BY NYERERE HAYNES
As far as music is concerned, Keshav Singh better known in the music world as Lazabeam, is interested only in one thing—the future. He believes, mixing traditional musical elements with a contemporary sound is the way forward in terms of developing music locally and also engaging wider markets. It’s a belief that has served the talented percussionist well thus far, as he and British music producer Sam Interface continue to make their mark on the international stage as the electronic music duo JusNow.
Singh and Interface already have a pretty decent discography, having produced hits like Tun Up featuring Bunji Garlin, Truck on d Road by Bunji Garlin and Junction by Machel Montano. They are now regulars on the European music festival circuit, and can boast of appearing at the Glastonbury Festival in England, one of the world’s biggest festivals.
Their recently released EP called Cyah Help It has opened new markets for them and has also put JusNow on the iTunes electronic charts. “We have a brand new EP out right now on Gutter Funk records in the UK and it also came out on Jillionaire’s Feel Up Records which has been in existence for about a year now. The public relations that Feel Up records is providing for the EP is pulling us in a cool direction.
Up until now, we’ve never released anything for the American audience- North, South, Central. The track hit number seven on the iTunes electronic music chart soon after it’s release. It seems America may be ready for this kind music now and it’s cool to see Trinidadian-oriented music on par with contempory acts like Major Lazer and Disclosure.” The EP which features soca star Bunji Garlin and UK rap icon Ms Dynamite on the title track, has been garnering international acclaim.
“They’re both legends in their worlds and we’ve been trying to get them together for quite sometime. Luckily we were all in London at the same time right before Notting Hill Carnival and we were able to get it together,” said Singh. Also on the album is an interpretation of Olatunji’s Bam Bam which has now been dubbed Badder Than.
UK-based T&T bassist Coreysan (Corey Wallace) is also featured on the EP with a reggae influenced song called Culture. From there the EP goes from reggae to rave to soca-influenced track Wave Something, featuring Bunji Garlin and Kerwin Prescott. According to Singh, T&T’s music industry is still far from being commercially viable.
His experience thus far in the UK has taught him a valuable lesson in being unashamedly authentic while at the same time being relatable. Of course, having some measure of talent is a definite prerequisite to any kind of success in his field but what has stuck in his mind without sounding too cliche, is keeping it real. “I think that we are in the nascent stages of forming a music industry in T&T.
It is what it is, there are things we aren’t doing. There is a big disconnect between the traditional and the contemporary in our culture of music, so obviously the marquee sound is soca and it’s something we’ve began to export, I think in may ways unwittingly, because we didn’t really stake a claim to it not that we should have, but think about this... only songs to make internationally have been from Arrow, Kevin Little, Rupee, Allison Hinds all non-Trinis. We persist in making music most of the time that specifically deals with and is under the banner of Carnival topicality.”
This lyrical limitation is a cause for concern for the young producer when he considers the kaleidoscope of human emotions and experiences that links us all. These can be used as a source of inspiration to widen the range of things our artistes sing about.
“It’s mostly Carnival, Monday, Tuesday, Jouvert, behind the truck, road, bumper, these things that don’t transcend the West Indian diaspora...I think it’s keeping our music back in terms of reaching wider audiences. That then leads to song writing, so if we really want to export out music we have to start looking at writing better songs, songs that make contextual sense in broader markets. We have only ourselves to blame when it comes to this bewilderment we have about soca not reaching farther places than we think it should.
If you want to make international records we have to keep it true and the best way to do that is playing on the strengths of our culture, of our indigenous sound, the strange and unique blend of African and Indian sounds and all the other influences that we have in our heritage. Nobody else in the world has that, so our cultural selling point is our uniqueness of history. When you mix that with now it becomes something new for everybody to digest,” he continued.
As JusNow, Singh and his partner Sam Interface travel a lot to perform at music festivals, and this nomadic tendency fuels their ability to infuse indigenous sounds from wherever they are at the moment into new or existing material.
“Rather than culturally appropriating, I think it is important as a musical communicator to be able to provide something to people as well too. One thing that sets us apart is that we really gravitate towards the traditional sound. We were in Brazil recently, and sometimes when you’re on tour you cannot catch the sound of the place, it was different there.
“We were there for two weeks and were able to immerse ourselves. We stayed at a live-in studio and experienced Brazilian life— from food to live shows. We got to understand their culture and that’s how we got to use it in a way that ‘bigs up’ their culture. So those elements combined with what we already do, allowed us to genuinely make a people connection,” said Singh.
He departs for London soon to get back to the studio and also embark on a tour playing music from the EP with Interface. That is how it’s been from the beginning of JusNow to the present for Singh. At the moment everything is coming together for them as the sound that they have created has taken on a life of it’s own.
“The UK public is loving it. We fortunately have a good relationship with UK mainstream radio which is interesting but we’re not really much of a mainstream type of act, we’re more underground. And I think our following so far is a pretty solid underground type of following. But luckily we do get good airplay on the mainstream radio stations like BBC Radio 1, BBC 1Xtra and Capital FM, that kind of thing.
We were experimenting, trying to find our sound. Now the sound is actually coming together and it’s something that has has a more organic nucleus. It’s a more identifiable sound and it’s starting to get known for its unpredictability. We are pleased with the position that we’re in because it gives us a chance to free up rather than trying to see where we fit in in terms of gean.