Although he might not say so himself, Loris Holland is kind of a big deal.
Holland certainly is no household name but over the course of a career that has spanned over four decades, the United States-based Guyanese has made his mark, working with a virtual who’s who in the music business, producing milestone albums and even earning himself a number of accolades along the way.
It was Holland’s dream to become a leading international recording artiste. It seems as though he has had to settle for helping to shape the careers of others, working behind the scenes to polish their shine a little brighter for us to enjoy.
The composer, who recently released a video for his COVID-19 influenced song “Six Feet (U Betta Back Up),” has the been the recipient of an Emmy award—three, in fact, by way of the ABC soap opera “All My Children”, for which he was the music composer. He was nominated five times. An arranger, singer, keyboardist and writer, Holland has also won two Grammy awards—for
Deniece Williams’ 1998 album, ‘This is my song,’ and previously for his work on Shirley Caesar’s and Al Green’s duet, ‘Sailin’.
His accomplishments perhaps shouldn’t be too much of a surprise as the New Amsterdam, Berbice native grew up in a musical family in the former British Guiana and his musical life has provided him with experience in different cultures and genres of music, including classical, sacred, reggae, African folk, calypso, jazz, gospel, country, R&B, and rock. He has lived in all three musical centres of the United States—New York, Nashville and Los Angeles—and his range can be attested to by the diversity of his collaborators, who include Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Mariah Carey, Shirley Caesar, Patti LaBelle, Celine Dion, Lauryn Hill, Smokey Robinson, Al Green, Carlos Santana, Maxi Priest, Sister Carol, LL Cool J, George Clinton, The Winans, Sheila E, Michael McDonald, Jonathan Butler, James Ingram, Deniece Williams, Mary J Blige, Anita Baker, Edward Hawkins, Walter Hawkins, Tramaine Hawkins, Marcus Miller, Mutt Lange, R Kelly, Randy Jackson (former American Idol Judge), Billy Ocean, Jeff Buckley, Anthony Hamilton, Rita Ora, the Roots, and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
A prodigious start
Although Born in New Amsterdam, Holland spent the first couple years of his life in Rose Hall, Corentyne, while his father worked as an engineer at the Bookers Sugar Estate. Some years later when his father was transferred to work in Essequibo, the family moved to Bartica.
His mother was a music teacher who ran the Ruby Holland School of Music affiliated with the Royal School of Music and was keen on her children learning music. Because his mother’s school was accredited through the Royal of School of Music, examiners would fly to British Guiana to give exams and grade the students.
The youngest of three children, he grew up hearing his sisters playing the piano. According to the composer, his home always had two pianos, sometimes three. “My home was always filled with music. By day it was The Ruby Holland School of Music, which was my mother’s conservatory. Surrounded by six pianos, and my mother’s vocal students. I was the cranky two-year-old holding on to her dress. By late afternoon when my father the electrical engineer returned from work, we reverted to normal family life. My two older sisters were also enrolled in my mother’s school, and assisted in helping my mother teach the beginners,” he said.
He recalled hearing one of his sisters practicing Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” for several weeks. He was two or three years old, he said, as he recounted climbing up to the piano. He was barely able to see over the top of the instrument. However, he had memorised sound for sound and following that learnt how to play the piece. His parents, he said, were surprised and his mother took even more interest in teaching him music.
The Holland siblings were only supposed to focus on classical music, but he confessed that whenever their mother was out, he would listen to the different genres of music being played on the radio.
“I remember my mother taking me with her to a friend’s home while we were in Bartica. I was about nine at the time. I could hear a band playing nearby, so I went across. They were playing ‘Georgie Girl’, and they didn’t know how to play it. I had learnt the song from the radio. When I got there, they ran me out of the place, but I sneaked around them and started playing the piano. They were amazed,” he said.
Later, when they moved to South Ruimveldt Gardens, he would hear different bands playing in his area and would wander over from time to time to be with them. He later founded his own band here, called Sound Dimension.
Despite his talent, his father convinced him that music should just be a hobby and so Holland was sent off to Canada to study electronics. However, he soon found himself back here after he joined a rock band and used the money for his tuition to buy equipment instead and allowed his student visa to expire. “Now I was sure that my destiny was to be a musician,” he said.
It was through his mother’s school that Holland would eventually secure a place at the Aaron Copeland School of Music in New York. Holland left for the US in 1970. During his time in college, he studied classical music. His ease on the piano as well as his ability to read music well made him a teachers’ pet. Many of the teachers, he said, were tough but his talent and ambition made him quite the favourite and popular at school. He spent lots of his free time practicing in-between class and loved to practice on Stevie Wonder songs. He also taught some of his peers to play the piano.
New Creation
After choosing to become a Christian, Holland started a Christian band called New Creation in 1977. He began writing songs for the band, but then its lead singer, Brenda Davis, got a huge career opportunity and left. The band broke up in 1980.
Holland was next hired as music director for a top Baptist Church. He trained the church choir in vocal techniques. The church, he noted, was known for promoting some of the country’s most prominent gospel singers, one of whom was Shirley Caesar. Holland wrote the song “Peace of God” for her and co-produced her album with Sanchez Harley. Holland’s music career kicked off when he met Harley.
“Sanchez was in New York and heard my band. I was in one studio recording and he was in another studio recording in the building. Then in-between breaks we would visit each other. He was checking me out and I was checking him out. My band was breaking up at the time and Sanchez said why don’t I play for Shirley and my career really started from there,” Holland recalled.
His involvement with Caesar led to him producing for a number of gospel singers, including Tramaine Hawkins and this later led to him meeting Mariah Carey.
“A friend of mine was getting married. I told her I’d do a segue of songs. I got the best singers for our songs. At the end of it, the entire church got up and gave us a round of applause. One of the bride’s cousins was in the congregation. He was one of the background singers for Mariah Carey. He was impressed by our performance. At that time, Mariah’s first album was released, and she needed a choir to perform in the background for her upcoming performance at the Grammy Awards. I knew all the best singers and so I got them together…,” said Holland.
It was around this time, he said, that Carey was dealing with vocal problems and would only get as far as performing three songs before she became hoarse. Following her performance at the Grammy Awards, she was scheduled to do MTV Unplugged, a programme where popular artistes performed acoustic. The Grammy Awards performance was a hit and Tommy Mottola, former CEO of Sony Music and ex-husband of Carey, had approached Holland and asked that he assist in finding some background singers for Carey for MTV Unplugged.
After he found his group of singers, Holland had them practice their vocal training during rehearsals. Carey, he said, was one day across from them when she saw them doing vocal training and walked over. Holland encouraged her to give it a try and told her she needed to do the exercises daily.
Carey, he said, followed through with the vocal exercises which did wonders for her voice. Mottola, grateful for Holland’s help, asked what he could do for him. “I asked for a publishing deal with Sony Music,” said Holland. Mottola followed through and Holland was given a contract with the music company.
Holland later wrote three arrangements for Carey’s ‘Merry Christmas’ album, which featured one of the most popular Christmas hits of all time, “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. He also co-produced the album with writer and producer Walter Afanasieff. Carey’s album became the biggest Christmas album for pop music. Twenty-five years later, the album still remains a hit every Christmas and over the years has sold 50 million records worldwide.
Following his work with Carey, Holland later worked with Lauryn Hill on her landmark ‘Miseducation’ album, which went on to sell 20 million copies.
Holland has also closely worked with American Idol Judge, Randy Jackson as well. When Jackson’s career picked up with the American Idol television show, the two went their separate ways but have remained friends.
Prior to being signed with Sony Music, Holland was signed to Zomba, a South African company. He shared that what led to this was Tramaine Hawkins arriving to sing at the Baptist Church. Her producer, Robert Wright, sat in the congregation, while Holland was upfront as the lead musician. Wright, he said, was influential on his career. Later that day after church, Wright approached Holland to play for Hawkins’s upcoming song. Holland also worked on her album ‘The Search Is Over’. Though a gospel album, one of the singles “Fall Down” became a club hit and was number one on the club charts. Holland explained that he was signed on to Hawkins’s album halfway through the making of it following the death of a producer from terminal cancer. This led to him being hired with A&M Records.
There he began doing work with famous percussionist Bashiri Johnson. They had co-written a piece which Johnson took to Zomba. In awe of it, Zomba asked about the other writer. Holland was soon signed to Zomba, which saw him travelling back and forth to England to produce singers there. Among the singers, he worked with was Ruby Turner, for whom he wrote and produced a song called “It’s Gonna Be Alright”, which became a number one hit in the country.
Tomorrow
Although it was his dream to become a leading international recording artiste, he instead ended up spending most of his time focused on the other areas of music and helping other singers. “I had quite a life, but I was always working it. It was like if I started working on my home but was requested to help somebody else with their home, and then somebody else with their home and so my home was never being completed, until the pandemic came,” said Holland.
While the COVID-19 pandemic seems like a never-ending nightmare, it has also provided inspiration for some. “My wife [Toni] and I went to the supermarket sometime back in April and we were standing in line six feet apart. This woman behind me had on no mask and she kept bumping into me. I turned around and asked her to back up. The woman was annoyed and replied that it was only the flu that was going around. I got angry and my wife said, I should write a song about it and so I took out my phone right there and started recording, ‘It’s better to be six feet apart, than six feet under.’ This led to my song, Six Feet (U Betta Back Up),” shared Holland. After decades, he was finally able to release his second song. His first was “Info Addict”.
The composer is currently working on his first album, titled ‘Tomorrow’. It is a double album and will have 24 songs under ‘Tomorrow AM’ and ‘Tomorrow PM’. The album examines life in the past and the future.
“I’m a proud Guyanese. Everybody knows where I’m from,” said Holland though he recalled earlier on in his career having to point out where Guyana is located as many persons thought he was talking about the African country Ghana. He was often disappointed when those who knew about Guyana only did because of its affiliation with cult leader, Jim Jones.
Though he has never returned to Guyana, Holland said he always longed to return. He shared his craving for star-apple and roti and curry made in Guyana. “There are a lot of things I miss about Guyana, especially curry. My father was a hunter when we lived in Bartica and he and his friends used to bring back labba and they’d divide it between themselves… My mother used to cook that thing,” he reminisced.
Holland had begun teaching music back in college while he was a student. Today he is the owner and founder of X-Music Academy. Holland designs a course and method of study according to each student’s individual goals through which common performance issues are targeted such as projection, passion, pitch, tone, lung capacity, breathing rhythm, diction, and multiple performance and recording techniques. “Singing brings spiritual and emotional fulfillment. Most of us want to sing but hate our voices. I use a method of vocal pedagogy based on decades of experience in producing successful vocal artists, training choirs and general music knowledge,” he explained.
Whether beginners or professionals, students are only accepted following an evaluation. Prior to the pandemic, he taught at his home or at other locations but owing to COVID, all classes are now via Zoom. Holland added that given the current online teaching norm, he would like to provide music classes online to Guyanese via Zoom sometime in the future as long as his students are serious about learning the art of music.
Outside of music, the proud father of eight children and six grandchildren loves to garden but only plants flowers as where he lives in North Texas, planting vegetables is an invitation for coyotes, bobcats, and squirrels to have a feast.
Holland can be followed on his YouTube channel (TimeShadow Music) or via his Facebook page.
