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Friday, July 4, 2025

iHeart crosses genres and generations

by

20140705

Jay­ron "Rawkus" Re­my of Rawkus Pro­duc­tion, start­ed the iHeart con­cert last year with the hope of bridg­ing the gap be­tween the old and new gen­er­a­tion of mu­sic and to al­so give a face and voice to the strug­gling up­com­ing artistes of T&T. He has ac­com­plished this goal and is suc­cess­ful­ly stag­ing the sec­ond event at the Na­pa, on Ju­ly 11. In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Re­my he said a lit­tle frus­tra­tion and a lot of love were the cat­a­lysts for the cre­ation of the an­nu­al event."I was just so frus­trat­ed with the way in which up and com­ing artistes would be strug­gling and fight­ing for a space for their voice to be heard. For them it is lit­er­al­ly like fight­ing for a space in a lit­tle whole in the wall for a chance to show­case their tal­ent," said Re­my.

The for­mer dee­jay with Boom Cham­pi­ons 94.1FM said it took him five years to ma­te­ri­alise his vi­sion of pro­mot­ing such an event, main­ly be­cause he was not fa­mil­iar with its set up. How­ev­er, it was not un­til the 28-year-old Diego Mar­tin na­tive joined forces with Rap­so group 3Canal that he was ex­posed to the re­al­i­ty of stage pro­duc­tion and how to ex­e­cute an event.With the where­with­al now and the con­fi­dence to go for­ward, Re­my used his own fi­nances and staged the first iHeart pro­duc­tion on No­vem­ber 30 2013. That pro­duc­tion fea­tured his men­tors 3Canal, ca­lyp­so, rock and funk band, Gazette, singers Tim Starr, spo­ken word per­former Kee­gan Ma­haraj and singer/po­et Muhammed Muwak­il.This year he has cho­sen to fea­ture ca­lyp­son­ian Selvon "Mis­tah Shak" Noel, who sang the hard-hit­ting so­cial com­men­tary Bois this Car­ni­val; con­tro­ver­sial T&T rap­per Richard "Chro­mat­ics" Ra­jku­mar; vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Willard "Re­la­tor" Har­ris and youth ac­tivist move­ment the 2 Cents Project.

Ac­cord­ing to Re­my, the con­cept of mix­ing the gen­res is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the uni­fied front singers and mu­si­cians of T&T must grow ac­cus­tomed to if we are to take the art form to a greater lev­el. He says the col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the old­er and new gen­er­a­tions of mu­sic is to sig­ni­fy har­mo­ny and re­spect among all who con­tribute to the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try."Hav­ing an act like Re­la­tor on this show is a huge deal for me, be­cause I grew up lis­ten­ing to my fa­ther play­ing his mu­sic and he still does to this day. I al­ways found he was so orig­i­nal and could not be du­pli­cat­ed."I re­mem­ber lis­ten­ing to a song he sang in the 70s called Ra­dio Sta­tion where he spoke about the on­ly two ra­dio sta­tions ex­ist­ing at that time, most­ly play­ing for­eign mu­sic and amaz­ing­ly that is still a rel­e­vant ar­gu­ment to­day," said Re­my.

He added both Noel and Ra­jku­mar will per­form with Har­ris on a ren­di­tion of the hit which Noel script­ed.Asked what were his plans for the fu­ture of iHeart, Re­my said he is hop­ing the project will even­tu­al­ly gain in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion for the con­cept up­on which it is built. Which is to in­tro­duce to the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty and the world, the gems of mu­sic who are ex­ist­ing right here in T&T.The event be­gins at 8pm with a pre-show where pa­trons will get to meet some of the coun­try's young and un­known tal­ent. Pa­trons can buy T-shirts and oth­er mer­chan­dise in the mi­ni mar­ket­place to sup­port the artistes.Re­my said he must give thanks to the peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions that have chipped in to help make the con­cert a re­al­i­ty for the sec­ond time. They in­clude Babash Me­dia, Par­a­digm En­ter­tain­ment, Blue Wa­ters, Chee Mooke Bak­ery and NL­CB.�2 For tick­et­ing and oth­er event in­for­ma­tion, call 312-3042 or vis­it Re­my's Face­book page@ Dj Rawkus Re­my.


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