­ed to Nol­ly­wood than She­mar Moore."

"See­ing more full-fig­ured women. See­ing body types of peo­ple who look like my sis­ter and my moth­er" is part of the ap­peal of Nol­ly­wood, said Flex.

Like­wise, he be­lieves Africans would ap­pre­ci­ate Caribbean shows and may even be in­ter­est­ed in film­ing here.

Said Flex: "I can drop my Niger­ian and my Ghana­ian friends in the Croisee and they will feel like they're home."

More in­fo and to pitch ideas:

E-mail Far­ley Flex at flex@fe­vatv.com