RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Ja­maican reg­gae and rap star, Shag­gy, be­lieves the Caribbean must build its own Gram­my awards to ho­n­our and recog­nise re­gion­al artistes. In a one-on-one in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Orville Richard Bur­rell, who is pop­u­lar­ly known by his stage name, Shag­gy, al­so said the time has come for so­ca to no longer be a sea­son­al genre of mu­sic.

Last week, so­ca artiste Machel Mon­tano said he be­lieves he has the key to tak­ing so­ca to the Gram­mys and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al award shows. When asked about the po­ten­tial of such an un­der­tak­ing, Shag­gy told Guardian Me­dia it is cer­tain­ly not im­pos­si­ble but pushed the idea of the Caribbean ho­n­our­ing its own artistes.

He said, "We should get to a point where we start do­ing our own Caribbean-type Gram­my fol­low­ing in the same foot­steps as the Latin guys where they cre­at­ed what is known as a Latin Gram­my. With­in the Latin cul­ture, there are dif­fer­ent styles. There is reg­gae­ton, bacha­ta and all these dif­fer­ent styles of mu­sic. I think if we come with a Caribbean-style Gram­my in­stead of a dance­hall Gram­my, reg­gae Gram­my or so­ca Gram­my and in­stead just cre­ate a Caribbean Gram­my where our mu­sic will be able to com­pete in­stead of just one style of mu­sic."

As so­ca re­turned in scin­til­lat­ing style this year fol­low­ing two years of no car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Shag­gy warned the lo­cal in­dus­try the genre must trans­form from some­thing that is right now too sea­son­al.

Shag­gy, who was award­ed the Or­der of Dis­tinc­tion in Ja­maica in 2007, said, "I think one of the big things that has be­come a ceil­ing for so­ca mu­sic is that sea­son­al type of thing where they feel it's on­ly in a sea­son. So when we did Mood with me and Kes, I was in that feel good mood cause this is the land and the cul­ture of feel good and that should not be a sea­son, it should be year-round. You don't have to feel good just for a sea­son, and the minute we move that whole sea­son­al thing from so­ca, I think you def­i­nite­ly have a shot of do­ing crossover suc­cess."

He em­pha­sised that Caribbean artistes have to work hard­er than those in de­vel­oped coun­tries to make it in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and that is some­thing not to be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

Shag­gy ex­plained, "These ma­jors are spend­ing around $100k or $5m, so to speak, on a roll out on any one par­tic­u­lar act. We don't have that priv­i­lege so we have to make up our mind as Ja­maican and Caribbean artistes to re­al­ly re­alise if we re­al­ly want our mu­sic to go we have to work 10 times hard­er with 10 times less and get 10 times less sleep and make mu­sic 10 times bet­ter, just to even have a shot. And once we have that mind­set then we're cer­tain­ly on our way."

Shag­gy fea­tured as part of Kes' IzWE con­cert that took place on Tues­day night at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my. Hav­ing en­joyed his per­for­mance in the south­lands, Shag­gy is now look­ing for­ward to re­lax­ing in the twin-is­land a bit be­fore leav­ing.