I am SOOOOO happy that I found this group. Is shows that this topic has become important enough for young Bahamians to discuss with passion.
I've been in this fight for many years as a musician and as a Bahamian at heart.
We have sooo many issues to deal with before we can get dis ting on track.
Firstly, we have to bring back the Bahamian pride and not only show it when someone wins a national event. We have to be Bahamians all the time just like the Jamaicans and Bajans and Trinis love themselves. This is another discussion for another time.
However, we need to determine what we really want to call 'our' music. So many of us refer to soca as our music. Maybe this is because this is because we hear so much of it. We even refer to the music by Ronnie Butler and others as Soca.
There is a distinct difference musically and we have failed to educate ourselves to the difference.
I do not believe that we have to be focused on taking our music foreign. WE don't have to be judged by someone else's yard stick. We have 300,000 persons living here with the majority loving our music when it's given to them properly.
Check out 'Burma Road', Look What You Do, Get Involved, Civil Servant, Catch Da Crab etc, etc, etc. Don't the Bahamian public love this music?
So if we get together and market and promote these artists locally and sell to only $100,000 of them at $10 per CD there is $1,000,000.00 floating out there.
So there are some fundamental things that we have to do before we can make a firm difference.
We have to set some cultural boundaries which affect our music, junkanoo, food, dialect etc. and then we'll see da difference.
Will watch for the replies and then I'll post some more.

I went to a popular music store today to pick up some new CD's and was quite disappointed to see that they didn't have anything new for me to pick up this Holiday Season.

I'm hearing all of these Xmas songs by Bahamian artists on Island 102.9FM and want to pick them up for some Bahamian Xmas flavor, but where do I find em? It's as if many of our stores have one measly Bahamian music section with the same CD's that have been there from years ago. Distribution is yet another issue that we have to deal with, internationally and at home.

Out of the 10 Bahamian CD's available at Amazon, 5 of them are unavailable.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=music&field-keywords=Bahamian&search-type=ss&bq=1&store-name=music/ref=xs_ap_l_xgl15/104-1740433-4382365

Hold on, scratch that. I typed in "Bahamas" and got 61 results. Also, if you type in certain artist's names on Amazon.com you can get the CD reference directly, like Ronnie Butler, Joseph Spence and Nita. Its strange that some artists don't show up when you type in "Bahamian" or "Bahamas"

And check out this Bahamen CD. It's $46 on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005Y15I/qid=1134529372/sr=1-36/ref=sr_1_36/104-1740433-4382365?v=glance&s=music

but check this out, they mussee didnt like it!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/offer-listing/B00005Y15I/ref=dp_pb_a//104-7487005-2517545?condition=all

I went to a popular music store today to pick up some new CD's and was quite disappointed to see that they didn't have anything new for me to pick up this Holiday Season.
I'm hearing all of these Xmas songs by Bahamian artists on Island 102.9FM and want to pick them up for some Bahamian Xmas flavor, but where do I find em? It's as if many of our stores have one measly Bahamian music section with the same CD's that have been there from years ago. [B]Distribution is yet another issue that we have to deal with, internationally and at home.



i want to know now where to find spice music... cuz she is carry on badd... all kinda stuff man... this made me think of the many times i've gone on mad hunts for bahamian music and turned up with nothing.... one time i finally found this album by nathaniel saunders out of bimini.... when i took it to the sales lady she didnt even want to sell it to me.... she acted like whe wanted to save me from wasting my money... i tell ya... i'm glad i'm not the only one looking for it tho.... that means there is a demand.... so someone supply!!!! and i looking for those early bahamen albums and some t-connection on cd pleez.... not to mention george symonette dem.... awwwwwwwww and ronnieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

As much as I dont really like calypso as much as you all, I can't stand to hear more reggae. It seems like all they do now is cry about some kind of problems i cant relate to and something about the ghetto another thing that I can't relato to, except (according to our poverty numbers) only 9 percent of our population can trully relate to but probably only listen to for the beat. I probably hate it also because my neighbor's freeloading roomate cant have a day without bombarding the neigborhood with the bass!

I think if we developed from bands like T-Connection (which suprised me that Bahamians can make music like that) Bahamian music of any genre esspecially calypso would have been more different. Like I've said before, artist must make the music attractive and appealing to young people with the latest sounds and equipment. You cant enforce appriciation so asking the government for anything dosent really help.

The thing is we want Bahamian appriciation for Bahamians doing calypso(aka Bahamian Music). Bahamians doing anything else seems sacreligious to the local industry. Luckily Some like Elon Moxey was able to make something catchy....it may not make too much sence (according to young listeners unless it carries somekind of sexual conotation), and someother things like the long line song(i dont know the actual name) was made to be easilly reated with, or for comedy. But what happens when that becomes "old" and fade into the land of "so 5 minutes ago".

I really think its hypocrasy though. In the 1970s and 80s you had people like smokey007 who used to sing disco songs and American songs of the day all the time. He even had the bell bottoms and all. It was hardly translated to anything calypso, yet he was never cruxified for deserting anything and is one of our honored entertainers. So, are not the people who chose to rap and do R&B and lets not leave out the gospel we import every Sunday, doing the same thing? I think its because the new music sends stronger signals that we dont want settling into our present generation. Yes in the 70s and 80s you had a fair share of indegounous, cultural folk music but I dont know if folk is appealing anymore. I just really think that its a dying thing and we should just preserve whats left for some kind of museum or I dare say reservation in a family island. However if there is the demand, thank God for it and just supply it.

You can get most local albums from Stars Records on Soldier Road opposite Nassau Christian Academy. It's actually upstairs of the Beauty Supply Store.

This owner is the largest distributor of local music.

You can get most local albums from Stars Records on Soldier Road opposite Nassau Christian Academy. It's actually upstairs of the Beauty Supply Store.
This owner is the largest distributor of local music.



Does this place have a number? I am in town for a few days and I really love this music... I want to stock up on this.

The phone number for Stars Records is 394-0819.

Enjoy

The phone number for Stars Records is 394-0819.
Enjoy

Thanks.

Yup, because that's what sells.

The thing is, as an artist, are you in it for the money, or for the music/art/culture.

If for the money, I may have something to say to that at a later time.

If for the music/art/culture, read on...

Record some old time Bahamian Music (stuff in the public domain) or some of your original stuff that you have complete rights to. Careful, some of you may not have the complete rights to your own works.

Put your recording / work under a Free (libre) and Copyleft type license.

I suggest looking at the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licenses:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Then upload your songs to The Internet Archive in their Open Source Audio (http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_audio) collection.

They will host it for you for free (gratis)...

If you want to try and earn a bit from it as well, you could also put it on Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/) or check out Jamendo. (http://www.jamendo.com/en/)

If you really want to do it right, I suggest you look into recording it with Ardour (http://ardour.org/) and making the multitrack project files available under the same Free (libre) and copyleft license.

Put the music before the money.

Think outside the box.

all the best,

drew
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/

I seriously wonder about the future of our Bahamian music culture... Is it dieing out?

I think that we all need to play our small role in this much larger project of preserving our history, culture and of course to preserve the topic under discussion OUR BAHAMIAN MUSIC.




So uhmm.. what your ''small role'' is ? Like.. what you doin about it ? Or you just in for da talk ?






Bahamas for Bahamians !!! (just so ya know)

bahamian music did very well worldwide back in the 40s, 50s and 60s. why? because it was well written, better produced and poetic. todays music ain't nothing but simple nursery rhymes. yesterdays bahamian music had change-ups, better hooks, features & solos, and better arrangements,etc. today's bahamian music is too simple, with the same monotonous beat from beginning to end. no change-ups, etc. no real creativity. it's almost as if the artist just slap together a song in 5 minutes with no real development. we have to learn to write and produce better music. right now we are not on par musically with our caribbean musicians. even Haitian music is better than ours. we better learn to produce better music or we'll stay at the bottom.

Bahamas for Bahamians !!! (just so ya know)