Sean Nero

Mu­sic lovers are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an en­tire­ly new di­men­sion in sound with the com­ing of a fresh­ly for­mat­ted ra­dio fre­quen­cy apt­ly called SLAM 100.5FM...Pro­gres­sive Ur­ban.It's the newest ad­di­tion to the Guardian Me­dia Ltd (GML) em­pire which al­ready has five di­verse fre­quen­cies un­der its ban­ner. They are: 95.1FM The Best Mix; CT Vibe 105.5FM; Aakash Vani 106.5FM; Sangeet 106.1FM; and 730 AM In­spi­ra­tional Ra­dio. And not for­get­ting its flag­ship print brand the T&T Guardian news­pa­per, as well as Ca­ble News Chan­nel 3 (CNC3).Com­bined, GML had an es­ti­mat­ed 800,000 lis­ten­ers, read­ers and view­ers.SLAM 100.5FM is des­tined to in­crease that fig­ure with its rev­o­lu­tion­ary ap­proach to ra­dio for­mat­ting.

Close to five weeks since the new ra­dio sta­tion be­gan broad­cast­ing and two weeks af­ter for­mal­ly an­nounc­ing its line of pre­sen­ters, pro­gramme di­rec­tor Joel "Sig­nal To Noise" Mor­ris ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion that the fre­quen­cy be­gan its op­er­a­tions with a bang."I have no­ticed that a lot of the oth­er ra­dio sta­tions, the ur­ban sta­tions (were) ac­tu­al­ly adding the genre of mu­sic that we are play­ing to their pro­gram­ming. It's al­most like we are lead­ing and they're fol­low­ing now," he told Sun­day Vibe.The sta­tion's pro­gres­sive pro­gram­ming al­lows for R&B and hip-hop, dance, pop and of course a wide range of lo­cal con­tent.Mor­ris added: "We felt that the ur­ban sound that ex­ists now is be­tween 15 to 20 years old.

"We feel that the mu­sic has since changed. A lot of R&B artistes are now do­ing a lot of dance mu­sic and pop mu­sic. There are a lot of col­lab­o­ra­tions tak­ing place be­tween pop and R&B artistes. For in­stance, Katy Per­ry singing with Kanye West with a num­ber one song on the charts. If you move around Trinidad, you'll re­alise that as Trinida­di­ans, when you go to clubs and par­ties, that's the mu­sic we lis­ten to."Like every­thing else, there is change tak­ing place in the mu­sic. I think we are here to rep­re­sent that."This rev­o­lu­tion in sound is be­ing led by an en­thu­si­as­tic and dy­nam­ic mix of es­tab­lished and emerg­ing an­nounc­ers.The week-day line up on SLAM 100.5FM be­gins with Su­per­Jig­ga (Ter­rin Cal­len­der) and So­phie Wight on the morn­ing show along with DJ Sit­u­a­tion-a young mu­sic pro­gram­mer.Ser­ala Ram­lo­gan of Syn­er­gy TV fame and DJ Aswaad (Aswaad Pe­ters) the son of cel­e­brat­ed mu­si­cian and steel­band arranger Len "Boogsie" Sharpe take lis­ten­ers through the mid-morn­ing set.

Ezel and Jon Boy in­tro­duce the af­ter­noon line-up, fol­lowed by Five Star Ak­ile (Ak­ile Bor­neo) and DJ Wat­ty, shift­ing gears dur­ing 'dri­ve time' seg­ment.The evenings be­long to Jet-Lee and Se­lec­tor Dori, while the beau­ti­ful J-An­gel (Jenelle De Leon) along­side DJ Young Kingston, com­plete the day's line-up.Some of these voic­es re­turn on the week­end. They share the spot­light with the likes of Dis­truc­tion Sounds, Mc Lur­bz and DJ Azwaad.Mor­ris said cre­at­ing and sus­tain­ing SLAM 100.5FM's fresh ap­proach was easy be­cause its be­ing done all over the world."Peo­ple are in love with the mu­sic we play. It's not just adding mu­sic, it's how it's done. How you flavour the food."I don't un­der­stand how these oth­er (lo­cal) sta­tions did not do it be­fore. As a mat­ter of fact, since we start­ed-and we're on­ly two weeks on the air-we have a heavy lis­ten­er­ship," he said.

Mor­ris added: "They (ra­dio sta­tions) are adding a lot of dance-pop mu­sic now, which they nev­er used to play be­fore, be­cause they felt it was not part of the ur­ban sound. Maybe they have re­alised it's work­ing.Lo­cal con­tent is a must on SLAM 100.5FM and this does not on­ly mean so­ca mu­sic."We have lo­cal con­tent. We will be rep­re­sent­ing a lot of lo­cal con­tent as long as it is good con­tent. We are not go­ing to put it on be­cause it's lo­cal, but it's good. I be­lieve the stan­dard of the lo­cal con­tent is very good and I'm one who has al­ways ad­vo­cat­ed for that."Lis­ten­ers to SLAM 100.5FM could look for­ward to hear­ing ma­te­r­i­al from na­tive boy Mark Hardy who had tak­en an in­ter­na­tion­al rid­dim and Neb­u­la 868 which had re­cent­ly been in re­ceipt of in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion for their work.Two new re­leas­es from MX Prime were al­so in ro­ta­tion on SLAM 100.5FM.Mor­ris said: "Young en­ter­tain­ers on the mar­ket are in­to what they are do­ing. Once they have a good prod­uct, I don't see why we can't rep­re­sent that. You'll be hear­ing a lot of lo­cal con­tent on this sta­tion every hour, with every­thing else."