When American diva, Natalie Cole, some weeks ago, lambasted the American music industry at the St Lucia Jazz Festival, one could be forgiven for thinking that hers was an isolated perspective of the music industry.

But for the same reason that Cole chided the industry, an Anguillan organisation, in which Jamaica's Stephen Cat Coore of Third World is a key player, has recently come into operation. This newly formed company in which another Jamaican, Colin Leslie, is also involved and comprising three Americans with years of experience in the business, is called Anguilla Music Production and Publishing (AMPP). With blessings from the Anguillan government, the outfit, which has in the pipeline plans to construct a recording studio in Little Harbour, on the southern shore of the country, has as its primary investor, the National Bank of Anguilla.

"Right now, the record industry is in shambles, in the US, in the UK," declared Allen Newman, president of AMPP. Pretty much along the same line of reasoning Natalie Cole gave in a rap session with journalists after her St Lucia performance, Newman, who is from New York, added: "I think that it (the music industry ) needs to be rebuilt from scratch."
His comments came during an exclusive interview with the Observer over the weekend, when he, along with other members of AMPP, was in Jamaica to meet with some stakeholders of the local music industry.

"It (the industry) forgets its priorities," he continues, "the record industry ended up hiring lawyers and accountants....To put it into a nutshell, they turned it into a business, instead of an art form. And what we are trying to do is bring back the art form. What we're really trying to bring back is the old values of the music industry before it was destroyed by accountants and lawyers."

One of the founders of MTV, Newman speaks with intimate knowledge when he says that modern technology has been used to destroy the true essence of what music is supposed to be. Interestingly, his newly formed organisation is highlighting to a great extent what some local music admirers and musicians have been complaining about since the introduction of digital/ computerised technology.

"Y'know, you can take things with today's technology and make them clinically perfect," Newman said, before asking rhetorically, "Do we want to do that? No. We want to do things like they were done 40 years ago, where you throw amazing musicians in a studio with an amazing vocalist and you do a recording. And you don't overdub it to death, and you don't pitch it to death and you don't Pro Tool it to death, and make it so clinically clean that it hurts your ears."
The former television director/producer, who also had a three-year stint with Polygram, emphatically dismisses the long-established approach of music as more business than art form.

"No," he insisted, "It turned into a business because everybody understood how much money they can make out of it. And the record companies, through technology, kept getting cheques and the perks. They were doing very well, they were making vinyl and everything was really fine, then all of a sudden, Sony came out with CDs, okay. Now all of a sudden, everything they ever sold, they can resell again. It turned into a money machine and the greed got ahead of it."

Continuing, he said: "The artistes worked very hard and many of them benefited from the big machine that existed. Let's face it, there are artistes that did very well through the '80s and '70s and the '60s. They did excellent. I'm not saying that it wasn't good for the artistes, but as it got bigger, the artiste started to take a back seat. And it became more business, how much can we make."

The president of AMPP pointed to former years when artistes were being developed by major labels. "Look at the old days. We used to have the opportunity to develop artistes over the course of say three to five records. It was called A&R, Artiste and Repertoire. And there was the opportunity for an artiste to grow. You weren't just going to wait for them to make a hit, and if they couldn't make another hit, they are done. There is no more development in the music in the music industry and that's where the problem is."

This view was supported by AMPP's vice president for Intellectual Properties, Mike Millius. "The priorities have gotten so reversed because they started making so much money that the guy who is running the business part of it started to take himself a little too seriously. Music is an artiste-driven art. And the business facilitated the realisation of that art to be distributed to the world. But the priorities got reversed. And they said ok, it's all about business now.....what we (at AMPP) are doing now, we're completely reversing that. We're artiste-driven, we're producing records," he explained.
Why the focus on the Caribbean?

"The Caribbean is one of the last authentic places on planet Earth where music is being made," said Millius, also a New Yorker. "We intend to attract people from all over the world that share our vision, that want to really bring it back to the basics of really making music again. People who are not looking to say, 'you know what, I'm not going to sign you guys unless you hand me US$5 billion for my first record'.

That's not going to be our case. We'll work with artiste, we will nurture them, we will spend time with them, we'll get them out there, we'll help develop them if it makes sense for both parties involved. Just the way they used to do it. It's such an old theory...the way they did with Ray Charles. We are not inventing anything new. All we are saying is, this is what went wrong, lets strip it back and start from where it was correct."

The real issue therefore, is not that they are saying that there is no business component to the music industry, but that theirs is a wholistic approach to the process of developing and marketing an artiste. "We are looking at the entire life cycle of music. And its a very important aspect of the business that we do need to be able to self-sustain.... because there is a music business that needs to be administered.

But you need to look at the big picture. Because if we're going to spend time, and we are developing artistes and not throwing them out at the end of their first record because it didn't sell a hundred thousand copies, didn't go platinum right away, we want to take that artiste to his second and third record. Our business is nurturing music from its inception through to its maturity," the company's vice-president of production, Mitch Maketansky who is from New Jersey, told the Observer.

Anguillan-born Davon Carty, the CEO, further explained the philosophy and mandate of his organisation. "The foundation of AMPP really is a love of music, a respect of music, a respect of the artistes, and a recognition that there is a sort of slippage in the whole heritage of music. Where it came from and where it is going.

And the belief that somewhere along the way, you lose the principles that really keep the art of music moving forward, which would be respect for the art and respect for the artistes. And the whole idea was to put together a team of people who felt the same way that I felt about it, and look at the business of music and develop a whole company and concept that could foster that belief. In doing so, eventually we'll be able to increase the viability of the whole music product in the Caribbean and around the world. To do that, I think you have to understand what's right and what's wrong in the whole concept of the music industry in the Caribbean and in the wider world.

"And what we've come across is the need for a company that knows how to work the whole product of music in terms of the administration of intellectual properties. In terms of having enough knowledge and respect for where music comes from. So that when you go to the table with something it is representative of the artiste and the art. And we've been putting together this company (AMPP) for two-and-a-half years and we've come up with this really terrific entity."

Carty, who studied in Jamaica, also spoke about the involvement of Cat Coore, who was off the island, as well as the projects AMPP is currently engaged in. "And in the early stages of the whole game, we had Stephen Cat Coore of Third World, who sat down with me and really jumped on board and is a key member in putting the whole initial phases of the concept together. We produced Stephen Coore's solo effort that is going to be released later in this year. We have very close ties to Benjy Myaz, these are like the core musicians in Jamaica. That album was produced at Mikey Bennett Studio and we also have close links with that camp. And we've done another project that we're just coming out of. We just finished mastering a couple of days ago."

And the experienced Jamaican music marketing consultant Colin Leslie sees his role as a facilitator. "I've always seen myself as a facilitator, that's my main thing. Because I've worked in the industry for almost 40 years, you know my links. Bob Marley, Chris Blackwell, Toots, everybody really. I thought I could bring something to the board. Because this is going to be something different, and because of my links in the region.....I figure that in terms of marketing this new service, this concept, I can be very viable in spreading the word. I'm prepared to do that and I offer my service to do that. And, of course, being based in Jamaica with the impact of reggae music on global culture, it's a good place to be in."

Endorsement also came from another local expert in music promotion and marketing, Maxine Stowe. "It's a new millenium (Ethiopian Millenium begins, September 11, 2007). I think AMPP will provide a fresh energy and perspective to the music. I'm working with Third World, and now by association, Cat Coore. So I'll be working with AMPP on Cat's album and will be discussing with them what is potentially possible with Third World."

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World