Come next Friday night at Club Rio, Trinity Promotion S E and High Rollas Production will celebrate the first anniversary of Frass Friday with performances from artistes of the Frass Friday Squad and a featured guest artiste from Jamaica, Linky First, also known as ‘Mr Rock and Come In’ after his song.
Frass Friday was founded last November as an avenue to promote up and coming Guyanese artistes. The platform is open to all Guyanese artistes performing in any genre to rehearse along with their peers. Over the last year, a total of 200 artistes registered with the group.
Those who are considered ready to make their own music are allowed to join the Frass Squad. On the last Friday of every month, a selected set of members from the squad go head to head in the Frass Squad Competition.
“This is a live entertainment platform. You come with your tracks or rhythm and you put in your rhythm and play, and you sing on it. We can also provide those rhythms. We have original rhythms built by Guyanese producers,” HipHop artiste Kevin ‘Da Prodigy’ Scott shared.
“All Frass Friday meetings are streamed live on Facebook and all songs that go through live are originals. But if somebody comes and they want to do a cover we give them that opportunity to see what they can do but that doesn’t go live. When we go live, we have people from China, Ghana and other African countries, …from the Caribbean, North and South America that are commenting.
“One of the biggest Jamaican artistes right now who has been trending number one for four months and the singer of ‘Clarks Pon Foot’, Jahvillani is actually an artiste from Frass Friday. His song was endorsed by the Clarks Company itself. We did a lot of work with him before he became who he is today. So, when we focusing on you it’s all man in the camp focusing on you. When it’s your time for your track to play and for you to sing, everybody has to relax and let you have your time. We work as a team in helping [all artistes] find the [best version of themselves].”
On average, 70 artistes show up every Friday evening to work on their music. They are all part of what is called Frass Friday Camp. Together they work with mentors in the music business and each other on their vocals, their vocabulary, how to deliver their music, write their music and whatever else is needed to prepare them for the recording of their music.
The Frass team said that doing this is important as they want the persons who are part of Frass Friday to be the best they possibly can. If they were to not follow the rules they would have laid out and go ahead and record artistes because they were only concerned with making money, persons who record before they are ready can easily end in failure. And according to one mentor, failure at an early stage in someone’s music career can cause them to crumble and quit on making their dreams a reality.
When asked whether they think what they are doing will make these up and coming artistes a threat to their careers in music, the men laughed and agreed that indeed this will happen and is happening already but added that they love doing this and helping others who need their assistance achieve their dreams.
One artiste Esan Paul said that without competitors they have no reason to go on and it is such competition that motivates them to elevate themselves.
It was noted that being a part of Frass Friday takes discipline and because of these guidelines they have lost persons who signed up to be a part of the initiative. The rules are not that difficult. One of the main challenges of the group is having to deal with artistes who are under the influence of alcohol or marijuana. The Frass Friday team does not prevent members from using what they choose to but warn them that they should be in control of whatever they choose to indulge in and always have a mind of clarity when attending Frass Friday meetings.
“Guyana right now is a public spectacle for talent, but a lot of people don’t know this because the information [is] filtered and rumours get out there and people hear their own things about us,” Da Prodigy said. “People consider us the lower class of people because we trudge from the ghetto or are from broken environments where we all witnessed various things that we could have allowed to result in negative outcomes, but we are different from the environment we grow in so what we’re basically doing is trying to find constructive things to keep the youths within the ghetto more positively occupied and focused. We also have the Youths Are the Future Foundation programme we’re doing.”
This foundation is designed to help youths from the less fortunate communities. Founded last September, the foundation has been preparing children for the National Grade Six Assessment by offering classes in Mathematics, Language, Science and Social Studies. The group collaborates with various ministries and private businesses to provide the necessary resources. All teachers on the programme are qualified and included at one time the well-known ‘Sir Mars’.
The venue for the classes is 144 Queen Street, South Cummingsburg and rent for the building is funded through the Frass Friday monthly competitions. The Frass Friday community also donate to this cause whenever they show up for meetings. These lessons attract a total of 40 children every afternoon and are free of cost. In addition to this, persons within the community try to make snacks for the children since many of them go home to no dinners.
Da Prodigy is a published and registered publisher of the Performing Rights Society (PRS) in Europe and therefore means that any content that is put out by him is automatically copyrighted through PRS. High Rollas is located at 392 North East La Penitence.
Da Prodigy offers a package for persons wanting to record their music of $20,000 a month that covers four recorded mixed and mastered tracks. This price includes four recording sessions as well.
Frass Friday meetings are held at Sister P’s Ital Shop in Tiger Bay where the CEO of Trinity Promotions Jahmai ‘Jahmie’ Charles is the chef. The mention of Tiger Bay brought up the stigma of the community being notorious for crimes but according to Prodigy since Frass Friday began last November, there have been no reported cases of robbery in the area. The team holds out that the people are of a “brotherhood” and look out for each other.
Many of the singers who go to these meetings travel from as far as Linden and other communities outside of Georgetown. Together they sing, eat and work on each individual progressing and at the end of each meeting they take care that their Frass Friday members get home safely.
The men shared of stories of persons who having visited the Tiger Bay community were surprised at the hospitality received and on more than one occasion indicated that they wanted to live among them. The meetings start at 5 pm and go until the wee hours of Saturday morning.
Next Saturday following Frass Friday’s anniversary event, the team is scheduled to open for DJ Garwin’s birthday bash and the launch of his FBS Entertainment at the National Park tarmac. Also, six Frass Friday Guyanese artistes are expected to perform at a cultural event in Jamaica slated for March 9, 2020. These selected persons need sponsorship to get to and from the Caribbean country. A collection of these artistes, their names and photos, and contents of their music will be released at a later date for sponsors to have an idea of who and what is being sponsored in representation of Guyana.
Frass Friday birthday celebration begins at 9 pm but doors will be open from 8 pm. Entry to the show costs $1,500 before midnight.
