Music: Big Music Confab in Kingston in 10 Days

Busy Signal

VOICE Season 5 winner Tessanne Chin

BUSY SIGNAL, TESSANNE CHIN FOR JAMAICA MUSIC CONFERENCE

by Dave Rodney

"It is no secret anymore. Reggae has finally begun to permeate the United States mainstream market in a big way. The focus of Snow's publicity campaign will be to establish Snow solely on the basis of his music, with as little knowledge of his race as possible. Therefore, the advance music mailing will not go out with a photo. It is apparent that we would not be able to send the bio either since it mentions the fact that he is white" .

The foregoing is an insightful quote from a hugely successful marketing plan for Canadian chart topper Snow from East West Records/ Atlantic over two decades ago, at a critical point for the music when reggae marketing was experimental, and when Jamaica's trademark brand was going gold and platinum, and topping charts all over the world. Over twenty years later, in a ramped up digital age, much of the marketing tools and promotional platforms have changed, but the age-old cunning, smarts and strategic maneuvers are still as critically important now a they were back then for success in the reggae music industry. And many of reggae's ghosts from the past still linger and continue to present formidable challenges for seasoned veterans as well as for a new generation of industry players.

Payola, effective artist management, the difficulties of turning a profit from touring, securing airplay, monetizing reggae, understanding copyright, licensing and publishing, entertainment for export and confronting rapacious pirates in the industry are among the issues that will be discussed at the fourth annual Jamaica Music Conference scheduled for Kingston from November 10 to 13 this year.

The objective of the Jamaica Music Conference is to create a platform for music business education, for networking and to create a pipeline for the stars of tomorrow. The four-day parley will bring together professionals from various areas of entertainment who will share their expertise with hundreds of local and visiting attendees. This year's conference theme is "Word, Sound and Power: Contracts, Sound Systems and the Potential of Jamaica's Music Industry". Parts of the conference will take place at various locations around Kingston including Alpha School for Boys, Jamaica College, JAMPRO Headquarters, Nanook, and at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

BESS-FM will host the welcome reception at Nanook on November 10. Among the confernce highlights are Friday's panel discussions on Global Soul, the Irish and Chin Sound System Summit, and a sound system and dub plate appreciation dance. Saturday is a full day of panels led by NBC's 'The Voice' winner Tessanne Chin, entertainment attorney Lloyd Stanbury, recording artist Busy Signal and Dr. Sonjah Niaah with the Institute of Caribbean Studies. Other participants include promotions guru Karen Mason (who was a part of the team that broke reggae rapper Snow in the US market) and prominent industry luminaries Mikey Bennett, Damion Crawford, Joan Webley and Allen Johnston. An artist showcase will follow on Saturday night.

"It is our hope that the 2016 Jamaica Music Conference (JMC) will be that space where people from around the globe who wish to do business with Jamaica's music professionals can attend and have their needs met", Kwasi Bonsu, CEO and founder of the Jamaica Music Conference said.

The conference closes on Sunday November 13 at Fort Clarence Beach with an all-day celebration party and artist open mic where artists will have an opportunity to showcase their talent for international booking agents and digital distribution platforms. For more, go to www.jamaicamusicconfrence.com

Live Music: Tessane to lend "Voice" to CFW Prince tribute

Tessanne Chin, season-five winner of NBC's 'The Voice', will pay a special CFW tribute to musical greatJamaica'sGleaner reports.

Prince, tomorrow at the Pulse Centre on Trafalgar Road,

Chin named Prince as one of her idols and a key inspiration for her career, so she is thrilled to be leading the Caribbean's effort in this regard.

Morris Day and The Time, Prince's band, successful recording and performing artistes in their own right, will lead the global tribute, which also features British fusion act, Mark-Anthony Abel.

The 'Best of the Collections', will also be showcased tomorrow, CFW's closing night. Caribbean designers will also pay tribute to Prince who was not only regarded as one of the greatest musicians who ever lived, but also a style icon.

Chin was born to two musician parents in Jamaica, and has fond memories of spending time at the recording studio. At age five, she picked up a microphone and began to sing alongside her father. Chin described that moment as not only "indescribable", but also life-changing.

Chin attended high school in England and returned soon after to officially start her music career. She was highly supported and endorsed by family friend and drummer, Desi Jones, which led to her touring alongside the legendary Jimmy Cliff as a backup singer. Her career took off in the Caribbean with the release of her first solo hit,Hideaway, topping the Jamaican charts. This only sparked Chin's drive to succeed, leaving her wanting to impact larger audiences.

International sensation Shaggy, a good friend of Chin, encouraged her to audition for the popular show, 'The Voice'. Chin chose Adam Levine, the main vocalist of Maroon 5, as her vocal coach on the show. She set a new record with her rendition of Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, become the first number-one song on the iTunes Overall Top Songs Chart for the show. Her success on the show only increased, eventually leading her to win the competition.

Chin recently released an album, Count On My Love, in 2014 under the Republic Records label.

For her, the goal was to "create something people will hold in their hearts for years to come".

With all of Chin's success, she still attributes everything to her country and is proud to have the support and give back to the entire Caribbean. She has the ability to combine the musical traditions of the Caribbean, while throwing in some pop vibes. She described her music as "pop, but it has a bit of an island swag".

Poetry: A Voice Across the Sea, Pam Mordecai records her body of work in Canada

On a recent trip to Newfoundland, Jamaican-Canadian writer Pamela Mordecai recorded 25 years worth of her poetry in a pilot project created by Memorial University English professor Stephanie McKenzie. The project took five days to record with Mordecai in the studio between four to five hours each day.

McKenzie is interested in Caribbean poetry and has taught Mordecai’s work in her classes. Mordecai first visited Corner Brook, Newfoundland in 2012 to lecture at Memorial’s Grenfell Campus and returned this year to read at the March Hare festival, for which McKenzie is the artistic director. It was during the most recent trip that Mordecai recorded her work in St. John’s.

Mordecai spoke to Q&Q about the importance of hearing poetry aloud and the connections between Newfoundland and Jamaica.

Why was it important for you to record your work? Recording my poetry keeps it alive in my voice – indeed an aliveness that will be available beyond my life. There are other aesthetic reasons, and some practical ones. From the point of view of aesthetics, there is a historical value to having a poet read his or her own work. Hearing someone else reading T.S. Eliot or Dylan Thomas or Derek Walcott or Kamau Brathwaite is quite different from hearing those poets read their own work, and presently, there is no record of me reading my poetry in any other archive in the world.

How does the experience of listening to poetry differ from reading it? There are many possible answers to that question, the easiest one being that the experience speaks for itself. Another answer is that the layers of meaning in poetry, indeed in any written language, become plainer when poetry is spoken. In the case of Jamaican or Caribbean poetry, where creole languages ghost the English line, those layers are multiplied. An example: I have a poem about Vincent Van Gogh called “Sunflowers” in which the last line is, “Madness has always been my guess.” That’s a pretty plain line with an obvious meaning – except that in Jamaican creole guess and guest are homonyms. That meaning best emerges when the poem is spoken, to an audience aware of the homonyms. And then, there is the singular appeal of a voice, “the word in audible motion,” as Trinidadian scholar Gordon Rohlehr calls it, with rhyme and rhythm and metre being explored as only that human instrument can. There is also, in a performance, a lively communion between speaker and hearer, a union of two presences that words on the page have difficulty achieving. I think most people would allow that the heard word is memorable in a way that words read on the page are not.

What is your connection to Newfoundland? There are historical connections between Jamaica, where I was born and have spent most of my life, and Newfoundland. Newfoundland ships brought codfish to the island, and barrels of Jamaican rum were taken to Newfoundland on the return journey. Until the moratorium in 1992, the cod in Jamaica’s national dish, ackee and codfish, came from Newfoundland. There’s now a family connection as well: I have a niece-by-marriage whose family is from Newfoundland, and a grandniece who is half-a-Newfoundlander.

- from Quill and Quire magazine