JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, March 17, 2025

Encouraged by fans and friends Anslem Douglas RETURNS

by

20130112

He is a Gram­my award-win­ning song­writer and a child of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Af­ter 14 years of re­sist­ing the urge to en­ter com­pe­ti­tions lo­cal­ly, Anslem Dou­glas has not just re­turned for Car­ni­val 2013 but has thrown his hat in­to the ring for this year's In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tions.

At the 2001 Gram­my awards, Dou­glas' Who Let the Dogs Out earned The Ba­ja Men the award for Best Dance Track. Al­ready a res­i­dent of Toron­to, Cana­da, Dou­glas says the suc­cess changed his life "for­ev­er." He ex­plained, "The changes have been both good and bad. The good side was get­ting world­wide recog­ni­tion as a song­writer. You know you are big when the New York Times calls you for an in­ter­view, and Jamie Foxx's peo­ple call you for ma­te­r­i­al. On the down side, peo­ple ex­pect there­after that every song you write is a Gram­my award win­ner."

With a new CD un­der his belt, Dou­glas has al­so re­leased three songs for C2K13. "I have two re­leas­es this year," he re­vealed, "one a pow­er so­ca named Bac­cha­nal (Ah Come Again), and a groovy so­ca named Do You Think He Will Un­der­stand. I al­so wrote a tech­no so­ca which I in­tend push­ing af­ter Car­ni­val. It is called Touch Me and it was pro­duced by a Toron­to-based mu­si­cian named Rocky."

Bac­cha­nal was writ­ten by Dou­glas, and Do You Think He Will Un­der­stand by Carl­ton Roberts, a young pro­duc­er out of Toron­to.Dou­glas has resided in Cana­da for the past 19 years, mi­grat­ing there in 1994 af­ter rock­ing the town with his hit sin­gle Rag­ga Pum Pum, and af­ter break­ing ties with At­lantic Records. He said, "I have al­ways been in mu­sic out there (Cana­da). I just re­leased a new ten-track CD, ti­tled Project AD. It's neo soul/R&B, with a few smooth jazz tracks as well, and has been re­ceiv­ing favourable ro­ta­tion on the air­waves in Toron­to."

Dou­glas par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 1999 edi­tion of the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion. Per­form­ing Palms on the Ground, he placed fifth. That fi­nal was won by Kurt Allen, singing Dus Dem.

About com­pet­ing against his peers, Dou­glas said, "I de­cid­ed then that the com­pe­ti­tion wasn't re­al­ly my bag and that I should fo­cus on the mu­sic. This year how­ev­er, en­cour­aged by fans and friends, I de­cid­ed that I should re­turn. My mind to do so was made up dur­ing an in­ter­view on WACK Ra­dio sta­tion when lis­ten­ers and a few knowl­edge­able peo­ple called in and ad­vised me to en­ter this year's con­test. Earl Cros­by was the one who point­ed out that I shouldn't re­gard the con­test mere­ly as a com­pe­ti­tion but as a pow­er­ful ve­hi­cle for in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure."

The hand­some, lanky com­pos­er/record­ing artiste, who has been in the mu­sic busi­ness for many years, said, "I jumped in­to this so­ca thing while I was still a mem­ber of the Coast Guard, singing with Fire Flight dur­ing the '80s. I went full time, 100 per cent, when I left the Coast Guard in Oc­to­ber 1990, just af­ter the coup in Ju­ly. Over­all, the mu­sic has been good to me."

At­tempt­ing to make a com­par­i­son be­tween the genre of old and to­day, Dou­glas said, "So­ca mu­sic can­not be clas­si­fied as bet­ter or worse. Change has hap­pened. I find that the mu­sic as­pect of the genre has be­come less melod­ic and less mu­si­cal, but more rhyth­mic, at least for a pe­ri­od.

"To­day, I am see­ing more mu­sic com­ing back in­to the mu­sic. It def­i­nite­ly now is get­ting bet­ter as the rhythm is here to stay. And as we be­gin to in­cor­po­rate those beau­ti­ful chords we once had it will get bet­ter. The thing that lasts the longest in mu­sic is its melody. If we can get back to the nice melodies we had be­fore, with the rhythms of to­day, I think we'll have a stronger mu­sic genre."

Dou­glas be­lieves that so­ca mu­sic in­ter­na­tion­al­ly is more recog­nised and pop­u­lar to­day than when men like Ras Shorty I breathed life in­to this new mu­sic genre four decades ago. He said, "So­ca mu­sic in North Amer­i­ca is see­ing a new grow­ing in­ter­est in the mu­sic. The sec­ond and third gen­er­a­tion West In­di­ans up North are grow­ing up now with a sense of be­long­ing and want­i­ng to iden­ti­fy with the mu­sic of their par­ents. Some of them who were born out there are ac­tu­al­ly now try­ing to speak like West In­di­ans, try­ing to nail down the ac­cents per­fect­ly. The younger gen­er­a­tion is re­al­ly in­to the mu­sic. I'd say our cul­ture is alive and well in North Amer­i­ca."

Asked not to name Machel Mon­tano as an ex­am­ple of young artistes to take so­ca mu­sic in­ter­na­tion­al, af­ter some thought, Dou­glas said, "Not men­tion­ing the ob­vi­ous, which is Machel Mon­tano, some of the young so­ca artistes I am im­pressed with to­day are Bun­ji, Ben­jai, and Fay-Ann. A lot of young peo­ple are do­ing some very good work here, but I won­der if they are get­ting the kind of ro­ta­tion their work de­serves on the air­waves. Nonethe­less, they've got to keep toil­ing be­cause, at the end of the day, it's all about WORK."

Dou­glas ex­pressed con­cern over lo­cal 'age­ing' mu­sic. He ex­plained, "I think it's a sad thing that book­ings for fetes and shows are not based on reper­toire but more on what have you done late­ly. It would be nice if pro­mot­ers would hire an en­ter­tain­er just based on reper­toire, with the artiste giv­ing a one-hour per­for­mance on stage with­in the Car­ni­val sea­son. What hap­pens though is that once you be­gin singing on stage, peo­ple be­gan clam­our­ing for some of your old school ma­te­r­i­al, like When Ah Dead, Rag­ga Pum Pum and, of course, Who Let the Dogs Out. It would be nice to see so many of our so­ca and ca­lyp­so stars, like Shad­ow and Baron, singing some of their old stuff in par­ties. Since I've been here I have man­aged to get a few gigs for the Car­ni­val. My cal­en­dar is be­gin­ning to fill out bit by bit.

"In Car­ni­val the world comes to us, the world comes to the home of Car­ni­val, and I feel we should show the world every­thing that we have to of­fer–from lim­bo to tas­sa, to African drum­ming and danc­ing, pan and ca­lyp­so. Per­haps the ca­lyp­so tents can start to do this type of thing.

"There is an artis­tic side to Car­ni­val, one that peo­ple come from all over the world to see, but which isn't shown to them. It's all about show­cas­ing our Car­ni­val in its en­tire­ty, every facet of it."

Dou­glas is al­so a suc­cess­ful vo­cal­ist of songs for Panora­ma as three of his songs have won the Na­tion­al Panora­ma ti­tle three times in the last five years. Those wins have been Mu­si­cal Vengeance–Phase II Pan Groove (2008); Bat­tle Zone –Sil­ver Stars (2010); and, Show­time–Trinidad All Stars (2011). He said, "I love mu­sic that is spe­cial­ly de­signed and com­posed for the pan. I be­lieve that I feel the same kind of ex­cite­ment record­ing and singing these songs that a pan­man feels on a Panora­ma fi­nal night. I def­i­nite­ly in­tend do­ing more pan mu­sic."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored