Gillian Cal­iste

In his youth, Michael Williams, known on the reg­gae scene as JaMelody, dreamed about be­ing on stage with im­pas­sioned crowds singing his mu­sic.

In 2002, Williams’ dream took off when he burst on­to the lo­cal and re­gion­al reg­gae cir­cuit with Nev­er Let You Down and went on to grab at­ten­tion in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Twen­ty years on, the peo­ple can’t get enough of the hon­ey-voiced singer and his smooth soul­ful melodies.

Eas­i­ly one of the most re­quest­ed artistes in T&T, JaMelody has made his rounds at a host of events since pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions eased, of­fer­ing his typ­i­cal reg­gae vi­bra­tions and throw­ing in a lit­tle so­ca, which he first tried late last year.

The pro­lif­ic artiste was ex­pect­ed to ap­pear on Reg­gae Thurs­day night at Great Fete in To­ba­go. Even in­di­vid­ual gigs like per­form­ing at peo­ple’s wed­dings are dif­fi­cult to turn down. It’s all part of ful­fill­ing his mis­sion, he told the Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly.

“Most of the peo­ple, they come to me—diehard fans—they would say: I have muh wife, Brethren. I just want you to come and sing one song. I will pay what­ev­er the price is. And these are things I wouldn’t turn down be­cause I get to re­alise my mu­sic have a great im­pact on peo­ple’s lives, so I have to be there for them,” he said.

Williams takes none of the de­mand for his mu­sic for grant­ed, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter liv­ing through a pan­dem­ic. He is grate­ful to be in the line­up for the mega con­cert “Re­demp­tion 2022: The Re­turn” card­ed for Au­gust 27. Boast­ing a cast of reg­gae leg­ends like Ja­maicans Tar­rus Ri­ley, Richie Spice, Sanchez, and Lu­ciano, and home­grown Isas­ha and Zig­gy Rankin, along­side JaMelody, in this sev­enth edi­tion, the con­cert is billed as a love fest rekin­dling pos­i­tive vibes among the peo­ple af­ter two years of gloom. It is pro­mot­ed by Tropix En­ter­tain­ment and Ricky Raghu­nanan Group of Com­pa­nies.

“The pan­dem­ic was tough for us, be­ing en­ter­tain­ers and artistes, we had no gigs com­ing in. We had noth­ing, so I would say this is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty. I get to re­alise that Re­demp­tion is one of the great­est shows be­cause the world looks at it and I’m proud to rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go with reg­gae mu­sic. Right af­ter the pan­dem­ic, we start­ed to get a lot of calls,” Williams said.

For Williams, gigs have nev­er been in a short sup­ply. Just be­fore the pan­dem­ic struck T&T in March 2020, his sched­ule had been packed. De­spite the gru­elling set­back, he was still able to learn some valu­able lessons.

“The pan­dem­ic taught us a lot in mas­ter­ing our trade and con­cen­trat­ing more on writ­ing songs. I didn’t even know we would have had that op­por­tu­ni­ty, as peo­ple would say, of be­ing nor­mal again.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple was more on a con­scious lev­el, I would say, turn­ing to God, pray­ing, beg­ging for for­give­ness,” he said.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that artistes were not the on­ly ones en­dur­ing a tough time dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Williams said he is thank­ful to God that it is over as it was very trag­ic for some and for many a time of mourn­ing.

The Love Crazy singer told us “Bet­ter Gonna Come One Day” promis­es to de­liv­er “The Best of (Him­self)” at the event come Au­gust. From so­cial me­dia re­spons­es so far, when the high reg­is­ters of his “I Love You” pierce the air at T&T’s con­cert cap­i­tal three weeks from now, “JAH ALONE” will be able to keep the ladies at bay. It will in­deed be “Beau­ti­ful”.

“The pub­lic can ex­pect to be see­ing one of their own Trinida­di­an artistes rep­re­sent­ing in a big and spe­cial way. I’m go­ing to come out with one of my best per­for­mances just to make this coun­try feel re­al proud,” he said.

This should be an easy feat for Williams who dropped his first hit 20 years ago with Jet Star Records of Ja­maica and made waves again not long af­ter with “Be Pre­pared”, as part of a rhythm com­pi­la­tion with Ja­maican mas­ter reg­gae and dance­hall pro­duc­er Robert Dixon (Bob­by Dig­i­tal). It would lead to him be­ing signed by the world’s largest reg­gae mu­sic and dis­tri­b­u­tion la­bel VP Records, pro­pelling the JaMelody brand to mar­kets in North Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope and Aus­tralia.

The reg­gae bard, who said the love he re­ceives at home and on his tours abroad in­spires him to be a bet­ter artiste, was adamant when asked whether the So­ca We Love so­ca sin­gle he dropped last year had now made him a crossover artiste.

“The fu­ture holds a lot of sur­pris­es. I be­lieve I’ve en­tered that realm be­cause my mu­sic has played all over the world and my aim is not just to be a reg­gae artist but a main record­ing artiste who (is) ca­pa­ble of do­ing any genre of mu­sic once I could bring my vibes; JaMelody is pos­i­tive vibes. So­ca is part of my her­itage so I would def­i­nite­ly take part in it,” he said.

As to how he made his so­ca de­but last year, Williams ex­plained that as a pro­duc­er he had record­ed tracks for artistes like Black Loy­al­ty (Keon Jones) and Jaron Nurse and was al­ways ex­per­i­ment­ing. At An­tho­ny Chow Lin On’s (Chi­nese Laun­dry) stu­dio one day, he played a so­ca track he had held for about five years.

“The mo­ment he heard it, he say yo: I want to work with this song.”

En­cour­aged, Williams de­cid­ed to ven­ture in­to so­ca. “So­ca We Love” is part of a ground­break­ing nine-track Caribbean mu­sic al­bum mixed in the state-of-the-art Dol­by At­mos for­mat which al­lows lis­ten­ers to hear the mu­sic and artiste with ex­tra­or­di­nary clar­i­ty and depth. It was re­leased by Chi­nese Laun­dry Mu­sic and Ma­ha Pro­duc­tions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Shayegan Me­dia and fea­tures oth­er artistes like Kes and col­lab­o­ra­tion with Machel Mon­tano, Ravi B (Ravi Bis­samb­har) and Azaryah.

JaMelody

A Care­nage na­tive, Williams grew up singing in the church choir. Build­ing on his tal­ent dur­ing his school ca­reer at Mu­cu­rapo Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive, he joined the pop­u­lar 90s lo­cal R&B group Broth­ers with Voic­es.

Meet­ing Nera who would “show” him “a whole dif­fer­ent way of life” and be­come his wife would change his course. He em­braced her Rasta­far­i­an be­liefs and be­gan to sing reg­gae.

“I be­lieve that is where my whole ca­reer start­ed. I was singing back then, but where it start­ed is when I ac­cept­ed Rasta­fari. From there it be­came a dif­fer­ent lev­el, the whole act of who I am to­day which is JaMelody,” he said.

Williams was one of the first Tri­ni reg­gae pi­o­neers to gain ma­jor recog­ni­tion.

“I would say I was one of the first artistes to re­al­ly get the big for­ward be­cause Queen Omega was there be­fore me, then I came, then Mar­lon Ash­er, then Isas­ha and Prophet Ben­jamin. So I’m proud to be like the be­gin­ning of it and still go­ing hard, and al­so to be an in­spi­ra­tion and en­cour­age­ment to the young up­com­ing artistes as well.”

He said sign­ing with a big la­bel for the first time was a phe­nom­e­nal ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I was young in the in­dus­try and the feel­ing was like a dream come true be­cause is some­thing I’d been think­ing about way be­fore I could even sing my first song in a stu­dio. I al­ways used to like walk­ing on the road­side and hear­ing crowds singing in my head and I was see­ing my­self on a stage and that kin­da vibes.”

Nera was signed as his song­writer. Ex­cit­ed for him, she was some­what over­whelmed about how she would cope in the in­dus­try.

“I was kin­da scep­ti­cal be­cause I didn’t know much about the busi­ness. I didn’t know what I was get­ting in­to so I had to ask a lot of peo­ple for ad­vice, but for him, I was very ex­cit­ed be­cause it was some­thing he (had) worked for,” she re­called.

But Nera’s fears were un­found­ed. Writ­ing for her is like say­ing a prayer. To­geth­er, and with help from above, they be­came a force.

“We were the words and song. We were wait­ing for the pow­er to en­ter. We could have on­ly got­ten the pow­er when we in­volved the Almighty,” Nera said of how they first start­ed.

They were to­geth­er for 18 years be­fore they got mar­ried as their fo­cus had been on Williams’ “call­ing”. In­spired by God, love for each oth­er and love for hu­man­i­ty, their love sto­ry and dai­ly life em­body the lyrics of many of their songs.

“The mu­sic is re­al. It tru­ly was re­flect­ing on my re­la­tion­ship, know­ing that some­one could love some­one deeply like a hus­band and wife could love each oth­er. So we try to make every song as re­al as pos­si­ble. Just what you see, is what you hear and it af­fects the fans just as if I was singing it to them. Is all a con­nec­tion,” he said.

“And as I say, you know, noth­ing like that hap­pens with­out the Most High. I al­ways try to put in the Most High. Is about right­eous­ness be­cause with­out right­eous­ness, you wouldn’t get that kind of progress.”

Apart from pro­mot­ing the JaMelody brand over­seas, progress has al­so meant launch­ing the Jour­ney Stu­dio Records and Lounge in Mor­vant. Opened on Ju­ly 17 with the help of busi­ness­man Ak­il Earl and MP for Laven­tille East/Mor­vant, Adri­an Leonce, Jour­ney Stu­dio Records and Lounge will al­so host Reg­gae Sun­days and en­cour­age youths who have a “spark” to re­alise their po­ten­tial to be stars, Williams said. With JaMelody Mu­sic be­com­ing more of an em­pire, the singer will be back in the stu­dio in Ja­maica soon and the pub­lic can look for­ward to more mu­sic, more shows, and more videos of a high­er cal­i­bre.

“JaMelody is here and we won’t give up. We just com­ing hard­er and hard­er, more pro­fes­sion­al­ism, more vibes,” he said.

VIP ca­banas for Re­demp­tion: The Re­turn

Af­ter a two-year drought of in-per­son events due to COVID, reg­gae fans can ex­pect two ma­jor bonus­es when Re­demp­tion the Con­cert is re­vived for 2022. Dubbed the “The Re­turn”, spokesper­son for the pop­u­lar reg­gae con­cert se­ries Seon Isaacs said that for its sev­enth edi­tion this year, the cast alone would be a mon­u­men­tal ex­pe­ri­ence for many of the fans of the con­cert usu­al­ly held at T&T’s con­cert cap­i­tal, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

The line­up is con­firmed as Ja­maican reg­gae icons Tar­rus Ri­ley, Richie Spice, Sanchez and Lu­ciano, and lo­cal reg­gae tal­ent JaMelody, Isas­ha and Zig­gy Rankin. It will be the first time Richie Spice, Lu­ciano and Isas­ha will be per­form­ing at Re­demp­tion and their pres­ence is much-an­tic­i­pat­ed.

In ad­di­tion to gen­er­al ad­mis­sion and spe­cial re­served tick­et op­tions, a lim­it­ed num­ber of pa­trons can al­so choose to en­joy an ex­ec­u­tive ca­bana VIP ex­pe­ri­ence, a fea­ture in­tro­duced this year. Here a group of ten will be treat­ed to pri­va­cy with all-in­clu­sive perks of an ul­tra-pre­mi­um bar, fin­ger foods, per­son­al VIP ser­vices from trained pro­fes­sion­als, se­cu­ri­ty, close park­ing and re­strooms.

De­scrib­ing the con­cert’s fans as “fam­i­ly”, Isaacs said dur­ing the pan­dem­ic many were reach­ing out con­cerned about what would hap­pen to the Re­demp­tion brand.

“Peo­ple are ex­cit­ed to free up them­selves. We’re try­ing to gath­er every­body back out to what we know as the con­cert cap­i­tal – and now we are deem­ing it the epi­cen­tre of the world’s largest round­about – to cel­e­brate to­tal to­geth­er­ness on that day. We guar­an­tee that all our peo­ple will have a great time be­cause it’s go­ing to be one of those con­certs of epic pro­por­tions,” he said.

The con­cert will bring to­geth­er artistes who will con­tin­ue the love peo­ple showed to each oth­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic which the world needs right now, he said.