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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Monk goes techno send positive vibes through music

by

20140615

The biggest sur­prise of the in­ter­view comes af­ter we've wrapped it up. Half way through ask­ing Richard Jones for his con­tact num­ber I stop my­self and mut­ter, "Oh. I guess you don't have a cell­phone, be­ing a monk..."

But Jones, aka the tech­no monk, shocks me. "I got my first smart­phone in De­cem­ber," he beams, reach­ing in­to the pock­et of his monk's habit and fish­ing out a Sam­sung.

"Oh cool, do you have any apps on there?" I say, "Any­thing re­li­gious...?"

"Yeah I've got the Bible app on here and the Dai­ly Missal..."

Per­haps for a man who is a com­mit­ted Bene­dic­tine Monk and al­so records tech­no mu­sic, that shouldn't be sur­pris­ing.

Jones is a full-time monk but he's not clois­tered. Five years ago he joined the Bene­dic­tine Or­der, the idea had struck him at the age of 25 when he had be­come en­gaged to a young woman and was sent by his church to a re­treat on a quest to dis­cov­er whether the two were re­al­ly com­pat­i­ble life part­ners.

They were, but Jones sud­den­ly ex­pe­ri­enced a con­ver­sion. In his words "be­liev­ing that God is re­al­ly re­al."

At his lo­cal church in Guaygua­yare in south east Trinidad he be­gan mak­ing en­quiries about how he could best serve God.

How do you be­come a monk?

"Well, you ap­ply!" Jones laughs. For him it wasn't a Dam­a­scene con­ver­sion, he had been born and bap­tised in­to the Catholic faith, it was more of a life pro­gres­sion.

Are there ex­ams?

"You have a for­ma­tion pe­ri­od of two years where you live an old-fash­ioned lifestyle and you don't go any­where out­side the monastery, you learn about the Desert Fa­thers." Third cen­tu­ry Chris­t­ian her­mits who lived in the desert in Egypt.

The life of a monk at Mount St Bene­dict is much as one might ex­pect from read­ing the Um­ber­to Eco nov­el The Name of the Rose.

Up at 5.30 am, morn­ing prayers at 6 am, a sim­ple break­fast, sim­ple lodg­ings (a room with a bed, desk, wardrobe and sink, but blessed with a beau­ti­ful view of the moun­tains.)

Vows of pover­ty, chasti­ty and obe­di­ence are strict­ly ob­served but luck­i­ly for him, no vows of si­lence. When asked if he got enough "in" be­fore his vow of chasti­ty, he con­firms that the mem­o­ries will car­ry him a long way. If he gets any groupies as a re­sult of his new mu­si­cal ca­reer, he says they can come by the monastery to see him, but just to pray.

Du­ties in­clude work­ing in the monastery gift shop or the yo­gurt fac­to­ry.

The habit is op­tion­al. Af­ter a pa­pal con­fer­ence in Rome in the 1960s, known as the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil or Vat­i­can II, the rules for monks were re­laxed some­what. Monks can now leave the clois­ters, for ex­am­ple, and in­ter­act with their lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty.

"Vat­i­can II changed the whole face of the church," Jones says.

Jones was talk­ing to the T&T Guardian in a small stu­dio above a shop on Fred­er­ick Street owned by mu­sic pro­duc­ers Lyn­don An­drews and An­tho­ny Broth­er­son who run the record­ing com­pa­ny 5Z1.

The two pro­duc­ers nor­mal­ly record gospel, so­ca and dance­hall and are ex­cit­ed to be work­ing with a man who they be­lieve is the first monk in the world to be per­form­ing in dance mu­sic. When one thinks of monks and mu­sic one thinks of the haunt­ing Me­dieval melodies of Gre­go­ri­an chant. In the ear­ly 90s Ger­man dance duo Enig­ma put chant­i­ng over a drum­beat and ti­tled it Sad­ness (Part I) achiev­ing a world­wide No 1 hit.

But here were have a monk poised to record a whole al­bum.

His mu­si­cal ed­u­ca­tion be­gan at the monastery.

"My su­pe­ri­or, Ab­bot John Pereira asked me if I was in­ter­est­ed in learn­ing to play an in­stru­ment, be­cause our prayer in­volved a lot of singing so it's al­ways good to have mu­si­cians. I start­ed off play­ing pi­ano at a school and I start­ed writ­ing with a piece of mu­sic writ­ing soft­ware called Fi­nale."

His mu­sic teacher re­alised he had tal­ent af­ter he record­ed a clas­si­cal record and in­tro­duced him to An­drews.

"I like tech­no!" Jones says, and again his in­fec­tious laugh rings out. "I liked clubs be­fore," he clar­i­fies. "The Lair in Barataria. Liq­uid in Barataria. A club up­stairs at Gulf City Mall in San Fer­nan­do."

An­drews plays one of the tracks they've been work­ing on, called Sky. The lyrics be­gin "This world is falling apart. There's no way I could ever love an­oth­er. We keep look­ing up to the sky."

It has a Pro­gres­sive House, EDM feel. It could be played in a Las Ve­gas or Mi­a­mi club. An­drews name checks David Guet­ta as an in­flu­ence.

Chris­t­ian Rock bands use a "cool" ap­proach in an at­tempt to ap­peal to younger peo­ple and draw them in­to Chris­tian­i­ty but when asked what he wants the mu­sic to do, Jones de­scribes it say­ing "it's some­thing to en­ter­tain, re­lease me be­cause I get to ex­press my­self and al­so to pass on a pos­i­tive mes­sage."

The T&T Guardian pho­tog­ra­ph­er ar­rives and gets Jones jump­ing about the stu­dio like a mad monk. Per­haps it's all the hours of qui­et med­i­ta­tion that have cre­at­ed pent up en­er­gy, he's a live wire, bounc­ing around.

I put it to him that the per­cep­tion of monks is that they're sup­posed to live a pu­ri­tan­i­cal life.

"Monks were re­al hard­core from ever since they be­gan," he ex­plains. "Clois­tered and con­tem­pla­tive. They used to say even if a monk has to go out of the monastery for an er­rand or any­thing when he comes back he can't tell any­body what he saw out there in case he con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the oth­er monks. So that's how it start­ed but grad­u­al­ly, through­out the years the whole monas­tic way of life has come out and be­come more ac­tive in out­er so­ci­ety."

And what's he go­ing to do now he's made the tunes?

"I want­ed to make dance mu­sic with a pos­i­tive mes­sage. There's dance with var­i­ous moods. In all gen­res there are songs and artists with pos­i­tive mes­sages."

An eight track al­bum is in the pipeline. Six tracks have been laid down and are be­ing mixed and the plan is to re­lease the tracks on iTunes and mar­ket it on so­cial me­dia.

There's al­so a project for young peo­ple, "my re­tire­ment plan," Jones says. "It's called YES, Young Ec­u­meni­cal Sound. I call it my home min­istry." The plan is to en­cour­age tal­ent­ed young peo­ple in­to mu­sic.

Is he try­ing to con­vert peo­ple?

"Yes, but it's a bit tech­ni­cal," he says, "there are so many dif­fer­ent de­nom­i­na­tions, I don't want to con­vert peo­ple to mine specif­i­cal­ly, I want to con­vert peo­ple away from a more de­struc­tive lifestyle."

Amen to that.


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