Car­ol Quash

At a time when young peo­ple seem to re­vere the mu­si­cal of­fer­ings by the likes of Vy­bz Kar­tel and Mova­do, four young peo­ple who pre­fer to fo­cus on more pos­i­tive lyri­cal con­tent have de­cid­ed to give T&T's youth what they see as a more up­lift­ing al­ter­na­tive.

Putting oth­ers first

Lyn­don An­drews, Leti­tia An­drews, Mar­cus Ruiz and An­tho­ny Broth­er­son are mem­bers of the group Ec­cle­sia, and are on a mis­sion to get their mes­sage to their tar­get au­di­ence through mu­sic. "We be­lieve what artistes like Vy­bz Kar­tel and Mova­do have to say is be­ing por­trayed in so­ci­ety. So in the midst of all the crime and drug abuse, we want to show them (young peo­ple) that they can do much bet­ter, and that they can achieve great things, no mat­ter what com­mu­ni­ty they come from," Lyn­don An­drews said.

"I grew up in Mal­oney and I have seen so many of my friends die. I went on to do my A'Lev­els but some of them did not even get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get that far," he lament­ed. He said he knew he and the oth­er mem­bers had mu­si­cal tal­ent and could make it big in the mu­sic in­dus­try, but when they thought about the many mis­led and hurt­ing young peo­ple in the na­tion they knew they had a mis­sion. He said when Ec­cle­sia was formed two years ago, the mem­ber­ship was a lot big­ger. "We start­ed with 15 mem­bers but we have been re­duced to four be­cause not every­one had the same vi­sion. Some peo­ple were just in it for fame and for­tune."

Pos­i­tive ghet­to vibes

He said the group ini­tial­ly did gospel reg­gae but was now branch­ing off in­to tech­no, so­ca and R&B in or­der to reach the youth. How­ev­er, he as­sured that the mes­sage re­mained the same. "We have the mu­si­cal tal­ent, we have a mes­sage and we want to con­nect with our lis­ten­ers. We want to be a voice in the so­ci­ety, from the so­ci­ety and for the so­ci­ety. "We want to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tions that ex­ist in our so­ci­eties, es­pe­cial­ly the ghet­tos." In ad­di­tion, he said, Ec­cle­sia mem­bers were in­tent on liv­ing their mes­sage by be­ing role mod­els to their lis­ten­ers.

"We (young peo­ple) used to look to lawyers, doc­tors, politi­cians and oth­er promi­nent peo­ple as role mod­els. But with all the neg­a­tive al­le­ga­tions about these peo­ple be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed, how many young peo­ple now say 'I want to be a doc­tor', or 'I want to be a lawyer'?"

Ac­cord­ing to An­drews, Ec­cle­sia has per­formed at church­es, schools and con­certs but had no prob­lems with mak­ing ap­pear­ances at oth­er events. The group's re­cent­ly-re­leased first sin­gle Keep Press­ing On, he said, was get­ting a lot of air­play and had been well re­ceived.

He said they were work­ing on a sec­ond sin­gle, Come Down In De Ghet­to, which tells the sto­ry of what hap­pens there. "Peo­ple go about their busi­ness and don't re­al­ly know what hap­pens in these com­mu­ni­ties, apart from what they hear on the news. We want to paint a broad pic­ture of what re­al­ly hap­pens there," he said.