Pop mu­sic orig­i­nat­ed in the 1950s hav­ing its roots in rock and roll. There are some pro­duc­ers al­ready en­cour­ag­ing the fu­sion of pop in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go's main stream mu­sic, but it seems that no one has dared to take on pop mu­sic in its rawest form. Twen­ty-year-old John Em­manuel, a post stu­dent of Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, is about to take on this mu­si­cal chal­lenge. Go­ing un­der the alias 'John Tho', Em­manuel de­scribes this in­di­vid­ual as a pre­vi­ous rock artiste who has made his name in the rock in­dus­try. He de­scribes 'John Tho' as a per­son who is ver­sa­tile with a dis­tinct in­ter­est in pop mu­sic. Many might know John Em­manuel as the lead vo­cal­ist of the lo­cal rock band 'Ban­gaseed'. The band, how­ev­er, is now de­funct and Em­manuel was quite will­ing to give gieMAGAZINE the in­side scoop on the sep­a­ra­tion. Ban­gaseed was co-found­ed by Em­manuel and his mu­si­cal part­ner Jonathan Agos­ti­ni, how­ev­er, the bat­tle be­tween them was de­cid­ing on the band's di­rec­tion. Em­manuel want­ed to car­ry the band in­to main­stream mu­sic, where­as Agos­ti­ni's pref­er­ence was in the un­der­ground form. This even­tu­al­ly led to split­ting of the band and the cre­ation of the pop mu­si­cal con­cept that is now 'John Tho'.

"Pop mu­sic is more in depth. It brings a cer­tain vibe, a cer­tain feel­ing that en­cour­ages one to move" said Em­manuel when asked to com­ment on the genre of mu­sic. His pro­mo­tion­al man­ag­er, Kezi­ah Wil­son, al­so added that they are try­ing to ap­peal to a wider au­di­ence - not just Trinidad and To­ba­go. John's mu­sic is set to be re­leased in Eu­rope as well as in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. "It's more is­land pop. There will be a Caribbean flavour" said Em­manuel, re­as­sur­ing gieMAGAZINE that there will be some lo­cal roots to the mu­sic. He al­so added that he does not want to de­vi­ate too much from the el­e­men­tal forms of pop mu­sic. Since the end of Ban­gaseed, John Em­manuel has changed his vi­su­al im­age. He was well known for his shoul­der length hair, but is now sport­ing a short hair cut, giv­ing him a crisp fin­ish as com­pared to his long locks that would 'bang' in every di­rec­tion dur­ing his en­er­getic rock per­for­mances. "It's more pop" said Em­manuel jok­ing­ly. Apart from the out­ward change, Em­manuel re­vealed to gieMAGAZINE that he has al­so giv­en up his ad­dic­tion to cig­a­rettes and is quite se­ri­ous about this change. One of the ma­jor rea­sons is to pre­serve his voice be­cause he has every in­ten­tion of break­ing out in the pop mu­sic in­dus­try.

'John Tho' has al­ready re­leased a pro­mo­tion­al track for his first sin­gle 'With You'. This 20-sec­ond snip­pet gives that im­me­di­ate bub­bly vibe that is syn­ony­mous with pop mu­sic. The song was writ­ten by Kit Is­rael, K.Rich and John Em­manuel him­self. The track is card­ed to be re­leased this month. I was priv­i­leged enough to hear the en­tire song dur­ing the in­ter­view, and from what I heard the tal­ent is lim­it­less and the brand 'John Tho' seems to be an en­er­getic force to be reck­oned with. John Em­manuel's friend and mu­si­cal part­ner, K.Rich, has al­ready ex­plod­ed on the groovy so­ca scene with his sin­gle 'Noth­ing Less'. When asked how he feels about in­ter­act­ing with these pop­u­lar in­di­vid­u­als, John wast­ed no time in re­spond­ing. "Ken­ny is my best friend! The friend­ship with Ken­ny is re­al­ly good. Be­ing around his lime­light is a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for me. It's a good way of meet­ing new peo­ple" said Em­manuel en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. His strate­gic man­ag­er, Jean Marc Valen­tine, has a plan for mar­ket­ing 'John Tho' in­clu­sive of pro­mot­ing his mu­sic on the TBC ra­dio net­work. In ad­di­tion to this plan, John Tho will be hav­ing an of­fi­cial launch at a pop­u­lar night­club in the west. Apart from the mu­si­cal ap­proach, John is will­ing to fill in all the gaps and by this he means pos­si­bly bridg­ing in­to fash­ion or even the mod­el­ling in­dus­try in the fu­ture. So who does he owe all this suc­cess to? John Em­manuel would like to thank his mom and dad as well as his en­tire fam­i­ly for push­ing him in a mu­si­cal di­rec­tion. He would al­so like to thank all the up­com­ing artistes for their con­tin­ued sup­port. He ex­pressed spe­cial sen­ti­ments for K.Rich, his man­age­ment team, and his ador­ing fans. John Tho al­so ex­pressed many thanks to Ri­ad Boo­choon and Rob­bie Stylez.

If you want to find out more about John Em­manuel, make sure to check out his so­cial links:

www.face­book.com/john­tho­live

www.twit­ter.com/john­tho­live

www.youtube.com/john­tho­live