Before the pandemic, by the start of February, this country’s Carnival season would have been in full swing.
Last year, there wasn’t a season and this year the events have been scaled down, but even with that reality several soca artistes have released songs that are dominating the airwaves.
One such song is Take Bamboo by Melick and Boogy Rankss which was released in October 2021 but started to gain popularity weeks ago.
“I was alright, three months I start to think like why it ain’t catching yet, one month pass, the second month pass, the third month pass why it ain’t catching yet…in two weeks’ time the song blow up immediately 100,000,” song writer and performer Melick Baptiste said.
Baptiste, who is a dancehall singer, said he was happy his first ever soca song picked up during the Carnival season.
“I will be pushing more to the soca also, I never knew like this soca industry will draw a bigger attention…I never saw so much of memes so much of videos in my entire career so to me this is amazing,” he said.
Many on social media created videos dancing to the song or synced the audio with popular videos like the Lucozade stick man advertisement. They said Take Bamboo would have been the perfect song for J’Ouvert morning.
“This is one of those songs that just tun up the vibes for J’Ouvert,” Kerwyn forde commented.
“Listening to this song nearly make me cry yes cause I done seeing myself on the road J’Ouvert morning getting on rel bad to this song while the DJ keep it on repeat for about 20 mins,” Jerome James commented as well.
Baptiste said he was also sad that the song couldn’t be played on the road this year but asked them to hold on because the pandemic is out of everyone’s control.
“I hope I bring out better music for everybody and I hope that this song last long enough that they actually get that same feeling that they wanted to feel as it playing here today,” he said.
The 25-year-old singer explained that, Take Bamboo is not a derogatory song but one written to match the riddim.
It really wasn’t rude, the producer basically send me the name of the riddim and the riddim was “Tek Bamboo” and I was like why you name the riddim this and he was like because the instrument was bamboo,” he explained.
Baptiste said when he listened to the other songs on the riddim no one wrote about bamboo so he did.
“They give me the song basically in a heights,” he said.
So far over 500,000 people have watched the visualizer video on YouTube but Baptiste said he plans to do an official music video before he leaves for tour.
He hopes to get permission to use the Bamboo Cathedral.
The San Juan native said he started doing music in Barataria North Secondary as a “mic man” but many teachers were against the genre of music he and his team, BME, performed. He said school was not really his focus.
“I remember a teacher named Mister Erskine who actually gave us the opportunity to do this in school and we started to teach other youths to do this as well and they passed it on,” he said.
He pleaded with teachers to not box children into academics.
The young singer said he prays every day for his music to be successful and admitted that all his savings were depleted during the pandemic.
“I basically started back fresh, I said lord I need this hit,” he said.
Which Take Bamboo definitely is.
Some of the Lyrics of Take Bamboo:
Push back baby, Push back on the bamboo baby
Take Bamboo gyal, take bamboo right dey gyal X4
Aye gyal you know is carnival, bamboo man will give you some jam, truck man why you driving so fast? Look bamboo sharing like Sinopharm.
Bamboo right in the conga line.