Ishara Agos­ti­ni

The ten-minute-long video starts with a mon­tage of equal­ly de­press­ing sit­u­a­tions: a man con­tem­plat­ing sui­cide, a mug­ging, va­grants beg­ging, a shot of an omi­nous­ly head­lined news­pa­per. Shady fig­ures meet in se­cret to plan on how to plunge an al­ready dark world in­to fur­ther dark­ness. En­ter Richie Lu­na.

Richie Lu­na is an­oth­er way for Trinidad-born per­former Richie Sab­ga, to bring light back in­to the world. A mu­si­cian and en­tre­pre­neur, Sab­ga start­ed his road-lights com­pa­ny Lu­na Road in 2008, and his mu­si­cal ca­reer in 2010 as pop­star-cum-su­per­hero Richie Lu­na.

"The over­all idea of the char­ac­ter Richie Lu­na has been in de­vel­op­ment for rough­ly three or four years. The orig­i­nal idea start­ed off as a movie script, how­ev­er, giv­en my in­nate love and pas­sion for mu­sic, I de­cid­ed to tell the sto­ry of Richie Lu­na through writ­ing songs and equiv­a­lent mu­sic videos. Each song and video rep­re­sent­ing a unique chap­ter of his sto­ry," said Sab­ga via e-mail. The char­ac­ter him­self is a su­per­hero with the pow­er to gen­er­ate moon­light en­er­gy, us­ing it to bring light and love to a de­pressed world.

Sab­ga's first song, co-writ­ten by Sab­ga and Kevon and Ko­ry Hart, Light­ing the Way, won the month­ly song­writ­ing award for March 2012 from Song­writ­ers Uni­verse Mag­a­zine. It was lat­er picked up by pro­duc­er DJ Am­mo, and re-record­ed by Machel Mon­tano and pop­star Pit­bull in 2013. On the tails of that suc­cess came Cel­e­brate (The Call to Light). The am­bi­tious video for the dance-pop tune was fi­nal­ly re­leased on Ya­hoo Mu­sic and Ve­vo on June 26 af­ter a full year of on­line hype. The 42-sec­ond-long teas­er on pop­u­lar video site, YouTube, has man­aged to rack up more than five mil­lion views since it was re­leased in May 2013.

"Hav­ing the mu­sic video for Cel­e­brate! pre­miere to the world on the front page head­lines of Ya­hoo Mu­sic was def­i­nite­ly an amaz­ing mo­ment in my ca­reer. From the sim­ple for­ma­tion of a dream and idea a few years ago, to see­ing it be­ing head­lined on one of the world's most pop­u­lar mu­sic/en­ter­tain­ment web­sites...was a def­i­nite mo­ment to cel­e­brate for me!" said Sab­ga.

The video was pro­duced by Alan Fer­reira and Nigel Ce­les­tine with cin­e­matog­ra­phy by Ronald Lee. View­ers may recog­nise parts of Port-of-Spain as well as mas­man Pe­ter Min­shall who plays one of the mid-lev­el vil­lains. The video al­so fea­tures the Elle NYTT dance group, though most of danc­ing in the video was not chore­o­graphed.

"The en­er­gy dur­ing the shoot was epic and re­al. Every­one was hav­ing a gen­uine blast as we all danced away to a mas­sive mu­sic truck. It felt like Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day on the streets again!" said Sab­ga.

For Sab­ga, Cel­e­brate! is just the be­gin­ning. The video ends with the dark forces tak­ing Richie Lu­na hostage, with a "to be con­tin­ued" promis­ing a sec­ond in­stall­ment though Sab­ga was tight-lipped about any de­tails. On the top­ic of the fu­ture he said, "Let­ting this mile­stone of the mu­sic video pre­miere un­fold and rid­ing that jour­ney for­ward to­wards the new des­ti­na­tions that I en­counter is my main fo­cus at the mo­ment. I try not to hold my plans too far in­to the fu­ture. Of course you must have fu­ture plans and goals, how­ev­er, as much as we try to plan in ad­vance, God is ul­ti­mate­ly in charge of the now."

You can view the video at www.youtube.com/richielu­nave­vo or at www.de­featthedark.com.