Radio doh play me!!!

Now don't get it twisted please; just because the picture displays 96.1 doesn't mean that I'm blaming the station because, in the words of the magnificent Mark Anthony, everyone knows that Chinese Laundry is an honourable man. It's just that the majority of people believe that they are mainly responsible for the bullsh*t playing on the airwaves and thus their picture is relevant to my discussion, ya dig? The fact of the matter is, radio can't possibly play every artiste and all the radio play in the world won't satisfy the insatiable appetites of the over-confident with inflated egos who believe that the world's populace needs to hear whatever they fart out. You know we artistes can be that way sometimes.

Nah, this isn't a simple problem really. Frankly, a lot of us aspiring, underground trini artistes do not understand how radio works very well, if at all. When you're casually listening to radio and flipping between a dozen of the 'too much' stations we have, you really don't realise that you're breaking the heart of many a program director. Their job is to ensure that you stay 'locked on' by providing content that you want to hear and most times the safest way to do that is by playing the music of known artistes. Artistes like Beyonce, Rihanna and even our own Machel HD have made themselves into identifiable brands and a terrible song by them will be guaranteed to generate at least some interest with only a "You hear de new Beyonce? It lame eh." response. In contrast, a terrible song by Mr. Noname artiste will probably generate a "What kinda chuppidness dem playing dread! I done with dis station yes!" and yuh out. And the number of listeners influences the main source of revenue for radio stations. This is commonly known as advertisements.

Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that local radio doesn't deserve a good bun down still. Case in point, Chromatics was on 96.7 Red FM (probably my favourite station on the airwaves right now) to engage in a 'debate' [CHECK IT HERE] during the set of Hyper Hopper or Hoppy (or whatever he goes by now) about the issue of upcoming artistes and radio play. One of the points brought forward was that most local artistes do not achieve the lofty standards established by foreign acts and thus the reason they get no 'bligh'. Really? This point stood for like two whole seconds until Chromatics inquired about the assault of a one Soulja Boy and his unique version of musical 'quality' pon local ears when suddenly there was a lot of silence followed by a lot of stammering and stuttering to explain the unfortunate statement.

The fact is, people can only choose from the choices made available to them. If you only play foreign music, saying that people only want to hear foreign music is like dividing one by one to disprove two. And even stranger, movements which counter the prehistoric thinking that people won't accept local music such as the Kiskidee Caravan in the early 90s, the brief rapso mainstream movement with Ataklan, Kindred etc in the late 90s and the all too recent reggae movement do nothing to change the general behaviour of radio djs and their ilk. Well at least we can thank 96.1 for initiating the soca switch which was instrumental in further popularizing soca music with the masses although it probably had something to do with the owner being a soca artiste. What I take from all of it is that radio, like the government, is not reliable to somebody trying to make it and even though they may both provide a helping hand sometimes, the hustle is yours to carry. Face out.