Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Two weeks ago when the T&T Guardian in­ter­viewed young singing sen­sa­tion Er­phaan Alves, then a semi­fi­nal­ist in the Dig­i­cel In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er and Play Whe Groovy So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tions, his fo­cus was to present a good enough per­for­mance at the semi­fi­nals to get him in­to the fi­nals. Well, at the Ari­ma Velo­drome last Sun­day, Alves con­vinced the judges that he was "fi­nal­ist ma­te­r­i­al" when he gave his all in both cat­e­gories with his com­po­si­tions In Your Eyes and Ter­ri­ble, land­ing him on the of­fi­cial fi­nal­ist list in both cat­e­gories, an­nounced on Tues­day by Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion for the Per­form­ing Arts. When con­tact­ed, the 20-year-old pelau lover was in a cel­e­bra­to­ry mood, as he was lap­ping up every mo­ment of his ac­com­plish­ment af­ter hav­ing on­ly made it to the semi­fi­nals in the past five years. "I am elat­ed, it's just a great feel­ing. Af­ter all these years the hard work is fi­nal­ly pay­ing off," he said. The song­writer con­fessed, how­ev­er, since the un­veil­ing of the good news he has been "tax­ing" his brain about his pre­sen­ta­tion for the fi­nals.

Quizzed on what he thought gave him the edge this time around, Alves dis­closed the change in time al­lot­ted to per­form­ers from eight min­utes to five, re­al­ly worked for him, as in the past he would nev­er per­form long enough to com­plete the eight min­utes. "It was just pace from start to fin­ish. With the new time I got to plan out my per­for­mance. It was just enough time to keep the crowd hype and to get all that I planned in." He al­so not­ed that his fo­cus at the Velo­drome was not on "mash­ing up the place", but rather pre­sent­ing the song to the crowd and the judges and get­ting them fa­mil­iar with it and Er­phaan Alves the artiste as well, which he be­lieves he suc­ceed­ed in do­ing. "I ex­pect­ed to come off in both cat­e­gories and that is what I worked to­wards at the semi­fi­nals. The song I sang in the pow­er cat­e­go­ry (Ter­ri­ble) was re­leased late so there wasn't enough time for air­play for peo­ple to get ac­cus­tomed to it, which is why I placed more em­pha­sis on per­form­ing that song on Sun­day," he added.

Spec­tac­u­lar per­for­mance

Con­struc­tive crit­i­cism is not some­thing Alves turns up his nose at. The Ch­agua­nas na­tive ar­tic­u­lat­ed, fol­low­ing his per­for­mance at the semi­fi­nals, that he re­ceived some point­ers from peo­ple who con­struc­tive­ly cri­tiqued him. He said they gave ad­vice he will def­i­nite­ly use come Fan­tas­tic Fri­day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um.

"I ex­pect to pull off a spec­tac­u­lar pre­sen­ta­tion and a great per­for­mance on that night, so I am re­al­ly fo­cus­ing on my songs and per­for­mance," he re­it­er­at­ed.

Ad­vice

Even as this young­ster goes up against ex­pe­ri­enced heavy­weights like Machel Mon­tano, Iw­er George and Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller, he wish­es them best of luck at the fi­nals and lends ad­vice to new­com­ers, like him, to the com­pe­ti­tion. "For some the jour­ney would have on­ly just be­gun. It took me five dis­ap­point­ments to get here, so it must hap­pen for you at some time. "The com­pe­ti­tion is a step­ping-stone for our mu­sic ca­reers...it's a great plat­form to be­gin any so­ca artiste's ca­reer be­cause it's glob­al­ly known and well re­spect­ed," he ad­vised.

"I am look­ing for­ward to the show and the con­tin­ued sup­port from my fans out there."