Nigel Teles­ford

Ja­maican tal­ent man­ag­er, Steve “Urchin” Wil­son was “blown away” by the scores of tal­ent­ed lo­cal artistes, pro­duc­ers and per­form­ers as­sem­bled at the re­cent RVRB Artiste De­vel­op­ment Work­shop and RVR­BX Tal­ent Show­case.

The two-day work­shop fea­tured a dy­nam­ic agen­da, in­clud­ing ses­sions on mu­sic in­dus­try trends, busi­ness fun­da­men­tals, brand­ing, song­writ­ing, so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing, EPK build­ing, live per­for­mance, pro­duc­tion, and net­work­ing. It was held at the Samaan Es­tate in St Clair and The Dalai Lla­ma in One Wood­brook Place.

“We had an amaz­ing time ex­plor­ing and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing all the tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­u­als who came for­ward and rep­re­sent­ed their brands and their sounds,” Wil­son said.

“Hon­est­ly, I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t love it and want to help the in­dus­try move for­ward. More in­vest­ment is need­ed in this sec­tor and I think we have enough ex­am­ples as proof that it can be lu­cra­tive and pro­pel our na­tion­al brands and cul­tur­al prod­ucts and iden­ti­ties for­ward to the mar­kets of the world.”

Wil­son joined ex­pe­ri­enced and pop­u­lar mu­sic in­dus­try ex­perts, Dana Shayegan (Monk Mu­sic) and Michael “Tano” Mon­tano (pro­duc­er for Kes, Coutain) in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the work­shop and show­case event.

Glob­al T&T, mu­sic di­vi­sion gen­er­al man­ag­er, Melis­sa Jimenez thanked all the pan­el­lists, par­tic­i­pants, her “Mu­sic TT Team” and mem­bers of the me­dia who at­tend­ed and re­port­ed on what she de­scribed as “a very suc­cess­ful ses­sion, which was piv­otal to the on­go­ing suc­cess of the lo­cal mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try”.

“We man­aged to achieve this on a very mea­gre bud­get and with a gen­er­al elec­tion com­ing right be­fore and all the com­plex­i­ties that bring to the ta­ble,” she said.

“We must thank our gen­er­ous spon­sors and part­ners, the in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als who gave us their time, en­er­gy and valu­able in­sights and per­spec­tives and ap­plaud the lo­cal mu­sic com­mu­ni­ty for an­swer­ing the call and at­tend­ing in their num­bers, for speak­ing up and not be­ing afraid to ask ques­tions and en­gage the pan­el­lists.”

Jimenez added: “It was a very in­for­ma­tive and eye-open­ing ses­sion all around and we look for­ward to work­ing with key stake­hold­ers to con­tin­ue the growth and de­vel­op­ment of the mu­sic in­dus­try and the cul­tur­al and cre­ative sec­tor of T&T.”

Shayegan and Mon­tano were equal­ly sat­is­fied and en­thused by the tal­ent pool that at­tend­ed and pre­sent­ed var­i­ous gen­res and hy­brid styles of vo­cal abil­i­ties and mu­sic pro­duc­tions.

Mon­tano even pro­duced a new track live in front of the au­di­ence to con­clude the sec­ond day’s work­shop and Shayegan and Wil­son an­swered all ques­tions from the as­sem­bly, both pub­licly and dur­ing one-on-one dis­cus­sions through­out the pro­gramme.

Par­ents of ris­ing tal­ent, Annabel­la Mona­co, Frank and Re­bec­ca Mona­co ex­pressed great sat­is­fac­tion and en­thu­si­asm af­ter the Tal­ent Show­case, say­ing it opened their eyes to all the com­po­nents nec­es­sary for main­stream suc­cess.

“I’m re­al­ly hap­py we came to this,” said the 17-year-old singer, Annabel­la. “I learnt so much and my par­ents got to see and hear and meet with re­al in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als who an­swered all their ques­tions and con­cerns and gave us great ad­vice on how to move for­ward. This has been my dream ever since I was a child and there’s still a lot of work to be done, but I feel a lot clos­er to un­der­stand­ing how to be suc­cess­ful now hav­ing had this ex­pe­ri­ence.”