Zahra Gor­don

Lo­cal neo-soul singer, John Fran­cis, bet­ter known as John John, has slow­ly but sure­ly been mak­ing his way in­to the ears, souls and con­scious­ness of the T&T mu­sic in­dus­try.

Last month, Fran­cis re­leased his de­but al­bum, Ci­ta Grand­son. The 12-track al­bum fea­tures an eclec­tic mix of R&B, neo-soul, reg­gae, funk, jazz and of course, Fran­cis's dis­tic­n­tive vo­cals.

Ac­cord­ing to Fran­cis, the al­bum is his in­tro­duc­tion to the world. It is al­so his sto­ry.

"There's no one mes­sage or one ide­al (in the mu­sic). It's not just about re­la­tion­ships. My in­spi­ra­tion comes from life, from the things I feel need to be said, from every­where," said the sur­pris­ing­ly soft-spo­ken singer dur­ing an in­ter­view at the T&T Guardian.

"Most im­por­tant­ly, my mu­sic comes from an earnest place. What­ev­er I say, I've lived. It's not fake and I think peo­ple can re­late to that."

Ci­ta Grand­son was three years in the mak­ing but Fran­cis is proud of not on­ly the fi­nal prod­uct but al­so the process.

"That three years went in a flash. I didn't rush to record be­cause every­thing takes time–writ­ing the mu­sic, go­ing to stu­dio, build­ing a fan-base. I'm slow­ly mak­ing the tran­si­tion to be­ing a full-time artist but it can be hard jug­gling work and fam­i­ly life and work­ing on mu­sic," said Fran­cis, who is al­so an emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cian.

Mu­sic pro­vides for Fran­cis with both an out­let and a boost of con­fi­dence. "As a fan of mu­sic, it's ther­a­peu­tic and I'm al­ways look­ing for new mu­sic. On the oth­er side, it's the on­ly time I get to bare my soul. I'm more of a re­served per­son and when I'm per­form­ing I just get to shout and scream."

Dur­ing his teens, the 35-year-old Fran­cis be­came in­ter­est­ed in mu­sic by sim­ply lis­ten­ing to the ra­dio.

Al­though his fa­ther sang with church choirs, Fran­cis wasn't in­ter­est­ed in mu­sic pro­fes­sion­al­ly while grow­ing up.

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from sec­ondary school, Fran­cis joined singing groups like Black Am­bi­tion, Kings of Ori­gin and the gospel choir, Youth Pulse.

Yet, Fran­cis says his mu­sic has evolved from those ear­ly days when he was heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by Amer­i­can R&B like that of Boyz II Men. These days, Fran­cis is lis­ten­ing to every­thing from Lau­ryn Hill to Tal­ib Kweli to David Rud­der to Justin Beiber.

There are many chal­lenges to pro­duc­ing the type of mu­sic Fran­cis does in T&T, how­ev­er. His fan base con­sists large­ly of a sim­i­lar group of peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in al­ter­na­tive mu­sic for one.

"It's a chal­lenge but I don't study it. If you're not book­ing me, I'll do my own shows. At the end of the day it has to get big­ger out­side of Trinidad so I work with the cul­ture. The way we take in mu­sic here is dif­fer­ent; we have a my­opic view of mu­sic," he said.

The fa­ther of one al­so has what can be la­beled an "afro-cen­tric" ap­proach to mu­sic. "I try not to force ide­ol­o­gy on peo­ple and al­so not to sound racist or un­pa­tri­ot­ic, but it's more about lov­ing self than hat­ing oth­ers and un­der­stand­ing who we are and where we came from. My mu­sic is knowl­edge-based though and tries to tug at peo­ple's con­scious and sub­con­scious."

Fran­cis sees him­self as part of a cur­rent move­ment of mu­si­cians in T&T.

"I'm part of a re­nais­sance of live mu­sic that's hap­pen­ing right now where we ac­tu­al­ly try to cre­ate an ex­pe­ri­ence for the au­di­ence. It's grow­ing and I hope it reach­es a place where it's not a sub­cul­ture, where peo­ple know these things are go­ing on. In gen­er­al, even with all these things go­ing on the pow­ers that be still don't un­der­stand the strength of art," he said.

His al­lies in this move­ment in­clude mem­bers of the Fringe Fest–an al­ter­na­tive show held si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence–such as rap­per Chro­mat­ics, reg­gae band Buz­zrock and singer Jeff Wight, and oth­er artists do­ing sim­i­lar work like Free­town Col­lec­tive and Col­lis Dur­ran­ty.

To take the move­ment for­ward, Fran­cis is plan­ning a coun­try-wide tour with his al­bum. He's al­so hop­ing to ex­pand by host­ing his own mu­sic fes­ti­val next year.

In the near fu­ture, how­ev­er, he'll con­tin­ue to sing and per­form and has col­lab­o­ra­tive projects com­ing up with jazz bands Elan Par­le and Hi Jinx.

A re­view of Ci­ta Grand­son by Nigel A Camp­bell

Soul is, in the words of writer Nel­son George, "a one word sum­ma­tion of our [Black Amer­i­ca's] spir­it, our de­sires and self-es­teem."

In T&T in the 1970s, lo­cal bands flirt­ed with the sounds and rhythms of soul mu­sic and chan­nelled its cel­e­bra­to­ry spir­it.

In 2013, a new avatar for soul has ar­rived. John John de­buts as the lo­cal poster boy for neo-soul singers with his first al­bum Ci­ta Grand­son on High­way Records.

The self-penned 12 tracks on this CD paint the pic­ture of a young man dis­cov­er­ing his true self and ex­plor­ing his long­ings. Let's Make Mu­sic is bru­tal­ly frank about his de­sires: "...take off those clothes/make 10 toes 20, your chakras ex­posed."

Pro­duc­tion val­ues that look to the larg­er world for val­i­da­tion, ex­cel­lent­ly high­light­ing John John's slinky voice to ef­fect, are keys that the la­bel and artist can de­pend on for mak­ing that in­ter­na­tion­al break­through.