Sean Drakes

So­ca mu­sic is the sound of the Caribbean that is yet to earn res­i­den­cy on lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al charts. Still, it re­mains the go-to genre for a fleet of writ­ers, pro­duc­ers and singers chas­ing a break­through mo­ment.

In a mod­est two-storey struc­ture on St Ann's Road, Mar­tin Ray­mond stew­ards the stu­dio of cham­pi­ons with Je­re­my John­ston, and an ex­tra­or­di­nary arranger named Gregg Ass­ing who vis­its from Lon­don and col­lab­o­rat­ed with Bil­ly Ocean and Gre­go­ry Isaacs.

The night of the in­ter­view Ray­mond, the man many call Mice, had al­ready taught a class on mu­sic pro­duc­tion and sound en­gi­neer­ing at Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, held a round of meet­ings, and at 9 pm still had enough en­er­gy to record a ses­sion with leg­endary ca­lyp­son­ian David Rud­der.

Dur­ing a break in the record­ing, Rud­der says: "You can work in a stu­dio and peo­ple have ab­solute­ly no un­der­stand­ing of the mu­sic you play­ing. They don't un­der­stand your soul. Mar­tin is not just some­one who un­der­stands, but al­so some­one who grew up in my era. That kind of con­nec­tion is even more im­por­tant."

Rud­der and Ray­mond's al­liance dates to 1982 when cov­er bands were king of the fetes.

Rud­der was lead vo­cal­ist for Char­lie's Roots and Ray­mond was a 17-year-old gui­tarist with Fire­flight. Born in Eng­land, Ray­mond lived his teen years in Di­a­mond Vale with his moth­er, Ur­su­la Ray­mond, who, he says, was a mem­ber of Girl Pat, the first all-fe­male steel­band, and "cre­at­ed a mas­sive record col­lec­tion years be­fore we had a record play­er. Even­tu­al­ly we were able to af­ford one; we lis­tened to all these records that had been pil­ing up."

Read­ing al­bum jack­ets of­fered clues to the team play­ers in­volved in pro­duc­ing records, but be­fore Ray­mond knew what a pro­duc­er does, he knew he ad­mired the work of Quin­cy Jones.

On the ad­vice of Gram­my Award-win­ning R&B group The Broth­ers John­son, Ray­mond mi­grat­ed to Lon­don in 1986 to de­vel­op pro­duc­tion skills.

"I ap­plied to more than 100 stu­dios, got in­ter­views with two of them. Both turned me down. Be­ing Black and from the Caribbean was a ma­jor dis­ad­van­tage," he re­calls. Ray­mond got his break from Adri­an "Smokey Joe" Joseph (Hot Vinyl Records) who in­vit­ed him to pro­duce a record for Den­nis "The Mer­chant" Williams.

The mu­sic pro­duc­er, he ex­plains, "is like the di­rec­tor of a movie, he/she finds the song, de­cides how to bring it to life, and di­rects every­one from the en­gi­neers to the singers."

Ray­mond re­turned to Trinidad in 1996, and opened Cham­pi­on Sound Stu­dios in 2005.

Au­dio mas­ter­ing and mix­ing for the ti­tans of so­ca and ca­lyp­so has nev­er cov­ered all the bills. The record­ing sea­son peaks from Oc­to­ber to Jan­u­ary due to the em­pha­sis on Car­ni­val.

"It is said that we do not have a mu­sic in­dus­try in T&T," notes Ray­mond, "we have a Car­ni­val In­dus­try." That ob­ser­va­tion may al­so in­flu­ence bank loan of­fi­cers.

Fi­nanc­ing mu­sic projects with­out crowd-fund­ing, in­vestors, loans or bar­ter­ing leaves "pay­ing for it out of my own pock­et!" ad­mits Ray­mond.

"Se­ri­ous­ly, ac­cess to fi­nance is the ma­jor is­sue fac­ing the in­dus­try here. Mu­sicTT, a sub­sidiary of Cre­ativeTT, is look­ing in­to this now. TU­CO, the ca­lyp­son­ian's as­so­ci­a­tion, launched an ini­tia­tive with the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny to pro­vide fi­nance for record­ings by their mem­bers. There were few tak­ers as far as I am aware."

Ray­mond adds: "Most ca­lyp­so­ni­ans I spoke to were re­luc­tant to get in­to to debt to fi­nance their record­ings."

"Record­ing stu­dios and record la­bels are seen as very high risk," re­veals Ray­mond.

"The sit­u­a­tion is sim­i­lar to the UK a decade ago, where that gov­ern­ment found that de­spite the vis­i­ble suc­cess of UK artists in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the bank­ing sec­tor was very re­luc­tant to lend. They set about cre­at­ing an in­vest­ment cli­mate to en­cour­age ven­ture cap­i­tal. The re­sults over the past decade speak for them­selves."

There are rough­ly 30 record­ing stu­dios in T&T. Ray­mond says the ma­jor­i­ty in Port-of-Spain are com­mer­cial fa­cil­i­ties, not home stu­dios, which have low­er over­heads. Yet, they charge fees com­pa­ra­ble with a stu­dio pay­ing com­mer­cial rates for util­i­ties.

Cham­pi­on's month­ly op­er­at­ing ex­pense slides above $25,000.

"We make a small prof­it on most out­side projects, enough to off­set op­er­at­ing costs," shares Ray­mond.

De­vel­op­ing emerg­ing tal­ents who don't on­ly sing so­ca is a new av­enue for the stu­dio. The hope is that their po­ten­tial will de­liv­er ROI. As he awaits fruit to bear from in-house projects, Ray­mond is ex­plor­ing "whether we need a stu­dio at all. The av­er­age lap­top can be a ful­ly-op­er­a­tional record­ing stu­dio/mix sta­tion."

Lo­cal­ly, stu­dio time is the "most ex­pen­sive com­po­nent" of CD pro­duc­tion. A ses­sion can cost be­tween $200 and $400 per hour.

Ray­mond says: "Most songs are done on a project ba­sis with a cost for the en­tire project: $1,500-$2,000 for a de­mo, and $6,000-$12,000 for a full pro­duc­tion; bud­gets are "all-in­clu­sive," all costs are paid from the pro­duc­er's fee. In the US, you are look­ing at be­tween US$10,000 to U$100,000 per song," es­ti­mates Ray­mond.

Over­seas the largest ex­pense is hir­ing "a hit record pro­duc­er (not arranger, eg, Dr Luke, Max Mar­tin) who can com­mand a fee up­wards of US$100,000 per song. This does not in­clude stu­dio time, mu­si­cians, etc."

"Ten years ago the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket was not ready for Caribbean artistes," re­calls Ray­mond.

"Af­ter the suc­cess of Ri­han­na, Sean Paul and Nic­ki Mi­naj, the idea that some­one is from the Caribbean opens all sorts of doors, whether or not you're do­ing Caribbean mu­sic."

As man­ag­er of Cham­pi­on Sound Stu­dios, Je­re­my John­ston, 38, is the co-or­di­na­tor of lo­gis­tics, cus­to­di­an of com­fort, and the 999 and 611 guy on every­one's phone.

"It is up to me to make sure they all have every­thing they need to cre­ate," says John­ston. The stu­dio "sur­vives on a shoe­string bud­get with the bread and but­ter mas­ter­ing, sea­son­al pro­duc­tion at Car­ni­val time, and Mice's salary from teach­ing."

Cham­pi­on's mas­ter­ing ex­per­tise is a key in­gre­di­ent in crowd-pleas­ing, soul-stir­ring tracks by Fay-Ann Lyons, Shag­gy, JW & Blaze, Mr Ve­gas, Sean Paul, Akon, Bun­ji Gar­lin and Machel Mon­tano. To serve clients who com­pete for mil­lion-dol­lar prizes dur­ing Car­ni­val, the "stu­dio op­er­ates like Switzer­land," adds John­ston, "we're neu­tral with no par­tic­u­lar al­le­giance."

Be­neath Ray­mond's mel­low, nerd-like de­meanor is a brawny ego, dri­ven to de­liv­er his clients to chart-top­ping suc­cess:

"At no point, from the foot­ball team The So­ca War­riors, did I hear any­thing like, we're go­ing to the World Cup to win it. (Their) at­ti­tude was, we know we're not the great­est team and just glad to be kick­ing a lit­tle ball with Beck­ham, and we beat Eng­land and Swe­den."

Ray­mond in­sists, the tal­ents his stu­dio grooms are "the re­al so­ca war­riors, go­ing against the biggest teams in the world, and play­ing to win!"