Jazz pi­o­neer Rafael "Raf" Robert­son, passed away sud­den­ly on Thurs­day night. He was well-loved and high­ly re­gard­ed as one of this coun­try's finest and most pro­gres­sive mu­si­cians. As part of our Busi­ness of Mu­sic se­ries ear­li­er this year, Shereen Ali in­ter­viewed Robert­son about achiev­ing suc­cess in the mu­sic in­dus­try. We re­pub­lish it to­day in ho­n­our of the great mu­si­cian.

"If life is a jour­ney, then part of suc­cess is know­ing when to stay in your lane," says jazz pi­anist Rafael "Raf" Robert­son.

He's re­fer­ring to fo­cus­ing on your strengths. For mu­si­cians, that means fo­cus­ing on mak­ing good qual­i­ty mu­sic. And when it comes to the busi­ness end of things, don't as­sume you can do it all your­self, he ad­vis­es–seek sound busi­ness ad­vice from those who know.

A re­spect­ed TT pi­anist, com­pos­er and record­ing artist who's cre­at­ed beau­ti­ful ca­lyp­so-jazz mu­sic, Robert­son has record­ed four al­bums: Just Teasin' (1989), Branch­es (1994–a trib­ute to Lord Kitch­en­er), Uni­ver­sal Rhythm (2000) and Majesty (2011). His ca­reer be­gan in the '60s when, still a youth at St Bene­dict's Col­lege, he'd play mu­sic with lo­cal dance com­bos. He then stud­ied mu­sic in the UK and the US, be­fore re­turn­ing to make a mu­sic ca­reer in the Caribbean.

He toured Eu­rope, North Africa and the Caribbean for ten years in the 1980s with pop star Ed­dy Grant, and sub­se­quent­ly per­formed ei­ther as a leader or an ac­com­pa­ny­ing mu­si­cian in re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al con­certs and fes­ti­vals.

He has played with well-known artistes such as the Louisiana-born sax­o­phon­ist Bran­ford Marsalis, jazz-fu­sion sax­o­phon­ist Grover Wash­ing­ton Jnr from New York and Boston-born jazz drum­mer Roy Haynes. Robert­son has al­so arranged and judged pan mu­sic, and to­day con­tin­ues to com­pose and play mu­sic, while al­so teach­ing mu­sic at the Tu­na­puna-based Bird­song Acad­e­my.

Robert­son has a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence in both the artis­tic and the nuts-and-bolts re­al­i­ties of mak­ing a mu­sic ca­reer ac­tu­al­ly work–not an easy task in T&T.

He's col­lab­o­rat­ed with oth­er mu­si­cians and bands, ne­go­ti­at­ed mu­sic deals for him­self with for­eign groups, and al­though it hasn't all been easy, he re­mains com­mit­ted to mu­sic as both a ca­reer and a per­son­al pas­sion.

In­spired by the '70s

"As far as my ca­reer is con­cerned, I have been very for­tu­nate...I got the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing on the cusp of the 1970s mu­sic rev­o­lu­tion in Lon­don, and hear­ing songs of that time, like Saya­man­da (by An­dre Tanker)," said Robert­son, in an in­ter­view at Trevor's Edge restau­rant/bar in St Au­gus­tine.

Robert­son said he was in­flu­enced by "all the so­cial things in­flu­enc­ing the mu­sic of the '70s. And I got the chance to play with many peo­ple, at dif­fer­ent lev­els, which taught me how things are done in the in­dus­try. I learned a lot from the peo­ple I worked with. I played with Ed­die Grant for ten years on tour. That was a school in it­self."

His en­quir­ing, ob­ser­vant ap­proach trans­formed ear­ly mu­sic gigs in­to a form of self-di­rect­ed ap­pren­tice­ship–his own on-the-job train­ing.

He learned the val­ue of be­ing or­gan­ised, and pre­sent­ing a pro­fes­sion­al show: "So: how do you set up your­self–show-wise, busi­ness-wise, pro­mo­tion-wise, how do you as­sem­ble your whole ma­chin­ery to get that work­ing?"

Be pro­fes­sion­al

He was mak­ing a point about the need for pro­fes­sion­al­ism in our lo­cal TT mu­sic sec­tor. An artist who plans to sell a CD, for in­stance, needs to pack­age it well. If that same artist wants to per­form live, he needs to plan and pack­age his show well, too: "I have seen how a band like Earth, Wind and Fire pack­age their shows. It is pro­fes­sion­al­ly done, at sev­er­al lev­els. That is how pop­u­lar mu­sic works."

Where­as too of­ten in TT, an artist may not both­er to plan a pro­duc­tion for best im­pact, but just cav­a­lier­ly per­form on a stage and then leave. Robert­son com­ment­ed: "Peo­ple here as­tound me be­cause they're al­ways busy–but busy is not nec­es­sar­i­ly pro­duc­tive, you know."

He com­ment­ed: "In this world of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, some feel they can Google ex­pe­ri­ence. You have to earn it. You have to be on the ball. You have to know and be pre­pared for the things that can hap­pen in the busi­ness."

Know your mu­sic rights

Knowl­edge about how the in­dus­try re­al­ly works is vi­tal, and is part of hav­ing a pro­fes­sion­al ap­proach to any mu­sic ca­reer, said Robert­son: "Youhave to learn how to make deals for your­self, and know what you are en­ti­tled to. Be­cause at the end of the day, it is your work, and you are look­ing for the best op­por­tu­ni­ties to make (a liv­ing) from that work."

He gave a hy­po­thet­i­cal ex­am­ple:

"Sup­pose a man in the mu­sic busi­ness is trav­el­ling on the road in Or­lan­do, and he hears some mu­sic he likes, and finds out it's from a TT artist and wants to li­cense that mu­sic, to make some mon­ey. When he con­tacts you, you, the artist, must be equipped and pre­pared to talk to him, and to ne­go­ti­ate with him. Fur­ther, you should have some­one who can rep­re­sent your busi­ness in­ter­ests, and ad­vise you."

Get a busi­ness ad­vis­er

He's quite firm on that point: get some­one you know, who tru­ly knows the mu­sic busi­ness, to ad­vise you. If you don't know some­one, you may have to pay for the ad­vice; but that is a valu­able ser­vice.

"You can't go with the at­ti­tude: 'Well, I'm go­ing to charge you $X, and if you can't pay that, I'm not deal­ing with you.' The busi­ness does not work like that. A busi­ness­man might say: 'Let's make a deal. I'll give you some up-front mon­ey, and I'll give you a per­cent­age on that...." and you have to be able to dis­cuss it, long be­fore you reach any con­tract stage. Then if a con­tract is pro­posed: do you have some­body to read that con­tract? Some­body who is in the busi­ness, and knows the ins and outs of it. Be­cause a lot of the busi­ness is not writ­ten in any books."

Robert­son said artists who try to do it all may make mis­takes, like un­wit­ting­ly sign­ing away in per­pe­tu­ity rights to some of their mu­sic, or mak­ing bad deals; er­rors like that hap­pen, but need not, with bet­ter busi­ness ad­vice, he says.

He sug­gest­ed as­pir­ing mu­sic work­ers ed­u­cate them­selves, read­ing bi­ogra­phies of suc­cess­ful artists: "First­ly, they show you what you might have to go through. Sec­ond­ly, the bi­ogra­phies can be an in­spi­ra­tion, be­cause some­times, you may want to give up, but when you see what these peo­ple went through, you are bet­ter pre­pared. Third­ly, they can be ed­u­ca­tion­al, in terms of in­side sto­ries of how the mu­sic busi­ness works."

No mu­sic in­dus­try in T&T yet

Robert­son at­tend­ed the re­cent Mu­sicTT pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions and said: "I think it is long over­due that we tru­ly have a re­al mu­sic in­dus­try." He said this doesn't ex­ist here yet.

He felt some young peo­ple in the TT mu­sic sec­tor to­day have an un­re­al­is­tic, even lazy at­ti­tude to fund­ing and train­ing; too many ex­pect state hand­outs. He point­ed to hum­ble con­di­tions of many Cuban mu­si­cians, who still pro­duce great works: "Look at what they are able to pro­duce with noth­ing. We have so many won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ties, and be­cause of our im­ma­tu­ri­ty, we squan­der them.

"Here we have a coun­try known for pro­duc­ing all kinds of won­der­ful artis­tic works, be it pan mu­sic, ca­lyp­so, so­ca, what­ev­er. And the ev­i­dence is show­ing we have nev­er been able to cap­i­talise on that in any mean­ing­ful way. It seems to me that we are al­ways start­ing over."

A force for change

But he is con­vinced that mu­sic can be a force for change: "I like to look at the pow­er of mu­sic." He re­ferred to Venezuela's in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-cel­e­brat­ed El Sis­tema pro­gramme, set up al­most 40 years ago by Jos� An­to­nio Abreu, a mu­si­cian and econ­o­mist, as a so­cial pro­gramme to bring Venezuela's dis­ad­van­taged youth off the streets and in­to mu­si­cal en­sem­bles to en­rich their lives. Since 1975, when it be­gan with 11 mu­si­cians in a garage in Cara­cas, it has placed more than two mil­lion chil­dren in­to or­ches­tras, and has in­spired sim­i­lar pro­grammes in many oth­er coun­tries.

"What is it that hap­pens to us that we do not un­der­stand (the val­ue of some­thing like that)?" asks Robert­son.

He was point­ing to the trans­for­ma­tive qual­i­ty of mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion–mu­sic as not just a busi­ness, but as a cul­tur­al en­ter­prise and a de­vel­op­ment tool. If we think about mu­sic in a more holis­tic way, we may have more suc­cess at it, he sug­gest­ed.

He al­so not­ed that, in de­cid­ing on set­ting up mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems, if we con­fuse the mon­ey-mak­ing as­pects of mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion with the ed­u­ca­tion­al as­pects, it can cor­rupt the process.

"Mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion bears fruit in the full­ness of time. But some see it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to 'eat ah food', to make mon­ey. So what hap­pens to us is that our pre­vail­ing cul­ture (of in­di­vid­u­al­ism, prof­it, ego) is killing our art. That's it. That's what we keep do­ing over and over and over and over."

His part­ing ad­vice to young, tal­ent­ed mu­si­cians was sim­ple: "No mat­ter what hap­pens, you have to stay pos­i­tive, and keep do­ing what you do. Peo­ple who per­se­vere, end up suc­ceed­ing."