Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 19/Feb 05:01

DJ Private Ryan hopes Pepper Vine makes chutney-soca history

Ryan “DJ Private Ryan” Alexander hopes history is made with Pepper Vine and soca star Machel Montano wins his first Chutney Soca Monarch crown with a song he co-produced. The popular DJ and producer spoke to Newsday in a face-to-face interview on February 12 about the song, working with Montano as well as future plans and the global path for calypso and soca. If Montano does win on March 1, it will be a great accomplishment for Private Ryan as well as all involved in the project. This is not his first time working with Montano. They collaborated in 2022 on the Touch the Ground single for the Save Soil project. He said there are other project in the works with Montano. Pepper Vine sits atop the Bombay Tea Riddim and features Montano, Lady Lava, Drupatee and Jus Now. The song and Montano’s entry into the competition, 25 years after the celebrated Real Unity single, also with Drupatee, is poetic to Private Ryan. “I know he is up against Rikki Jai so it is two kings. Rikki Jai is a legend but I want to be the winner,” he said. The beat came while Private Ryan was travelling and he was looking to “create a futuristic-sounding, chutney soca-meets-Bollywood kind of vibe with energy.” He and Montano were going through some of his beats to try to figure out what they wanted to do and came upon the Bombay Tea Riddim. “We said, ‘This one is futuristic.’ He had the same idea as I. He said we had to figure out a way to bring it to life. We did not know who to send it to, to write anything on it. It takes a certain type of writing.” He went into the studio with singer/songwriter Mela Caribe and did some work on it. “I said we need something that would encourage movement and then we came up with the ‘loose waist, wuk up yuh spine, rude waist and dutty wine.’ [caption id="attachment_1139682" align="alignnone" width="1024"] DJ Private Ryan believes that the writing in soca and calypso has improved. -[/caption] “We pitched that to Machel as the idea and then he said, ‘Okay, this is perfect.’ Then we started to piece it together.” The team realised it was 25 years since Real Unity and Montano wanted someone who could bring some new energy to the sound. Lady Lava immediately came to Montano’s mind, Private Ryan said. “It was a process. She was travelling and we had to pin her down in Toronto. We had to go to her to get her vocals and piece it together. That is how we got Pepper Vine.” Raymond Ramnarine’s Rags is the other song on that riddim. He met Ramnarine while attending 2024 Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and told him he was working on the beat and he should hear it. Calypso in the new storytelling era Private Ryan, like many others, has realised calypso and its derivative, soca, are in a new era. Calypso and soca were now, “In a sense, a way of telling the stories of the streets of life, of experiences. For some, especially the youth, in terms of the era we are in now, it attracts them because they want to tell their stories.” Artistes like Yung Bredda and others singing calypso and being in tents were evidence of the new era. Soca, too, was changing as some younger people viewed it as “jump and wave” music. “Not every youth wants to portray their story that way. They want to be able to go and perform and spread their art in different ways and write in different ways. Calypso gives them the avenue to do that.” He said there is now also a “real interest” in pan that has put it squarely in the public’s eye. The digital numbers done by Kes’ Cocoa Tea and Yung Bredda’s The Greatest Bend Over illustrated that, with the right moves, writing, sound and marketing, the genres could go far. Both songs topped the US’ iTunes reggae charts. “You have new ways of doing soca which is why you have the Yung Bredda, Cocoa Tea, different types of soca coming to the forefront right now. You have the emergence of the new wave of the sound.” Freetown Collective’s Take me Home and Terri Lyon’s Forward were also examples of the changing sound. [caption id="attachment_1139726" align="alignnone" width="745"] DJ Private Ryan thinks calypso and soca are on the edge of global ascendency.  - Photo by Ayanna Kinsale[/caption] “People are actually partying to calypso right now,” he said. The use of live music and brass instruments in the creation of popular songs again was “good” because it showed that the genres were coming full circle to what the world knows as calypso and soca, he said. While he already works with Lyons – who straddles both soca and calypso – he hopes to work with artistes like Aaron Duncan, Karene Asche and any other talent he finds while visiting this year’s tents. Asked if he would be interested in having his own tent, he said he did not know. “Everything with me is always evolving and going into new spaces and creating my own dynamic. I would not say it is impossible, I think it is just for me to find my right time and moment." Building a new musical Battalion Maintaining this new momentum will require training the youth, he said. “In the next ten-15 years, Machel will be in his 60s and he is not going to be able to be the same Machel that we love.” The time was now to invest in younger musicians and new ideas, he added. When he started his umbrella organisation, Battalion, it was to do exactly that and that was why it was a “collective unit of creative people and expression.” He, too, thinks calypso and soca are on the edge of global ascendency. Once artistes create from their souls, hearts and draw from the inspirations of the past, soca and calypso will go global, he said. “I don’t think it is a situation where we need to force it. We don't need to try too hard to be accepted. Afrobeats and a lot of genres that went global did so organically.” He predicted a “musical renaissance” as soon, most things would be automated. “Because of the atomisation of everything there is going to be a desire for organic material. They can’t replicate feeling and soul.” He was doing his part by focusing on writing. “I am looking at broadening the palate, where it does not water down our music but broadens the horizon of what it can do.” Private Ryan believes that the writing in soca and calypso has improved. He was concerned, at one point, that youth were losing contact with the music. “Coming out of the pandemic, we had no Carnival so there was no celebration with which to associate the music. They started listening to other things and that was where the rise of Afrobeats, R&B and other things came from.” But Carnival 2025 feels different to him and many others. Cocoa Tea, the Full Blown riddim, and some songs got into people’s hearts immediately, he said. “It jumpstarted what is now feeling like a better Carnival.”   The post DJ Private Ryan hopes Pepper Vine makes chutney-soca history appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.