Pe­ter Ray Blood

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."