Kali­fa Clyne

So­ca star Ian Al­varez (Bun­ji Gar­lin) says lo­cal artistes need to use the op­por­tu­ni­ty cre­at­ed by Gram­my Awards fea­tur­ing T&T artistes and cre­ate mu­sic which can reach wider au­di­ences.

Al­varez said this dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a win for Best Dance/Elec­tron­ic Al­bum by in­ter­na­tion­al DJs Skrillex and Dip­lo on Mon­day night.

The two won for their al­bum Skrillex and Dip­lo Present Jack U.

The al­bum fea­tures a song by Al­varez called Jun­gle Bae, as well as con­tri­bu­tions from an­oth­er so­ca artiste, now ra­dio an­nounc­er MX Prime.

T&T's in­flu­ence was al­so felt through rap­per Trinidad James, a T&T na­tion­al whose re­al name is Nicholas Williams.

James is list­ed as one of 11 writ­ers of the song that won the Gram­my for Record of the Year, Up­town Funk, by Mark Ron­son fea­tur­ing Bruno Mars.

The third T&T link to the Gram­mys came from Meghan Train­or's award as Best New Artist, for her song All About the Bass.

Train­or has in­sist­ed that her song, which had topped the US Bill­board Charts, was a so­ca tune.

She said she was in­spired and en­cour­aged by her un­cle, To­ba­go-born so­ca artiste Bur­ton Toney, who is mar­ried to her aunt.

Last year so­ca star Machel Mon­tano was added to the first round bal­lot of nom­i­na­tions for three cat­e­gories.

"None of the gen­res in the cat­e­gories were so­ca but T&T's in­flu­ence was still felt," Al­varez said.

"That should be grasped as an op­por­tu­ni­ty but we have to un­der­stand that it is not an overnight thing as well."

Al­varez said work had to be put in and artists had to in­vest their time to en­sure the T&T sound reached fur­ther.

He said it wasn't nec­es­sar­i­ly for the per­son­al fame and ben­e­fits for to­day's so­ca artistes but that it was more im­por­tant to pro­vide a step­ping stone for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

"We need T&T to stand firm. This is a rev­e­la­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ties there are for us. Here is a mo­ment where you can move for­ward.

"I am sure that be­cause of the wins last night, the name of our coun­try was on the lips of some ex­ec­u­tive or big per­son in the mu­sic in­dus­try. They could be won­der­ing what else they can find here."

He said elec­tron­ic dance mu­sic pro­duc­ers saw that there was an en­er­gy in the coun­try that they could tap in­to.

He said artistes need­ed to start mak­ing more mu­sic out­side of Car­ni­val.

"We need to be us but we al­so need to make mu­sic in a more ro­bust way.

"We can do some songs ded­i­cat­ed to Car­ni­val but if you have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to craft your mu­sic in a way which reach­es more au­di­ences, we should do that al­so."

Al­varez said he and his fam­i­ly cel­e­brat­ed the win, not on­ly be­cause of his in­volve­ment but be­cause the al­bum had some­thing which re­flect­ed T&T.

He said there was a lot to of­fer from T&T and if artistes al­lowed it to hap­pen, the mu­sic could con­sis­tent­ly reach in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences.