This year has seen a num­ber of high-pro­file ini­tia­tives aimed at im­prov­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of T&T's mu­sic in­dus­try and putting our mu­sic on the in­ter­na­tion­al scene. With the help of en­ti­ties like Mu­sicTT, there's been a buzz about how the mu­sic com­mu­ni­ty can pull to­geth­er and grow. The T&T Guardian spoke to peo­ple from many lev­els of the mu­sic in­dus­try to hear their views. To­day, in the fi­nal of a sev­en-part se­ries, we hear from Ja­cob Edgar, a mu­sic crit­ic, eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist and tal­ent scout. He al­so runs his own World Mu­sic record la­bel, Cum­ban­cha.

From Den­mark to Is­rael to the Sa­hara Desert, San Fran­cis­co-born Ja­cob Edgar's been re­spon­si­ble for sign­ing up many tal­ent­ed mu­sic artists from un­ex­pect­ed places, and gain­ing them wider ex­po­sure, re­spect, and mu­sic sales.

Edgar is an eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist, cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an and mu­sic crit­ic who trav­els the world in search of orig­i­nal new mu­sic for his la­bel Cum­ban­cha, which he found­ed in 2006 from his home stu­dio in Char­lotte, Ver­mont. The la­bel is re­spect­ed for its qual­i­ty of mu­sic: in on­ly its sec­ond year of ex­is­tence, it earned the 2008 Top La­bel Award from the World Mu­sic Ex­po (Wom­ex), the most im­por­tant in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and show­case of world mu­sic.

Edgar is al­so a tal­ent scout and mu­sic re­searcher for the New York City-based Pu­tu­mayo World Mu­sic la­bel, the suc­cess­ful mu­sic in­dus­try pi­o­neer in the non-tra­di­tion­al re­tail mu­sic mar­ket. Pu­tu­mayo has built a glob­al net­work of more than 5,000 book, gift, craft, cloth­ing, health food and oth­er re­tail­ers that play and sell its mu­sic, with of­fices in Eu­rope, Latin Amer­i­ca and Aus­tralia, and dis­tri­b­u­tion in more than 80 coun­tries.

Found­ed in 1993 by Dan Stor­p­er, Pu­tu­mayo has helped many mu­sic ca­reers, pub­lish­ing pre­vi­ous­ly un­known artists in com­pi­la­tions to be en­joyed by a world au­di­ence–so Ja­cob Edgar's role as a mu­sic re­searcher there is sig­nif­i­cant.

"Since he joined Pu­tu­mayo in 1998, Edgar has helped pro­duce CD col­lec­tions that have sold more than ten mil­lion units world­wide," re­port­ed Cre­ateTV, a US lifestyle tele­vi­sion sta­tion. Ac­cord­ing to www.glass­dooor.com, Pu­tu­mayo makes US$5–$10m a year.

Ja­cob Edgar's artists on his own Cum­ban­cha la­bel in­clude The Gar­i­fu­na Col­lec­tive (soul­ful Afro-Amerindi­an mu­sic from Be­lize), Omara "Bombi­no" Moc­tar (a rock- and blues-in­flu­enced, folk Tu­areg gui­tarist/song­writer from the Sa­hara), Da­by Toure (a genre-de­fy­ing mu­si­cian, singer, lyri­cist and com­pos­er of Sene­galese roots), Idan Raichel (an eclec­tic Is­raeli singer, song­writer and mu­si­cian who mix­es elec­tron­ics, He­brew lyrics, Arab and Ethiopi­an mu­sic), Ska Cubano (a hap­py mix of

Ja­maican ska and Cuban mu­sic, with hints of cumbia, jazz and ca­lyp­so), and Drew Gon­salves (a Trinidad-Cana­di­an song­writer orig­i­nal­ly from Diego Mar­tin, now Toron­to-based, whose band Kobo Town re­vives wit­ty ca­lyp­so and sto­ry­telling with a mod­ern twist.)So how did Ja­cob Edgar first get keen on in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic? In a 2012 in­ter­view with Aar­ti Vi­rani for Afar mag­a­zine, he said:

"When I was a teenag­er, I spent a year as an ex­change stu­dent in Reyk­javik, Ice­land. I went with a choir to what was then the So­vi­et Union. I had my gui­tar with me and found that mu­sic was the gate­way to meet­ing peo­ple. Af­ter com­plet­ing my mas­ter's de­gree in eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gy at UCLA, I felt the aca­d­e­m­ic side was too stodgy. I was more in­ter­est­ed in en­er­gised, re­al-world stuff.

So in the ear­ly 1990s, I start­ed work­ing for a small French com­pa­ny that ex­port­ed mu­sic from Africa and France to the Unit­ed States. Even­tu­al­ly, I met Dan Stor­p­er, founder of the Pu­tu­mayo world mu­sic la­bel. He asked me to be his re­searcher. From there I launched Cum­ban­cha. Find­ing the next Bob Mar­ley has been my goal ever since."

'Un­der­stand thein­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket'

Edgar spoke with the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view on Au­gust 18 on some of the things he feels is im­por­tant for any mu­sic artist, and es­pe­cial­ly for artists from small coun­tries, to con­sid­er. He's vis­it­ed Trinidad twice in the past cou­ple years: in Sep­tem­ber 2013, as part of a Na­tion­al Ge­o­graph­ic mu­si­cal ex­pe­di­tion, and dur­ing Car­ni­val 2014.

"One of the things most chal­leng­ing for many coun­tries try­ing to break in­to world mu­sic mar­kets is a mis­un­der­stand­ing of what the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket is in­ter­est­ed in, as op­posed to what the lo­cal mar­ket is in­ter­est­ed in," he said.

"It is ac­tu­al­ly quite rare for an artist that is pop­u­lar and revered at home, to be­come a hit in­ter­na­tion­al­ly–and vice ver­sa... So the first step is to get a sense of what the world wants, as op­posed, say, to what Trinidad wants," he com­ment­ed.

Edgar said peo­ple should ask whether a par­tic­u­lar piece of mu­sic (or mu­si­cian) is pop­u­lar–and if so, why? Lo­cal gos­sip, he said, is not the same as in­ter­na­tion­al re­gard. He said to make in­roads on the world mu­sic mar­ket, T&T must first find artists whose mu­sic con­nects to the world.The sec­ond step, he said, was to tru­ly un­der­stand the sounds/mu­sic styles of the mar­ket you want to en­ter and com­pete in. "That can be hard for lo­cal mu­si­cians," he said.

Two ap­proach­es to suc­cess

"Ba­si­cal­ly," he said, "there are two ap­proach­es to in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic suc­cess."

"One way is to fo­cus on what is unique about the coun­try's mu­sic, what makes it dif­fer­ent and spe­cial. What is the sto­ry be­hind the mu­sic, what is the her­itage? You re­al­ly dig in­to a cel­e­bra­tion of that sound," he said, in a way that al­so pro­duces ap­peal­ing, qual­i­ty mu­sic that can be un­der­stood and en­joyed by a for­eign lis­ten­er.

"The oth­er way is to try to beat the in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence at its own game," said Edgar, "for ex­am­ple, pro­duc­ing pop or non-lo­cal mu­sic. Then you're play­ing the game; you're be­ing a Ri­han­na or a Ricky Mar­tin. That way can work, too, but it re­quires in­cred­i­ble tal­ent, and an abil­i­ty of op­er­a­tions to nav­i­gate that world."

He not­ed that just be­cause a piece of mu­sic is main­stream does not mean it will be suc­cess­ful. If lo­cal artists pro­duce main­stream mu­sic, it still has to be unique and to be bet­ter that what's out there. "The qual­i­ty must be just as good, or bet­ter, with mu­sic videos and fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment," said Edgar.

Now, this can hap­pen–such as Bar­ba­dos-born Robyn Ri­han­na Fen­ty, who's now an in­ter­na­tion­al pop star with more than 41 mil­lion records sold world­wide. But these in­stances are very, very rare, not­ed Edgar. So it of­ten makes more sense to go the first route: mak­ing mu­sic unique to your re­gion, and to you.

The need to in­vest in our­selves–and get bet­ter

Edgar re­called that the Caribbean has pro­duced sev­er­al kinds of mu­sic in­flu­en­tial out­side the re­gion: the reg­gae and dance­hall of Ja­maica, the myr­i­ad rich mu­sic forms of Cu­ba, and styles from mu­si­cal hot spots in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Haiti and Puer­to Ri­co. "Trinidad used to be one of those places too, 50 or 60 years ago," he said, on ca­lyp­so's ear­ly suc­cess as pop mu­sic out­side of the re­gion.

"But the mu­sic in­dus­try has lost some­thing," he ob­served of the T&T mu­sic scene: "Now, even some of the more pop­u­lar so­ca artists are from the oth­er is­lands...Part of the rea­son is prob­a­bly be­cause the Trinidad econ­o­my is not based on tourism." Large num­bers of peo­ple do not come to T&T to lis­ten to our mu­sic, he not­ed. Our econ­o­my is dom­i­nat­ed by hy­dro­car­bon in­come, not any­thing else: so, na­tion­al­ly, we haven't in­vest­ed in any sys­tem to con­sis­tent­ly cre­ate or en­cour­age good mu­sic or mu­sic-re­lat­ed in­come.

"T&T pro­duces some amaz­ing mu­sic still–but I did not hear a lot that would trans­late well in­ter­na­tion­al­ly," said Edgar.

"Steel­pan is amaz­ing mu­sic," he said, but he won­dered whether it would be easy to ex­port, as he felt its pow­er may lie more in the live ex­pe­ri­ence than in a record­ed prod­uct.

As for T&T's so­ca, he was quite frank: "A lot of it is very poor qual­i­ty. Peo­ple just have to be more cre­ative, and not get stuck in­to do­ing the same thing year af­ter year."He gave ex­am­ples of sev­er­al artists from dif­fer­ent re­gions who be­came in­ter­na­tion­al stars: Car­los Vives from Colom­bia, Juan Luis Guer­ra from the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ruben Blades of Pana­ma, the Bue­na Vista So­cial Club from Cu­ba, Bob Mar­ley from Ja­maica. All these drew from their own cul­tur­al unique­ness to make mu­sic that was ac­ces­si­ble to the world, and mar­ried qual­i­ty with world ap­peal.

Al­though there's lots that mu­sic artists any­where should be do­ing to bet­ter mar­ket their mu­sic–such as us­ing so­cial me­dia tools con­sis­tent­ly and cre­ative­ly to cre­ate a fol­low­ing–Edgar in­sists that the ba­sics of good mu­sic sales will al­ways be root­ed in the same thing: "Just make great mu­sic, have a cool style, be cre­ative, and you will find an au­di­ence."