The Trinbago Interactive Music Expo (TIME) will begin next Thursday and the project represents a major effort at coaching a select group of young local musicians in the very specific skills that they will need to move from local success to appealing to audiences on international stages.It's a long overdue acknowledgement that all the talk about taking local music to the Billboard charts will demand more than just native creativity, some clever melodies and wishful thinking.
Local artistes used to the warm and largely welcoming confines of the local market, as fickle as it might be, are generally unready to compete with foreign acts also keen to make their mark.These are performers who bring more experience, backing and promotional power propelling their career arcs than any local act might hope to muster.
Local acts may be heartened by the example of Barbadian singer Rihanna, who emerged almost perfectly packaged by Jay Z's Def Jam records to begin a sustained and relentless assault on the music charts of first America and then the world, but even Ms Fenty's success was hardly a Cinderella story.Nicki Minaj rose through the ranks of hip hop artistes mixtape by mixtape, working a labyrinth of streets, then boroughs then cities before finally exploding into the major collaborations that launched her career.
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