Pe­ter Ray Blood

With the sur­name Bor­neo, and born on Bournes Road, he was born to shine. Son of St James Ak­il Bor­neo at­tend­ed Mu­cu­rapo Boys' RC School, Mu­cu­rapo Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive and Diego Mar­tin Sec­ondary and to­day is one of the most con­sis­tent emerg­ing so­ca artistes in the land. For the past four years, his mu­sic has been among the most heav­i­ly ro­tat­ed songs on the air­waves.

Re­lax­ing this week at the T&T Guardian Ch­agua­nas of­fices, Bor­neo spoke about his life and ca­reer in mu­sic. "From a small boy I was dig­ging up in ra­dio," said the easy­go­ing Bor­neo. "The mu­sic bug bit me from child­hood as my fa­ther was a pan­man, play­ing for North Stars of Bom­bay Street. He was well known in St James and is pop­u­lar­ly known as Chan­na Man as he sells chan­na in the area."

At­tend­ing sec­ondary school, Bor­neo con­tin­ued with his love and pas­sion, fine-tun­ing his mix­ing skills. He said: "We used to play at Pros­per­i­ty Club and would be prac­tis­ing af­ter school in­to the night."

On leav­ing school, Bor­neo was hired by WEFM 96.1. He said: "The ex­pe­ri­ence was all pos­i­tive for me at that sta­tion as a lot of what I learned about the busi­ness was from there. I stayed with them around nine years be­fore mov­ing on to Slam 105.5FM. I be­gan in this busi­ness as an an­nounc­er and con­tin­ue do­ing the an­nounc­ing gig for the past four years."

At WEFM, Bor­neo hooked up with sound sys­tem As­so­ciate De­gree, an out­fit com­pris­ing five guys from the Bournes Road area who shared his pas­sion for mu­sic.He re­called: "The sound sys­tem era was quite nice as it cre­at­ed clash­es be­tween the best in the mu­sic busi­ness. The vibes were on a high but sad­ly the trend even­tu­al­ly phased out. It was a hap­py feel­ing cut­ting the mu­sic of artistes like Mova­do and Boun­ty Killer."

Bor­neo adopt­ed his moniker from the ti­tle of one of the par­ties As­so­ciate De­gree Sound Sys­tem was hav­ing at Sting Night­club in the south. The par­ty was named 5 Star and the rest is his­to­ry.

With mu­sic pump­ing through his veins it wasn't long be­fore Bor­neo ven­tured in­to singing. He said: "Hav­ing mu­sic in your sys­tem and be­ing around a mu­si­cal fam­i­ly, I just couldn't fight the at­trac­tion to go deep­er in­to mu­sic. My first record­ing, Shake Yuh Bumper, was with Daryl Brax­ton and this was just the op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to wet my feet in the busi­ness.

"It be­ing my first re­lease, I was kind of scared and shaky, even ap­pre­hen­sive, but I was de­ter­mined to make it, es­pe­cial­ly when the crit­ics told me, 'yuh cyar do it'. That's the worse thing any­one can tell me as it on­ly gives me more steel and de­ter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed."

Bor­neo land­ed his first break­through hit four years ago singing Parti­er, writ­ten by Ghost Writ­ers Mu­sic and pro­duced by Sher­iff. "That track was one of the break­through tracks of Car­ni­val 2012," said Bor­neo."It was through this one song I be­gan fly­ing abroad and see­ing the out­side world and do­ing for­eign gigs. In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, Parti­er didn't land me in So­ca Monarch but I was hired to per­form it at all the ma­jor events for Car­ni­val."

The fol­low­ing year Bor­neo re­leased Jo­van James' To Meh Heart, pro­duced by Pre­ci­sion, and Nev­er Done with Na­dia Bat­son, writ­ten by Sekon Sta and Kit Is­rael.This year was Bor­neo's de­but qual­i­fi­ca­tion in the fi­nals of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch (Groovy) Com­pe­ti­tion and he did it with Noise, al­so penned by James.

He said: "I made it to the fi­nals via the Dig­i­cel Wild Card pick. So­ca Monarch was one of the biggest au­di­ences I have ever per­formed for. That crowd was re­al­ly big. It was right up my al­ley as the big­ger the crowd, the bet­ter I per­form. I get pumped up by huge crowds. Last year I al­so did Is­land Ad­ven­ture, again writ­ten by Jo­van, as well as Un­tamed, a duet I did with Lyrikal."

Come Car­ni­val 2016, one of Bor­neo's re­leas­es will be Tonight, on the Gold Medal rhythm, which al­so fea­tured Olatun­ji, Sher­a­da, Sekon Sta and Preedy.Bor­neo is chang­ing his style and ap­proach for Car­ni­val 2016 with a James com­po­si­tion ti­tled Dif­fer­ent Side of Me.He ex­plained: "Peo­ple go about their dai­ly lives one way, but when it comes to the two days of car­ni­val they trans­form in­to a dif­fer­ent crea­ture. Next year, it will be a dif­fer­ent me."

Dif­fer­ent Side of Me was pro­duced by Nikho­lai Greene, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kyle "No­vahh" Joseph, mixed by Greene and An­dre "Dre Ma­jor" Stew­art, and mas­tered by Greene. It al­so fea­tures live gui­tars by Kashiff Wil­son, with back­ground vo­cals by Jo­Jo.Bor­neo has al­so writ­ten a doc­u­men­tary for Dif­fer­ent Side of Me which has been di­rect­ed by Cowin Thor­pe and pro­duced by Gabriel Nagee and Thor­pe.