Minus $72 million

Four years ago the Artists Coalition sent out a call for musicians to submit non-soca, non-chutney, non-festival local music to us. We received over 1,000 albums in about a week! We now have over 2,000 CDs, recorded in the last five or so years, by mostly young Trinbago artists.

It’s a drop in the bucket of what exists and could exist. Bear in mind this is Trini-rock, reggae, R&B, electronica, jazz, fusion, rapso, and other styles. These 2,000 CDs — most with laid-out covers and notes — have on average six songs. The average cost of doing a song in the studio is $6,000.

Let’s do the math. That’s 2000 CDs with six songs — 12,000 songs by $6,000 a song. That’s $72 million spent by young artists in the last five years on music that basically was never played by our 37 radio stations! That is madness, youth oppression and cultural genocide.

Listening to the best couple hundred of these songs you would be floored by the talent and dedication to craft in them. And this is despite the musicians knowing in their hearts they would never be played on radio. You wonder if this is the same generation that many say is delinquent…