Glenville Ash­by

On the ground lev­el of�the fa­mous Char­lie's Records on Ful­ton Street in Brook­lyn, Rawl­ston Charles stands in front of just two of the many gold records he has churned out over the years. He is tall, sar­to­r­i­al and as debonair as ever. He con­cedes that the mu­sic in­dus­try has changed course, dra­mat­i­cal­ly. But he is al­so trou­bled�by the to­day's mu­sic–T&T mu­sic, that is. And for one wide­ly con­sid­ered a leg­endary fig­ure in ca­lyp­so and so­ca mu­sic, what he had to say should be lis­tened to... at­ten­tive­ly. His tone is mel­low but his words are provoca­tive, in­ci­sive. "Our mu­sic�tells us what is hap­pen­ing in our so­ci­ety. There is a beat, but re­al­ly no melody. Melodies live on...beats change from day to day," he says. And for one who has pro­duced the likes of Swal­low, Shad­ow, Scrunter, Blue Boy, Ex­plain­er, and the list goes on and on, such words are in­deed weighty.

He is fa­ther­ly, invit­ing to­day's youth to lis­ten to the mae­stros of the past and learn. "The youth should not get an­gry with what I am say­ing. I un­der­stand that they are still try­ing to find them­selves." "Our mu­sic has to of­fer more. It must have greater ap­peal." And in a state­ment that may stir some re­flec­tion, if not con­tro­ver­sy, he adds, "Reg­gae mu­sic of­fers every­thing. You can re­lax, make love with it, and dance to it. But with our mu­sic, it's all about hands in the air, wav­ing and jump­ing. This is fast food mu­sic; there is no iden­ti­ty." Char­lie, as he is af­fec­tion­ate­ly called, ac­knowl­edges the dif­fi­cul­ty in re-es­tab­lish­ing�the melody and cross over ap­peal of the 80s and ear­ly 90s. "The young peo­ple just don't see us. We are here and they are over there."

Up­stairs at the stu­dio, su­per en­gi­neer and pro­duc­er Franklyn Grant is be­hind the con­trols. He is busy�mix­ing some new tracks. It's a state of the art fa­cil­i­ty that had been the adopt­ed home of Cur­tis Blow and Heavy D–and of course count­less ca­lyp­so and so­ca artistes. Franklyn has worked with the very best. And that in­cludes Jen­nifer Lopez and Ted­dy Ri­ley. He is al­so cred­it­ed with one of so­ca's biggest hits, Workie Workie, by Burn­ing Flames. Singer Ty­ro Matthews of Moru­ga, is al­so in the stu­dio. Franklyn and Rawl­ston go way back. Franklyn, who�grew up in Tacarigua,�must rein­vent the wheel, so to speak. He did it be­fore; why not again? He shares many of Rawl­ston's sen­ti­ments. "We must take so­ca to an­oth­er lev­el," he says. He cites UB40, a British band that shot to fame with the help of reg­gae mu­sic, dom­i­nat­ing the Eu­ro­pean charts in the 80s. "Look, our mu­sic must be big­ger than Car­ni­val. Don't get fooled. When for­eign­ers go to Car­ni­val and jump to so­ca they are en­joy­ing every­thing about the ex­pe­ri­ence. It does not mean that they will be tak­ing that mu­sic home with them."

He�con­tin­ues, "How can the mu­sic en­joy in­ter­na­tion­al ac­claim if there is no air­play here in the States...if no one is buy­ing?" Franklyn iden­ti­fies ma­jor prob­lems fac­ing so­ca mu­sic, one of which is boot­leg­ging. An­oth­er is the preva­lence of un­der­ground Caribbean ra­dio sta­tions that can be closed at any time by the au­thor­i­ties. "Our mu­sic just doesn't have the av­enues for ex­po­sure," he says. "Why don't the gov­ern­ments buy some sta­tions here and pro­mote our stuff prop­er­ly?" he asks. Franklyn is all about mu­sic. He has stud­ied the art well and be­lieves that so­ca must take on main­stream sta­tus to sur­vive. He ad­mires Kevin Lit­tle's mu­sic and Machel Mon­tano's work on One More Wine. "Now that is mu­sic that takes a lit­tle from all gen­res," he says with some an­i­ma­tion. Char­lie's Records' new "chair­man", Ku­ti Grant, joins the dis­cus­sion. He is Rawl­ston's son. He must chart a new course and car­ry the mu­si­cal ba­ton hand­ed to him by his fa­ther.

Pen­ny Bernard joins the group. A sen­sa­tion­al vo­cal­ist, she is al­so a for­mer Miss T&T USA. Franklyn and Ku­ti are bank­ing that Ty­ro and Pen­ny will be the next big acts at Char­lie's. Their�mu­sic is now play­ing non-stop in the stu­dio–loud­ly–and every­one is in high spir­its. Rawl­ston is down­stairs. It is more sub­dued there but sure­ly the good news will reach him. Af­ter all, as he stat­ed ear­li­er, "I am on­ly se­mi-re­tired. I still have one foot in the door."–Glenville Ash­by is�a New York-based jour­nal­ist