KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Den­zil Coutain’s melo­di­ous tunes are a blend of ca­lyp­so, reg­gae and soul with afro-in­fused RnB, cre­at­ing a unique and sig­na­ture sound all his own.

His in­fec­tious vo­cals have cap­tured the at­ten­tion of many with his 2024 re­lease “Art­form” push­ing him fur­ther in­to the spot­light.

For the hum­ble, fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed San­gre Grande en­ter­tain­er the feed­back has been a bit sur­re­al with “Art­form” gain­ing over a mil­lion views on YouTube.

“The feed­back has been tremen­dous and heart-warm­ing,” he said. 

“I went from hav­ing no in­ter­est in be­ing a mu­si­cian to be­ing a full-time one. It goes to show that when God has some­thing planned for you, un­less you tell him you don’t want it, he will con­tin­ue plac­ing it in front of you. It is up to you to do what you want with it.”

He cred­its his mu­si­cal growth and suc­cess to his long-time col­lab­o­ra­tor British mu­sic pro­duc­er Neil Dwala. 

“Neil is the Dan, Neil is a fa­ther, a man­ag­er, one of the per­sons who gave me the av­enue to cre­ate a sound for me,” he said.

“He went in­to the depths in show­ing me the ropes and fine-tun­ing my mu­sic.”

Sport­ing thick dread­locks and a huge smile, the 28-year-old en­ter­tain­er re­vealed that his fam­i­ly is the heart­beat of his in­spi­ra­tion.

“I have al­ways been around mu­sic,” he shared.

“My cousins are Jim­my Oc­to­ber and 8Osede. It was my de­ceased cousin, more like a sis­ter, Shan­na-Marie Fuentes, God rest her soul, af­ter hear­ing my voice when I was about 13, who en­cour­aged me to start singing. She kept nag­ging me to go and sing.”

With the sup­port of his grand­fa­ther and un­cle, Coutain trans­formed life’s hard­ships in­to mu­si­cal ex­pres­sion, cre­at­ing his 2019 hit “African Dancer”. 

“That song was three years old be­fore it dropped,” he said.

“We were hold­ing it be­cause we didn’t know if we were re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in drop­ping it be­cause I was not sure about be­ing a mu­si­cian.”

Af­ter some un­cer­tain­ty, “African Dancer” was dropped, and it was the start of many oth­er re­leas­es.

Coutain is now en­joy­ing the pos­i­tive feed­back from his lat­est re­lease “Jam­town” (He­roes Rid­dim) pro­duced by Tano.

“I feel blessed, ho­n­oured and thank­ful to be tak­ing part in this cul­tur­al space,” said Coutain.

“As long as God per­mits life I have no prob­lem in be­ing of this phe­nom­e­nal cul­ture and sound.”

Coutain is ex­cit­ed and grate­ful to be part of what he called “a big shift in the so­ca space.”

“That stems from not on­ly my­self but Tano, Yung Bred­da, Mi­cal Te­ja, Kevin Hart­man, Kris Kennedy and David Har­vey,” he said.

“This new gen is tap­ping in­to how it was be­fore and pay­ing homage to the icons. It’s a pos­i­tive en­er­gy where all en­ter­tain­ers are do­ing their ut­most best to keep the en­er­gies high whilst show­ing re­spect to the ones be­fore and in the same breath main­tain­ing our­selves in the cul­ture.”

The en­ter­tain­er con­tin­ues to push the en­ve­lope of con­tem­po­rary Caribbean mu­sic through his abil­i­ty as both a singer and ob­ser­va­tion­al lyri­cist through his re­leas­es, with an aim to be an in­spi­ra­tion to the fu­ture gen­er­a­tion.

“I see my­self giv­ing back and ba­si­cal­ly help­ing those who can’t help them­selves,” he said.

“I want to be suc­cess­ful enough to give in­spi­ra­tion to those who have no faith or have giv­en up on them­selves. I want to be a tes­ta­ment to God.”

Coutain has en­joyed an or­gan­ic growth to over 1.5 mil­lion streams via Ap­ple Mu­sic & Spo­ti­fy and is cur­rent­ly av­er­ag­ing 35,000 month­ly streams. ​