Kwasi ‘Ace’ Edmondson has not quite forgotten the moment of victory, but he cannot afford to live on it. There are career ambitions to fulfil and he doubts that Soca will be his musical mecca. He is clear about a desired career in music but is uncertain about the route that will take him there.
“The business of music,” here in Guyana disturbs him, he says. Even before the last cheers of an appreciative audience had stopped ringing in his ears, a man stopped the 33-year-old Soca Monarch on the streets of Georgetown and offered to sell him a copy of the winning 2014 Soca tune. He says he simply told the man that the song was already his and went on his way.
Edmondson’s views on copyright are blunt and informed. He says that Guyana will never be able to build strong intellectual and creative industries if we continue to allow our books and our music to be pirated.
“It’s tough to watch your efforts, your talents and your investments go down the drain while people who have nothing to do with what you produce make a great deal of money,” he says. He believes that change is a matter of will and is not indifferent to the fact that the authorities have done nothing, over the years, to tackle piracy.
Edmondson says that at a bare minimum it can cost a local artiste around $60,000 to produce a song. If you choose to do it outside of Guyana the cost can go as high as $250,000. The local costs include studio time, recording, marketing and replicating CDs. Afterwards, you have to be prepared for the likelihood that a ‘pirate,’ either a small time backroom operator or an established businessman can ruin you.
It is, he says, the same ‘dog eat dog’ environment in the world of live performances. The promoters have, on the whole, never really allowed local talent to flourish. The airwaves are dominated by foreign artistes as is the stage at Providence every time there is a big show. The popular international artistes are able to twist local promoters’ hands for millions in performance fees. Edmondson says that when it comes to local artistes it is the promoters who call the shots. “If you ask for $150,000 compared to what they pay the overseas artistes they laugh at you,” he says.
He says there are cases where local artistes are so desperate for exposure on the “big shows” that they perform for nothing. “We cannot expect to build an industry that way,” he says.
Still, the former Richard Ishmael Secondary School student is bent on a creative career. That is much of what he has done for more than half of his life. Music apart, he has had stints in stand-up comedy and has also been involved with The Link Show, Stretched Out Magazine and No Big Ting, apart from having written pieces for Mori J’Von’s Comedy Jam.
What he has discovered up until now is that by and large Guyanese artistes cannot be sustained by their profession once they confine their talents to the land of their birth. There is an emotional satisfaction to be derived from the creative arts in Guyana, but neither theatre nor stage provides the kinds of entrepreneurial openings that creative people seek.
He dwells on the circumstances of local artistes. Their frustrations are magnified by the fact that once they look outside of Guyana they see people enjoying considerable success. Edmondson says he does not believe that a car or a home is an unreasonable expectation for an artiste. For many of them it is unattainable.
He concedes that it is not the easiest thing in the world to find a takeoff point from which Guyana can create genuine business out of its creative industries but believes that Mashramani is as good a place as any to begin. He believes that a permanent, self-sustaining secretariat should be created, “something that goes way beyond the Mash event itself.” He envisages an institution that is fuelled by a succession of creative business initiatives and which, moreover, provides incubator-type support for “up and coming” creative people. As for the business sector he believes that while it has to be left to entrepreneurs to determine how they spend their money, it would do no harm for them to use the images of local artistes on batches of their products. And yes, he thinks that the 2014 Soca Monarch is as good a person as any with whom to start.
He returns to the theme of the foreign artistes who never fail to take centre stage at the National Stadium, conceding, “that’s what the market appears to want” but insisting that it is as much the outlook of the media as consumer tastes that have shaped that market.
Edmondson believes that if Guyana is to create a “genuine tourism product” it must include the creative arts. “What we have at the moment are foreign artistes who come to Guyana, do big shows for big money then leave with the money. They leave nothing behind.”
A great deal has been said in 90 minutes and he responds to the question about migration as an option by suggesting that living and working elsewhere raises “other issues” like having to reinvent his creative self to accommodate the peculiarities of another market. “That has its own difficulties,” he says. Perhaps that is why Guyana’s thoughtful 2014 Soca Monarch is so preoccupied with wanting to see the emergence of an enabling environment in which creativity and attendant entrepreneurship can be realised.
