AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

In the heart of Bei­jing, Chi­na, thou­sands of miles from T&T, the fa­mil­iar sounds of so­ca have found an un­like­ly new au­di­ence. Be­hind the turnta­bles is dee­jay Kirt­ly Fran­cis, bet­ter known as Se­lec­tah Kir­tis, mak­ing the city’s nightlife his newest stage.

But how did a Trin­bag­on­ian DJ end up liv­ing and per­form­ing in Chi­na for near­ly two years? It cer­tain­ly wasn’t a mapped-out ca­reer plan. In­stead, a short vis­it to see fam­i­ly and a last-minute de­ci­sion opened a door un­like any oth­er.

“I re­al­ly just came for a vis­it, to be very hon­est,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

Fran­cis’ moth­er had been work­ing in Chi­na for sev­en years. Fol­low­ing the chal­lenges faced by en­ter­tain­ers in T&T af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Fran­cis de­cid­ed to take a chance and vis­it her.

“I went out and min­gled with some peo­ple, some lo­cals and I kind of got a foot in­to the nightlife. In­to the door of dee­jay­ing and stuff.”

Com­ing from a mu­si­cal fam­i­ly, Fran­cis de­vel­oped a pas­sion for DJing at just eight years old. He re­mem­bers watch­ing old­er DJs work­ing with vinyl, be­com­ing fas­ci­nat­ed by their craft, and promis­ing him­self he would try it out.

At 19, Fran­cis at­tend­ed the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute in Point Lisas, un­der the in­struc­tion of Christo­pher Mor­ris, where he stud­ied var­i­ous ar­eas of mu­si­cal ed­u­ca­tion, such as mu­sic pro­duc­tion, en­gi­neer­ing and live sound. These for­ma­tive ex­pe­ri­ences shaped his skill set and ap­proach be­hind the decks.

Be­fore trav­el­ling to Bei­jing, Fran­cis was em­ployed at a lo­cal ra­dio sta­tion in Trinidad. When his trip was un­ex­pect­ed­ly ex­tend­ed, he at­tempt­ed to keep broad­cast­ing back home from near­ly 9,000 miles away.

“We tried the live stream­ing from Chi­na to Trinidad, but the down­fall with that is that we have to use the VPN over here in Chi­na. Be­cause Chi­na is a whole dif­fer­ent world. They have their own so­cial me­dia. They have their own pro­gram­ming. They have a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent at­mos­phere,” Fran­cis ex­plained.

“It didn’t work how we want­ed it to work out. But we still tried. It was suc­cess­ful for that pe­ri­od of time. But the qual­i­ty that we want­ed, we were not get­ting it. And we strived on qual­i­ty, so we just placed that on pause for the mean­time un­til I re­turned to Trinidad.”

De­spite this hic­cup, Fran­cis con­tin­ued to net­work in Chi­na and se­cured gigs across Bei­jing, in­tro­duc­ing his sound to a fresh nightlife au­di­ence.

As he dis­cov­ered, nightlife in Bei­jing is a world away from T&T.

“When you think that our night­clubs back home, or on the (Ari­api­ta) Av­enue, are hyped, Chi­na is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent. The at­mos­phere is dif­fer­ent. The sound sys­tems are dif­fer­ent. How they set up their clubs is dif­fer­ent,” Fran­cis said.

In Trinidad, a night out means stand­ing, danc­ing and be­ing en­er­getic in their so­cial­is­ing and on the dance floor. In Bei­jing, the ex­pe­ri­ence can be much more sub­dued. Pa­trons of­ten sit, drink, lis­ten to mu­sic, and play cards or board games while the DJ pro­vides the back­ground sound­track. At least, un­til it’s time to dance and let loose.

The mu­sic scene is equal­ly di­verse. A sin­gle night can fea­ture Afrobeats, Afro house, house mu­sic, Russ­ian hits and Mo­roc­can tracks. But Fran­cis made it his per­son­al mis­sion to push So­ca and oth­er Caribbean gen­res. It was not easy at first.

“Club own­ers will come and be like ‘What are you play­ing? We don’t know that kind of mu­sic. Could you change it up.’”

But Fran­cis was per­sis­tent.

“I pushed un­til it had lo­cals ac­tu­al­ly re­quest­ing so­ca mu­sic. Now they know me for so­ca and dance­hall. They know me as the Caribbean DJ.”

“It is re­al­ly the pa­trons. They en­joyed it. Chi­nese peo­ple loved so­ca’s rhythm, its en­er­gy. It al­ways made them feel like par­ty­ing.”

But his mu­sic not on­ly at­tract­ed lo­cals but al­so oth­er Caribbean peo­ple liv­ing in Bei­jing and oth­er provinces.

While the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty in Bei­jing is rel­a­tive­ly small, Fran­cis says its sup­port is strong.

“I can’t just say T&T. But the Caribbean sup­port sys­tem in Bei­jing is crazy. They at­tend what­ev­er event I’m at.”

But even with all the con­nec­tions he has built in Chi­na, his heart re­mains firm­ly in Trinidad. Hav­ing missed two Car­ni­val sea­sons, his tick­et to re­turn home is al­ready booked be­cause he doesn’t plan on miss­ing an­oth­er.

“I can class Chi­na as my sec­ond home now, but T&T is home.”