Pe­ter Ray Blood

Jay­ron Re­my is not your typ­i­cal, young ra­dio disc jock­ey with a faux for­eign ac­cent who aban­dons his na­tive, in­dige­nous mu­sic to play hip hop and dance­hall tracks. Known on the air­waves as DJ Rawkus, Re­my took a bold de­ci­sion to pro­duce a se­ries of ca­lyp­so mix­es, all Oc­to­ber long, in cel­e­bra­tion of Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month.

From the on­set of our in­ter­view Re­my pro­claimed: "The pur­pose of this se­ries of mix­es is to en­light­en, ed­u­cate and en­ter­tain au­di­ences us­ing the vary­ing forms and styles of ca­lyp­so. My in­spi­ra­tion was fu­elled by the clear ne­glect for our tra­di­tion­al art form that most of the 'ur­ban' ra­dio for­mats fol­low, and those who di­rect­ly in­flu­ence the youth of our na­tion from an en­ter­tain­ment point of view. I have set out to share knowl­edge through my mix­es."

So, who is ac­tu­al­ly DJ Rawkus? Re­my is now 28 and comes from Sime­on Road, Pe­tit Val­ley.

He told the T&T Guardian, "I grew up with my mom but both my par­ents played a big part in my mu­si­cal in­ter­ests. I at­tend­ed Holy Name Prep and St Mary's Col­lege. My fa­ther used to play a lot of records and his col­lec­tion was most­ly of ca­lyp­so and Michael Jack­son. Mom used to work with Carib Spe­cial Events and some­times she would take me to work with her so I would see when the artistes were set­ting up on stage and do­ing sound checks. I was for­tu­nate to see all the bands, like Shandileer, Sound Rev and At­lantic do­ing sound checks. I just en­joyed be­ing around mu­sic."

Re­my's cousin, DJ Mag­nif­i­cent Sounds (Mau­rice Jack­man), was al­so in­flu­en­tial in him choos­ing his ca­reer path. He ex­plained: "My cousin was work­ing at 98.9FM at the time and would some­times take me along to his overnight shifts. Even­tu­al­ly I learned to dee­jay through him. I then went to the In­sti­tute of Broad­cast­ing Ca­reers (IBC), run by Per­cy Park­er, and start­ed a DJ group (Lil Ruff Neckz) in Form Four at St Mary's. We used to play at events like St Mary's May­fair and house par­ties. My cousin asked me to join his group, which I did with Gonzo from my group. We end­ed up land­ing our own overnight shift at 98.9FM, do­ing that for a cou­ple years. Even­tu­al­ly, Gonzo and I left and start­ed Rage (Rawkus and Gonzo En­ter­tain­ment). This went well for a time be­fore the ra­dio sta­tion was closed and Boom Cham­pi­ons (94.1FM) and Red 96.7FM opened up. Gonzo was in­vit­ed to join Boom Cham­pi­ons and I went to uni­ver­si­ty."

Re­my at­tend­ed the New Eng­land In­sti­tute of Art in Boston, ma­jor­ing in sound en­gi­neer­ing and pro­duc­tion. While res­i­dent in the States he al­so worked on a ship, do­ing din­ner cruis­es on the Spir­it of Boston. "That ex­pe­ri­ence widened my knowl­edge in mu­sic," said Re­my. "I learned about a lot of songs that I didn't even know ex­ist­ed and deep­ened my ap­pre­ci­a­tion for all mu­sic. I al­so in­terned at Boom Cham­pi­ons when­ev­er I came home on va­ca­tion."

Re­my gained even more pop­u­lar­i­ty when he be­came a part of the 3Canal fam­i­ly. He said: "While at St Mary's Col­lege I ac­tu­al­ly em­ceed a fash­ion pro­duc­tion at the col­lege. Wen­dell Man­war­ren of 3Canal was di­rect­ing and that's how I met him. A few years lat­er he asked Gonzo and me to DJ in the 3Canal's Jab in the Box pro­duc­tion in 2004. When I re­turned to Trinidad in 2007, I joined Boom Cham­pi­ons as a pro­duc­tion en­gi­neer, and would some­times dou­ble as a disc jock­ey. I was al­so of­fered a job with 3Canal's Cut and Clear band."

This union proved to be an up­ward curve and fur­ther learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for Re­my pro­fes­sion­al­ly. He said: "We went to Spain for Wom­ex in 2008 and did a num­ber of gigs af­ter that with me as the mon­i­tor en­gi­neer. I grad­u­at­ed to be­come 3Canal's DJ, then be­came their se­quencer, all the while still work­ing with Boom Cham­pi­ons."

Al­ways one to push the en­ve­lope, Re­my wasn't sat­is­fied with be­ing just a ra­dio pro­duc­er and was al­ways look­ing for ways for the mu­sic and brand to evolve. He said: "Among the things I did at Boom Cham­pi­ons of which I am par­tic­u­lar­ly proud is a Car­ni­val cam­paign in which the top-of-the-hour fea­tured mod­ern so­ca artistes do­ing cov­ers of old­er ca­lyp­soes and so­ca songs.

For ex­am­ple, we had Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter do­ing Spar­row's Jean & Di­nah and Fay-Ann Lyons do­ing her fa­ther's So­ca Bap­tist. "Be­side the fact that I love blend­ing the old with the new, I knew I was on the right track when Lennox Tou­s­saint (vet­er­an en­ter­tain­ment spe­cial­ist) and Anya Ay­oung Chee both com­pli­ment­ed my work. We al­so did a cam­paign for an eco tour. That cam­paign turned in­to a mon­ster in a good way. It went vi­ral. Through the kind of work we were do­ing, though a lot of it was about par­ty ads, we al­ways tried to bal­ance it with some pos­i­tive stuff, un­der the guid­ance of sta­tion man­ag­er O'Bri­an Haynes."

Be­com­ing rest­less, Re­my was ready to move on once more. He said: "I stayed with Boom Cham­pi­ons for about five years and then it got po­lit­i­cal­ly awk­ward to con­tin­ue our re­la­tion­ship. I felt that I want­ed to do more. I spent a year or two search­ing for that thing and so I de­vel­oped Iheart T&T, a con­cert.

The first one was held last No­vem­ber 30 at Na­pa. It was a great show but was poor­ly at­tend­ed. It fea­tured 3Canal, Gyazette, Tim Starr, Muham­mad Muwak­il and Kee­gan Ma­haraj. The con­cept of this par­tic­u­lar pro­duc­tion was to as­sem­ble artistes who had the pulse of the coun­try and some of the vet­er­ans.

"The sec­ond show was held in Ju­ly, again at Na­pa, fea­tur­ing Re­la­tor, Mr Shak, Chro­mat­ics and the 2 Cents Move­ment. This was bet­ter at­tend­ed and it was just as great as the first. I was par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of this one es­pe­cial­ly to have Re­la­tor on the cast, as he is some­one I look up to. The high­light of that show was the per­for­mance of Re­la­tor's Ra­dio Sta­tions by Mr Shak, Chro­mat­ics and Re­la­tor, fol­lowed by an ex­tem­pore seg­ment be­tween Re­la­tor and Mr Shak."

Com­ment­ing on his cur­rent ac­claimed on­line se­ries of ca­lyp­so mix­es, Re­my said: "At the be­gin­ning of Oc­to­ber I heard that Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month was be­ing ob­served by Tu­co. I was lis­ten­ing to one of those ur­ban ra­dio sta­tions while on the road and it was fea­tur­ing a month of Amer­i­can R&B and hip hop artistes. In my head I was an­gry that, in Ca­lyp­so Month, this sta­tion, which has the pow­er and con­trol of the na­tion's youth, would use that pow­er, in­stead of us­ing it to at­tract and in­spire lo­cal youth to in­dige­nous mu­sic, chose to show and in­flu­ence them with Amer­i­can cul­ture and mu­sic. I then took it up­on my­self that if no­body else would high­light our mu­sic in the month set aside to com­mem­o­rate our mu­sic, then I would."

Re­my's se­ries is ac­ces­si­ble on You Tube and Face­book, the mu­sic trac­ing ca­lyp­so from its roots to cur­rent day. He said: "I opened the se­ries with the sto­ry of ca­lyp­so, then went in­to the strug­gle of ca­lyp­so, mov­ing on to the us­age of ca­lyp­so as a ve­hi­cle of protest. The third edi­tion was more re­laxed and fea­tured the craft and beau­ty of dou­ble en­ten­dre, and fi­nal­ly cli­maxed with the pur­pose of ca­lyp­so to tell sto­ries and bring the news. I did this to ed­u­cate and pro­vide en­ter­tain­ment, es­pe­cial­ly for young peo­ple. I would like to tar­get peo­ple my age and old­er."

Re­my is cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a course, ti­tled Men­tor­ing by the Mas­ters, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Min­istry of the Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. He in­tends to use his ex­pe­ri­ence and new­ly-ac­quired knowl­edge to en­hance and em­bell­ish his an­nu­al pro­duc­tion."

To hear the ca­lyp­so remix­es that Dj Rawkus has done, vis­it his Face­book page: DJRawkus­Re­my or look for him on YouTube: Mr­Rawkus­Mu­sic.