KINGSTON, Jamaica – World Music Supervisor for Disney’s The Lion King, Clement Ishmael, is urging Jamaican creatives to be “bold” as they pursue various endeavours that will impact their careers.

“The career choices that you make, you have to make bold ones. You have to step out of your comfort zone and try new things. That’s the only way you’re going to find out whether you can do it or not,” declared Ishmael.

He was the guest speaker at Thursday’s Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport’s Jamaica Creative Career Expo.

Ishmael, a British-born Canadian composer, conductor, musical director and arranger across classical and contemporary genres, explained that while he was happy directing choirs and conducting music in Canada, he felt like he wanted more out of his career. 

He then made the bold decision to move to London in his native United Kingdom to study composition. 

“It was tough, and it was a real hard decision to make, and all my family and friends back home were saying, ‘No don’t go, you are doing fine here.’… But I knew here wasn’t fine. I needed to be better,” Ishmael recounted. 

“What has helped me in my career more than anything else is being bold on the decision making that I have made. I am quite a shy person… Stepping up into the spotlight; that’s tough to do,” he added.

Against that background, he urged local creatives to make those bold decisions for their lives, as well.

“That’s what impacted most on me and my life, and really put me where I am today; this poor kid from Leicester, who just so happened to have a piano where half of the keyboards didn’t work. I have moved step by step by step, and its a journey you do take step by step. You don’t suddenly get to this place. It’s a process and it takes a long time,” he shared.

Ishmael also told the audience that three Jamaicans played a critical role in his life and engrained in him the mantra of being “bold and take on life”.

The individuals, now all deceased, were: Joyce Britton, renowned Jamaican contralto; music professor Denise Nacisse-Mair; and Lenford ‘Len’ Garrison, a historian and community activist who was the founder of Afro-Caribbean Education Resource (ACER) and co-founder of the Black Cultural Archives. 

“If you spoke to the 17-year-old me and said, ‘What do you want to be doing in your career?’, it would not be this,” said Ishmael as reflected on his career.

“My choices have taken me to this moment and now I use the influence of Joyce Britton…. She is right there. Denise Nacisse-Mair, who told me to be prepared in everything you do; Len, who is telling me, you know you can conduct, you can write your own music and present it. These voices are still going around in my head and I feel like I’ve come full circle now because I can do anything,” he shared.

With a new musical, Playboy in the West Indies, which he wrote the music for, Ishmael explained that he would not get to that stage of his career without being bold and having several persons guiding him on the right path.

“All of these things I didn’t think I would have the courage to do without the people who were piloting and pushing me, and the fact that I made difficult decisions at crucial points in my life. I would encourage you all to do the same,” he stated.

In closing his presentation, he ended with his favourite quote, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”.

“So be bold everybody and dream big,” he told the audience.