Scores of young Anguillian song-writers and musicians are being given a chance to develop their talent in these areas of entertainment and are doing very well, given the huge performance they displayed several days ago.
That was when they participated in the 2017 Music Revolution Project Showcase at Italia Restaurant at CuisinArt Golf Resort & Spa on July 21. The event was the second such training and performance delivered by the Anguilla Music Academy in conjunction with the Grammy Museum in the United States. The event attracted a number of persons from the public and private sectors including many young people.
Founder and President of the Academy, Mr. Darius James, originally from the Commonwealth of Dominica, but who made Anguilla his home nine years ago, spoke about the event. “The whole idea is to provide a service to the community and to train the young people in the art of recording, production and engineering,” he told The Anguillian newspaper. “We have a summer programme which was introduced by the Anguilla Music Academy alongside the Grammy Museum. This is the second instalment of the Music Revolution Project as we call it. We did it for one week last year and now for two weeks this year.
“We focussed on song-writing arrangement where the young people had an opportunity to write their own songs. We are still making twenty-five students in last year’s programme and this year twenty-eight this year. We touch all genres of music but for the Anguilla Music Academy Programme, in particular, we are more focussed on song-writing, arrangement and recording – a little of every aspect of the music business.”
Mr. James continued: “I am originally from Dominica and have played music for a long time including working as a musician on a cruise ship for three years. I came here on vacation, liked the environment and stayed here. When I came I realised that there was a growing need to have trained musicians on the island so that led me to establish the Anguilla Music Academy. I have no intentions to leave Anguilla anytime soon.
“The Music Academy is currently located at the former Caribbean Commercial Bank building at West End temporarily. We will shortly be moving into what we think will be a permanent space for us. We are still trying to figure this out and are in the negotiation phases. We are just looking for more real estate so that we can have some additional space to teach our students. We are going to introduce the Grammy Music Museum to Anguilla, and right now we have a small display of that museum which we installed two weeks ago.”
James added: “When I am doing interviews I always give all the praise and glory to God first of all – for knowledge and breath. I also always tell the young people that if they aspire to do anything in life they should put their all into it. I remember when I was growing up I used to look at the Grammy Awards on television. Now, I work alongside the Grammy Awards. It is quite a privilege, but I am very humble so anybody can achieve what he or she wants in life.
“Two weeks ago the students never had the songs they are now performing. It was a lot of work. It was challenging and some of the children are young. It was always challenging for us to deal with young people, but we took on the challenge anyway. For the first instalment of the programme we recorded seven songs and for this year we recorded ten. Next year, who knows, we may record twenty songs.”
Working with Mr. James are Omar Tomlinson and Dennis Warrington, the latter of whom plays with him in the True Intensions Band. Both Tomlinson and Warrington are instructors at the Anguilla Music Academy. James, team also includes a number of persons from the Grammy Museum. “We have twelve or thirteen people here who came from the United States just for the Music Revolution Project,” he acknowledged.
“Where does this put Anguilla?” he was asked.
“It puts Anguilla on the map,” he replied. “We actually had a two-time Grammy winner engineer who was just in our studio mixing the songs written by our students. So it definitely puts us on the map. It’s all part of the project, and part of economic development and getting Anguilla out there in the world of music.”
