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Flashmag september 2017 www.flashmag.net
or as distributor. Filling the rooms remains and will always remain the same, an advertising and communication problem, but not only. Music tends to become Kleenex music, that one consumes quickly and throws just as quickly.
Record companies are doing the bare minimum and no longer build careers for artists they sign. So, I think we still have some concerns. Furthermore, as Caribbean, the fight is more difficult. (Internet is poorly installed or do not work very well and everywhere back home). What is left is the live. But not every artist can afford to support a live band, without any help to support the various expenses (clothes, rehearsals, musicians, movements, etc.) And without an industry that will govern our music to better sell it and make it known to our own audience, our music industry will die.
In Jamaica, they mainly consume Jamaican music (reggae, ragga, dance hall). In Cuba (salsa, meringue, soca) In Haiti the Kompa, and each of these music’s are in their original languages but are all governed by local industries, professionals who have the "ear", they are vanguard professionals who keep the schmilblick alive and well.
Last year our editorial in an article felt that African as Caribbean music, does not perform well because some play it now like other genres namely pop or American music and that necessarily it was losing in a ground where for decades American and Western artists have built an audience. Do you think it is important to keep its originality to continue to sell better?
Nothing is predictable these days. You can see a stranger post images of a clip and make millions of views (in English, French, Creole, or other). So, everything is possible and everything is impossible at the same time. We do not know on what criteria to base ourselves, we do not know how to do. The only loophole remains the record company for TV and Radio promotion; And which nowadays is not even truly reliable anymore. To build an audience it’s very difficult because it must keep its loyalty, thus you have to produce titles more often that please, with
the ability to be bombarded on the radios at a certain period like (Maître Gim’s) for example? But especially nowadays it is necessary to self-produce to put your own money. But it is also necessary to perform live to retain an increasingly demanding clientele (reality TV) that wants it concretely. The nerve of war remains and will remain money, for it requires means
We complain that there are no longer TV shows on Afro Caribbean music, and at the same time the few medias pro Afro that exist have difficulty surviving because Blacks support them very little. Don’t you think that there is more a crisis of identity that tends to pervert the work of both conscious media and conscious artists ?
Yes, I think there is a real identity crisis that results in a rejection of our own musical identity. Zouk music has made our islands known throughout the world and remains a true passport on the outside. But also by bad behavior (non-respect of the schedules, the importance of an 8:30 (prime time), due to our ignorance or our pride). On the one hand, which can be explained because the status of the intermittent workers in the West Indies is not at all in force since very few artists can work and have paychecks of 507 hours declared! For that you would have to work in a hotel and have a contract of 2 to 3 months and work 2 to 3 times a week? For each artist? Or else to be solicited by most of the events that happen on the territory and especially to be declared? And to top it all, the hotels are closing more and more at home, for lack of tourists. Event organizers to fill their stadiums or halls, call on foreign artists regularly, without thinking of our local artists who pick up only crumbs that do not help them to be professional. We go back to the lack I was talking about. A Caribbean music industry in which each artist would be trained. But as you said yourself, will the public follow? I think so if everyone works together in the same synergy and for the same purpose. We must change that. Defend our heritage much more and make it bear fruit with Caribbean influences necessarily in Creole, French, or even in English why not?