Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

On Tues­day, Do­minique Camp­bell will launch her Girl Ze­ro de­but al­bum, No More Hid­ing. The launch will be much more than just an en­try in­to record­ed mu­sic; it will sig­nal a tri­umph over ad­ver­si­ty and per­son­al strug­gles. The gospel pop artiste, who the leg­endary Bob Mar­ley once in­spired, is now tak­ing on the chal­lenges of the 21st cen­tu­ry in her own mu­sic.

It’s an ex­tra­or­di­nary rise for the once 12-year-old who start­ed dab­bling with her fa­ther’s gui­tar and who loved the drums so much her moth­er got her a set. Now, that child­hood hob­by is about to turn in­to a re­al­i­ty for Camp­bell.

The road to this mo­ment, how­ev­er, has been paved with the chal­lenges she en­coun­tered in her life. Be­tween the lines of her lyrics, if you lis­ten close­ly, you’ll hear Camp­bell’s own strug­gles—and how turn­ing to faith trans­formed her path.

Now, she is em­bark­ing on sav­ing oth­ers who may be go­ing through sim­i­lar chal­lenges as her with the hope that her mu­sic in­spires them to al­so emerge vic­to­ri­ous.

The Maple Leaf In­ter­na­tion­al School alum­nus start­ed study­ing a Mu­sic Busi­ness pro­gramme de­gree at Bel­mont Uni­ver­si­ty in Nashville, Ten­nessee, but was un­able to com­plete it for per­son­al rea­sons.

Un­daunt­ed, she pushed for­ward with her mu­sic ca­reer, in her own way, some­times silent­ly, where there was no ap­plause or fan­fare. And then came the day when she would launch her first al­bum.

WE mag­a­zine sat down with Camp­bell this past week as she pre­pares to launch No More Hid­ing.

Q: What got you in­to gospel mu­sic?

A: My in­di­vid­ual walk with God and then learn­ing, get­ting clos­er to him through get­ting bap­tised and go­ing to church more and speak­ing to him through my own per­son­al tri­als. So, I felt like God gave me the gift to shine light on him. I’ve been a singer since my teens, but I got more in­to it pro­fes­sion­al­ly when I was like 19.

Q: You men­tioned the tri­als you would have faced that have shaped you in your mu­si­cal ca­reer now. Can you walk me through some of those tri­als?

A: Most of them didn’t have to do with mu­sic, but it would have had to do with life and re­la­tion­ships and learn­ing what the na­ture of the world is like and com­ing to terms with evil and how God has a plan for us de­spite the evil in the world and the hope­less­ness. My mu­sic min­istry stems from re­cov­er­ing from an ex­is­ten­tial cri­sis. Find­ing Je­sus was the an­swer. I un­der­stood the pur­pose of why I am here and why he made me and the dif­fer­ent gifts that I have and what to di­rect them in.

Q: How did mu­sic help those chal­lenges?

A: It gave me a voice. It al­lowed me to em­brace emo­tion be­cause songs cap­ture emo­tion. It was a place to em­brace emo­tions in my life and then al­so to have po­et­ry, to do po­et­ry where I ex­press my­self or ask ques­tions, philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions. It was a way for me to con­nect with some­thing be­yond my­self. And then al­so to some­thing that res­onates with peo­ple all through­out, a kind of tran­scend­ing uni­ty. The way that mu­sic has the abil­i­ty to do that was a heal­ing fac­tor. I def­i­nite­ly use it as ther­a­py. I can reg­u­late emo­tions bet­ter.

Q: What do you hope peo­ple get out of the mu­sic that you sing?

A: I want them to know that there is pur­pose be­hind ex­is­tence, that good tri­umphs over evil, and that there is a rea­son to have hope in some­thing be­yond your cur­rent cir­cum­stance, what­ev­er it may feel like. So, what­ev­er you may feel, what­ev­er cage you feel you’re in, there is a key to un­lock that cage, and there is hope to be free, and that was the mes­sage, like free­dom and re­birth and res­ur­rec­tion.

Q: We live in a coun­try and a world where hope is be­ing chal­lenged in a ma­jor way. How im­por­tant has your mu­sic be­come, giv­en the na­tion­al cir­cum­stances of crime and so­cial is­sues and then the glob­al chal­lenges of war and geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues?

A: I would say my mu­sic rep­re­sents a war cry against the evils of this world. In a sense, it’s like a call to peace, but in an in­tense way. Some­times there needs to be an out­pour­ing of deep emo­tion­al des­per­a­tion for peace. The mu­sic is to evoke that–to get peo­ple in a place where they hunger and thirst for peace and light that we know is a part of who we are, but we’re not al­ways see­ing it rep­re­sent­ed when we look around. It’s al­most like we’re call­ing for the light that we know is sup­posed to shine on us.

Q: Who are some of the peo­ple who have in­spired you along the way?

A: I al­ways say Je­sus is my num­ber one be­cause I re­al­ly ex­am­ine how he walked. Even though his way was per­fect, it al­ways func­tions as a mea­sure for where I stand or in terms of the di­rec­tion I want to take my life. Bil­ly Gra­ham was a preach­er that I liked lis­ten­ing to a lot. Bob Mar­ley would be one of them be­cause he was like an un­of­fi­cial prophet­ic voice be­cause he just spoke in a way peo­ple that con­nect­ed to peo­ple and brought us to­geth­er in the way that we are hu­man. I al­so like Jor­dan Pe­ter­son. He’s a good voice for peo­ple who feel dis­con­nect­ed from the world of re­li­gion.

He breaks it down in­to terms that a lot of peo­ple of my gen­er­a­tion can un­der­stand, or even my par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion. He’s a trans­la­tor for the mod­ern world in terms of un­der­stand­ing nec­es­sary things.

Q: What are your hopes for the fu­ture?

A: My ca­reer is for me to ac­tu­al­ly get to wit­ness peo­ple. It’s my goal to con­nect peo­ple to God more, to plant seeds, and to see peo­ple draw near­er to God by seek­ing out things like my mu­sic or oth­er artistes that have mu­sic like mine. But it’s al­so for me to in­tro­duce that to peo­ple and to fill their spaces with stuff that will bring them clos­er to God. I want there to be up­lift­ing mu­sic in their life that will bring them clos­er to God and their pur­pose. Al­so, for me to do more per­for­mances and to have more op­por­tu­ni­ties to write more songs and pro­duce more songs, sim­i­lar goals as mine. And that could be any­one from any­where be­cause I’ve seen on the in­ter­net peo­ple do­ing amaz­ing things like what I want to do.