Aba A Luke

Even as vi­o­lence im­pedes har­mo­ny in neigh­bour­ing Caribbean is­land, Ja­maica, the mu­sic of some of the ter­ri­to­ry's lo­cal artistes, con­tin­ues to cross bound­aries, hit­ting in­ter­na­tion­al pa­ra­me­ters faster and more in­tru­sive than any oth­er genre. Young Ro­main Vir­go is but 20 years old. His hunger for suc­cess has tak­en him on a jour­ney that be­gan in 2007 when he won the lo­cal leg of the Dig­i­cel Ris­ing Stars com­pe­ti­tion.

From the smash hit sin­gle, Cyaan Sleep, to fol­low up hits like Love Doc­tor, This Love, Wan­na Go Home, Rain Is Falling and Who Feels It Knows It, the young star in the mak­ing is stamp­ing his name and clean mu­si­cal at­trib­ut­es across the world, from here in the Caribbean to North Amer­i­ca and be­yond.

The al­bum

On Tues­day, Vir­go, who at­tends the Ed­na Man­ley Col­lege of Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts in Kingston, Ja­maica, and is signed to VP Records, re­leased his de­but al­bum. The self-en­ti­tled com­pi­la­tion fea­tures some 15 tracks and de­picts the pos­i­tive­ly soul­ful state­ments that Vir­go has main­tained through­out his bur­geon­ing ca­reer.

With no­table col­lab­o­ra­tive tracks with Ja­maica's Etana, who in 2008 rocked the is­land with the song I'm Not Afraid, and a sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dig­i­cel Ris­ing Star's fifth sea­son cham­pi­on, Cameal Davis, the al­bum is, ac­cord­ing to Vir­go him­self, filled with el­e­ments of in­spi­ra­tion from every mu­si­cal genre in­clud­ing dance­hall and R&B. He re­vealed that he wrote 13 of the 15 tracks, a tremen­dous feat for any up­com­ing artiste.

"I must thank Don­a­van Jer­main of Pent­house Records and Shane Brown of Juke­box pro­duc­tions, as well as Daw­in Brown and Omar Brown of Vikings Pro­duc­tions and Dayan Fos­ter from Pe­te Mu­sic for their work on the al­bum," said Vir­go in his chat with the T&T Guardian; his calm tem­pera­ment all the while shin­ing through his words.

Hope for a bet­ter Ja­maica

On the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, Vir­go's man­age­ment team and la­bel ex­ecs have en­sured that their young tal­ent cap­i­talis­es on the hits that he's been spew­ing out. He re­cent­ly re­turned to Ja­maica from a US pro­mo­tion­al tour, which saw him touch a num­ber of ar­eas, in­clud­ing New York, Boston, Flori­da, Texas and Cal­i­for­nia.

Now, back in Ja­maica, even amid the war­fare that has top­pled the is­land to a cer­tain de­gree, young Vir­go re­mains fo­cused on his ob­jec­tive. "I'm liv­ing in Kingston be­cause of school and the sit­u­a­tion in Tivoli hasn't af­fect­ed me that much. Some shows that should have been hap­pen­ing over the past week­end were can­celled be­cause peo­ple were scared; no­body was brave enough to come out," he said.

Vir­go said he was a bit close to where every­thing was hap­pen­ing and was quite dis­ap­point­ed with what had tak­en place.

"It's the first time I've seen any­thing like this in Ja­maica," he said. "I think the vi­o­lence has cre­at­ed a bad im­age for Ja­maica. Peo­ple are now afraid to come and en­joy the is­land for the mu­sic and the at­mos­phere. I just want to see a bet­ter Ja­maica."

When asked about the politi­cians and their role in the may­hem, Vir­go ad­vised: "Politi­cians need to come to­geth­er to reach a com­mon goal for the bet­ter­ment of the peo­ple. This I would love to see–love and uni­ty."