Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

"I'm very op­ti­mistic of the fu­ture of our lo­cal mu­sic. To some ex­tent I've been ob­serv­ing that the ap­petite for mean­ing­less 'hype' mu­sic is di­min­ish­ing and there is a de­sire among the lo­cals for mu­sic with sub­stance," says Jessie McBar­row, al­so known as JWave, a singer/song­writer, po­et and pi­anist who made his T&T de­but at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa), Port-of-Spain, Fri­day night.

This 26-year-old, from Di­a­mond Vale, Diego Mar­tin, con­sid­ers him­self a nat­ur­al writer. "For as long is as I can re­mem­ber I was writ­ing my own songs and rewrit­ing pop­u­lar songs that my sis­ter and I would sing in a hi­lar­i­ous way. My favourite sub­ject was cre­ative writ­ing in pri­ma­ry school and I was among the top in class."At a young age he showed artist tal­ent and was en­cour­aged in school through be­ing se­lect­ed to sing in pri­ma­ry school choir, and lat­er on through his in­tro­duc­tion to play­ing mu­si­cal in­stru­ments. "At age 14 when I at­tend­ed Diego Mar­tin Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary, one of my late best friends, Du­ane Pan­tin, in­tro­duced me to the pi­ano. I was, sur­pris­ing­ly, a nat­ur­al at it and we would jam for hours af­ter school every day. The en­tire school com­pound would hear us jam­ming some of the most pop­u­lar songs of that time."

JWave al­so plays a lit­tle gui­tar but says, "I nev­er took [mu­sic] se­ri­ous­ly un­til 2006. I start­ed to at­tend the Apos­tles Min­istries and at the time there were no key­boardists there. I vol­un­teered to serve as a key­boardist and I have been there ever since."His mis­sion is one of love and he in­tends to use his mu­sic as a cat­a­lyst for pos­i­tive change."I named my­self JWave as a sym­bol that some­thing dif­fer­ent is com­ing–a wave of love and uni­ty that will open up the eyes of many and re­build a cul­ture that God in­tend­ed." He strong­ly be­lieves that this wave of change is one that will draw oth­er artistes to­geth­er to spread the same mes­sage.McBar­row is cur­rent­ly a fi­nal year stu­dent in the artist diplo­ma in mu­sic per­for­mance, a three-year pro­gramme at Na­pa. McBar­row grad­u­ates at the end of this year.

The JWave de­but show­cased McBar­row's tal­ents across sev­er­al gen­res in­clud­ing clas­si­cal, jazz, R&B, reg­gae, funk, pop and more. "I play all types of mu­sic; how­ev­er, my style of com­pos­ing is in­flu­enced by the mes­sage that I want to con­vey. I love jazz mu­sic–and, strange­ly, hip hop songs, the good ones." Back­ing him on Fri­day was a line­up in­clud­ing gui­tarist Aaron Low­chew­tung, bassist An­ton Con­stan­tine, sax­o­phon­ist An­tho­ny Woodroffe, drum­mer Keeron Archie, per­cus­sion­ist Mark Hospedalis, pan play­er Mikhail Sal­cedo, and vo­cal­ists Iziah Kan­hai and Patrice Le Quey.