Nigel A Camp­bell

On Ju­ly 14, Mu­sicTT, a sub­sidiary of the Min­istry of Trade state en­ter­prise, Cre­ativeTT, de­buted the first in a planned se­ries of mu­sic con­ver­sa­tions with stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try–mu­sic in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als and as­pi­rants in all branch­es, and me­dia–to ap­prise them of the de­vel­op­ments and po­ten­tial gains made by this or­gan­i­sa­tion for the ben­e­fit of the lo­cal in­dus­try.

This ini­tial meet­ing launched the video of a pan­el dis­cus­sion with par­tic­i­pants who at­tend­ed the an­nu­al South by South­west Mu­sic Con­fer­ence and Fes­ti­val (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, in March, un­der the aus­pices of Mu­sicTT.

In a video screened for the guests at Home on Scott Street, St Clair, band­leader and pro­duc­er Joey Ng Wai, rap­so artiste Atak­lan, mu­sic pro­duc­er Kasey Phillips, mu­sic busi­ness­man Si­mon Bap­tiste, Mu­sicTT chair­man John Arnold and com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Kris Granger an­swered ques­tions sub­mit­ted by lo­cal in­dus­try stake­hold­ers that lined up with the top­i­cal in­for­ma­tion gleaned from the many pan­els and work­shops at­tend­ed by this group in Texas.

Af­ter the film, an in­ter­ac­tive ques­tion-and-an­swer ses­sion with as­sem­bled stake­hold­ers cre­at­ed in­ter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion pieces. Those as­sem­bled ques­tioned the role of Mu­sicTT in the in­dus­try, and chal­lenged the fit the or­gan­i­sa­tion had in the ex­ist­ing lo­cal mu­sic struc­ture. Granger had to re­it­er­ate that the spe­cif­ic man­date of the com­pa­ny was "to stim­u­late and fa­cil­i­tate the busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and ex­port ac­tiv­i­ties of the mu­sic in­dus­try in T&T to gen­er­ate na­tion­al wealth."

With this in mind, it was not­ed that the small con­tin­gent of main­ly ex­pe­ri­enced pro­duc­ers and man­agers that went to SXSW were cho­sen via an in­vi­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate, post­ed in Feb­ru­ary, to rep­re­sent the T&T mu­sic in­dus­try, to net­work and to build ca­pac­i­ty, and "to build in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge," ac­cord­ing to Arnold. This was not a per­for­mance show­case con­tin­gent. That was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by pri­vate sec­tor agency ASK Pro­mo­tions, led by for­mer Cre­ativeTT board mem­ber Stephen Howard.

There was a de­lib­er­ate dis­tanc­ing from that pri­vate sec­tor con­tin­gent by Mu­sicTT per­son­nel on the pan­el, al­though it was iron­i­cal­ly not­ed by Arnold sub­se­quent­ly that pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships were the way for­ward for the in­dus­try, and mak­ing sure that the si­lo men­tal­i­ty was lim­it­ing.

Jour­nal­ist Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips asked a point­ed ques­tion about the knowl­edge base up­on which Mu­sicTT had to build: "If af­ter all the pre­vi­ous trips to in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic ex­pos and con­fer­ences, why were we still try­ing to de­fine what we have to do to get trac­tion?"

That ques­tion was re­in­forced by an­oth­er from Wen­dell Man­war­ren, of 3Canal, who queried why are we still not get­ting the right mix at these events. He spoke from first-hand ex­pe­ri­ence as a par­tic­i­pant at Wom­ex in 2007. The shar­ing of knowl­edge, al­though an ide­al in such a small econ­o­my as T&T, was miss­ing by the in­dus­try, as well as the many it­er­a­tions of state en­ter­pris­es re­spon­si­ble for mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment: Tid­co, Ei­di­co, TT Ent. This se­ries of con­ver­sa­tions is an at­tempt to right that wrong, ac­cord­ing to Mu­sicTT gen­er­al manger Jeanelle Fron­tin.

Among the things that were both­er­some to some gath­ered stake­hold­ers was the idea among the younger pan­el par­tic­i­pants that the al­most whole­sale trans­fer of con­cepts from the ma­jor mu­sic mar­kets would work in this small econ­o­my. The jar­gon of US mu­sic busi­ness mar­ket­ing sec­tor such as "brand­ver­tis­ing" was in­tro­duced to par­tic­i­pants, as well as ideas that are ripe in the in­ter­na­tion­al space in­clud­ing mon­etis­ing mu­sic videos, were re­peat­ed with­out a con­tex­tu­al reck­on­ing by those pan­el­lists.

Deputy chair­man of Cre­ativeTT, Shya­mal Chan­dra­daths­ingh, who was part of the live in­ter­ac­tive pan­el af­ter the film tied to­geth­er a num­ber of these con­cerns, lat­er not­ing that an­oth­er func­tion of the SXSW trip was to gauge how best to se­lect par­tic­i­pants for these for­eign mu­sic ex­pos, who fits best where, and how best to pre­pare these par­tic­i­pants. This sub­jec­tive choice was to be honed to ob­jec­tive cri­te­ria to make sense of any in­vest­ment.

En­ter­tain­ment lawyer Car­la Par­ris and Cott CEO Josh Rud­der both not­ed the im­por­tance of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and pub­lish­ing in the new mix of rev­enue streams in the mod­ern mu­sic in­dus­try world­wide. They both ac­knowl­edged, re­gret­ful­ly, that this was still not a pri­ma­ry area of fo­cus lo­cal­ly.

Sig­nif­i­cant in the evening were the con­ver­sa­tions out­side the of­fi­cial con­ver­sa­tion, where some hard "truths" were re­vealed about the state of the in­dus­try, and opin­ion wres­tled with fact to make the case that there was al­ways more work to be done to sat­is­fy stake­hold­ers. A pop­u­lar mantra bandied about was that there was "no mu­sic in­dus­try here in T&T" de­spite the fact that for more than a cen­tu­ry lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs and cre­atives have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the com­merce of mu­sic so much so that da­ta has been col­lect­ed to sug­gest that this "in­dus­try" con­tributes to the an­nu­al GDP, es­ti­mat­ed at $169 mil­lion by Trade Min­is­ter Bharath.

An­oth­er, was the seem­ing­ly short time frame for ac­tion by the com­pa­ny giv­en that gen­er­al elec­tions are a cou­ple months away, as is the bud­get, thus cre­at­ing an un­sure and some say ten­sion-filled en­vi­ron­ment for ef­fec­tive­ness. Arnold told the T&T Guardian that the board of Cre­ativeTT had a term end­ing in the third quar­ter of 2016 some­how ne­glect­ing the pro­to­col of board res­ig­na­tions if a new gov­ern­ment comes to pow­er.

Mu­sicTT in the mean­while is ac­tive­ly re­cruit­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion from stake­hold­ers via ten­der doc­u­ments for pro­pos­als for con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for prepa­ra­tion of a strate­gic plan for the mu­sic in­dus­try, this one af­ter an un­suc­cess­ful pre­vi­ous ten­der round be­fore Car­ni­val by Cre­ativeTT, and oth­er pro­pos­als via an open call, an ex­er­cise which is planned to hap­pen bian­nu­al­ly. This first en­gage­ment with the stake­hold­ers was not­ed as a step in the right di­rec­tion.