Joanne Brig­gs

When Ger­man DJ Bar­ney Mil­lah speaks, the words that come out of his mouth are not sprin­kled with his na­tive Berlin ac­cent. In­stead phras­es such as "yeah man, ah com­ing!" "fel­lahs," "and ting," and " by he" come out with the fa­mil­iar sing-song in­flec­tion of a Trinida­di­an.

Added to that, he likes a good lime.

"I am not the kind of Eu­ro­pean who likes to chill on the beach. Once I have food and drink, I'm good," he said dur­ing an in­ter­view on Skype.

He pro­claims his love for Ger­many and his place of birth, Berlin, but his ex­po­sure to the Caribbean has made him feel as if he was born in the wrong coun­try. Blame the so­ca mu­sic that he plays or blame the fact that he once took it up­on him­self to vis­it To­ba­go so­lo or that his girl­friend of sev­en years is a Trinida­di­an and her fam­i­ly has so em­braced him that he has be­come an hon­orary Tri­ni.

For those in the so­ca in­dus­try, Mil­lah is known as a point man for push­ing the mu­sic in Eu­rope. Bun­ji Gar­lin re­cent­ly post­ed a pic­ture of the two of them in a broth­er­ly em­brace on Face­book, ex­plain­ing in brief the sto­ry be­hind the man.

Bun­ji wrote: "...he was the sec­ond per­son to ever start play­ing so­ca in Ger­many but the first to ac­tu­al­ly stick with for a decade or more, any­time he would play so­ca every­one would leave, some even want­i­ng him to be fired be­cause they didn't like the mu­sic...THAT IS A DE­FEND­ER OF SO­CA and the world of so­ca should know and re­spect this man..."

It's true, Mil­lah said. He cleared a club once. He cleared the floor at oth­er par­ties and he didn't care. As long as he played so­ca he was hap­py, he said.

His at­trac­tion to so­ca be­gan in 1987 when he pur­chased his first vinyl LP, a so­ca sam­ple ti­tled So­ca Train. Among the songs on the al­bum were Kitch­en­er's Sug­ar Bum Bum, Crazy's So­ca Tarzan and Ar­row's Hot, Hot, Hot. By then, he was al­ready a DJ with a reg­gae back­ground. Both reg­gae and so­ca were hard­ly played at par­ties in the 80s, ex­cept at the African clubs.

In 1991, he trav­elled to Ja­maica to know more about reg­gae and dance­hall. There, he met the late Caribbean mu­sic icon By­ron Lee who per­formed a groovy mix of reg­gae, dance­hall and so­ca. By the time Mil­lah re­turned to Ger­many, he es­tab­lished his sound sys­tem–which com­pris­es DJs with a va­ri­ety of mix­ing styles, hype men on the mic, and a vast li­brary of mu­sic.

He al­so told his boss at the record store where he worked that he was in­ter­est­ed in so­ca mu­sic. He per­suad­ed him to sell some mu­sic in the store. That was where he met Franky Fyah, of the famed So­ca Twins sound sys­tem, who of­ten bought record­s­there and of­ten had con­ver­sa­tions about Car­ni­val.

In 1994, at a beach club open­ing in Berlin, he saw a melt­ing pot of all peo­ple but reg­gae mu­sic was on­ly played. "There were Grena­di­ans, Tri­nis, peo­ple from Guade­loupe and Guyana. I said to my­self, why don't I give them some so­ca mu­sic? In 1997, I opened a club play­ing on Mon­day nights, some fel­lahs came every Mon­day night. And a bounc­er who was there, orig­i­nal­ly from the Vir­gin Is­lands, told me you have to play so­ca for them."

That same year, VP records re­leased So­ca Gold and Trinidad per­form­ers were al­so ex­plor­ing the dance­hall move­ment by in­cor­po­rat­ing their own styles. The names back then were Bun­ji (who ap­peared on the lo­cal air­waves with Rag­ga so­ca), Mag­ga Dan (now known as Max­imus Prime) and 3Suns who vis­it­ed Ger­many to mix their mu­sic.

When the sound sys­tem broke off in 2000, Mil­lah felt he had more free­dom to play so­ca. In 2001, Mil­lah made his first vis­it to T&T, vis­it­ing the sis­ter isle first through the ad­vice of a for­mer neigh­bour who was orig­i­nal­ly from To­ba­go. He stayed with the neigh­bour's fam­i­ly. There he met his sis­ter's neigh­bour who sang with By­ron Lee. Stay­ing with her fam­i­ly in Ari­ma, she in­tro­duced Mil­lah to Ron­nie McIn­tosh, Machel Mon­tano and Max­imus. "That was my first Car­ni­val and that was it there. The virus re­al­ly broke out," he said.

Since then he has vis­it­ed five times for Car­ni­val, the last vis­it was in 2008. He has al­so fre­quent­ed New York's Labour Day play­ing on the road for the band pro­duced by his girl­friend's fa­ther. "I play for a back yard par­ty on the night be­fore Labour Day, strict­ly so­ca, no reg­gae," he said. "I love to play for a ma­ture au­di­ence. I like to see cou­ples move to­geth­er. I let it flow, I let the peo­ple dance. I don't cut the mu­sic, I play back in times and mod­ern, with the right mix."

Back in Ger­many, Mil­lah felt the on the road feel­ing, not as a DJ but jump­ing along with the So­ca Twins mu­sic truck dur­ing the Car­ni­val of Cul­tures, which takes place an­nu­al­ly in late May to ear­ly June. Be­fore, he played reg­gae mu­sic on the road. That par­tic­u­lar Car­ni­val, he was re­placed by a team from Ham­burg and en­joyed the jump up in­stead. It al­so trig­gered the idea of bring­ing his own mu­sic truck on the road. So af­ter talks with Franky Fyah, they start­ed their first band.

"We had about 20 com­ing out in just t-shirts. But they didn't sup­ply rope, so we had about 14 to 15 mas­quer­aders and 600 be­hind the truck!" Mil­lah said. "Now we have two trucks–Car­ni­val Fever and Car­ni­val Ex­plo­sion. One that is strict­ly mas and oth­er with no cos­tume."

The girl­friends of Mil­lah and Franky Fyah are in charge of the Car­ni­val cos­tume band, which has since in­creased to 220 mas­quer­aders. In all, be­tween the two bands, there are close to 2,000 peo­ple who fol­low them. The pack­age to the Berlin street fete al­so in­cludes tick­ets for a wel­come par­ty, a beach par­ty and a glow par­ty. Among the Caribbean artistes to have per­formed with Mil­lah are Skin­ny Fab­u­lous, Pe­ter Ram, Lil Rick, Bun­ji and Fay-Ann.

?

Hav­ing es­tab­lished him­self as a go-to man for so­ca mu­sic in Ger­many, Mil­lah ad­mits that its pres­ence is still lim­it­ed. Al­though reg­gae and dance­hall is still his ma­jor busi­ness, he still plays so­ca when he works. The African pa­trons are get­ting in­to it, he said, be­cause of the hype of the genre azon­to (which is played in Nige­ria and Ghana) and is com­pat­i­ble with so­ca mu­sic.

"On the ra­dios this (so­ca) is not hap­pen­ing ex­cept for a mul­ti­cul­tur­al sta­tion. And even then, that is a few times. You get Sean Paul and Beanie (Man) but there is more fo­cus on hip hop and R&B," Mil­lah ex­plained.

Nev­er­the­less, Mil­lah be­lieves he has been able to change a lot of peo­ple by play­ing so­ca. "Now you see them at a lot of par­ties," he said.

Mar­tin Jay, the UK's lead­ing so­ca DJ, is a big fan of Mil­lah and DJs like the So­ca Twins. Jay told the T&T Guardian, "Bar­ney cham­pi­ons so­ca mu­sic and it gives us a broad­er hori­zon when Bar­ney Mil­lah and the oth­er guys in Eu­rope are pro­mot­ing so­ca like it's their mu­sic. It's like it's their navel strings are buried in the Caribbean. Full re­spect to Bar­ney."