IF there were any time for Guyanese to step up and be heard with messages of encouragement, that time would be now, and the Unity Ambassadors are ensuring that their voices are heard among the joyful noise. Last week, representatives of the Golden Children Project highlighted their plan for creating better earning power and visibility for local artistes.
Now, another enthusiastic group of young people, the Unity Ambassadors, will today launch a song with the aim of transforming the music industry, and ensuring that the interests of artists are properly represented.
Though they have been around for some time, the group has decided to use this time of renewed nationalism to put forth the Unity Project, which will be the first project for the group.
PROMOTING UNITY
Co-founder of Unity Ambassadors, Yerrodin Bowen, who is himself an exceptional spoken-word poet, said that the Unity Project calls together several local artists who contributed to a song that seeks to both bring artistes together and promote unity among them.
Yerrodin and his employer, Halvert George, the brain behind Unity Ambassadors, met with a group of artistes, and asked them several questions including what they thought was wrong with the world, what was the reason for those issues and how they thought it could be solved.
Yerrodin said that the artistes all came up with similar answers like greed and selfishness being the cause for many problems worldwide and the answer to such problems was unity.
Using this as inspiration, the artistes were then asked to place this in the perspective of the music industry.
“Perhaps part of reason why there’s strife within the music industry is because there’s a sense of greed,” Yerrodin posited.
He added: “So we told them, maybe instead of separating ourselves then we can have a better outcome if we come together. The music industry in Guyana is a small pie but we are all clawing for that, so what we wanted to do is make the pie a bit bigger so that everyone could benefit.”
GREATER RECOGNITION
With that in mind, the artistes were sent to write, and came back with a collaborative song which he said has a ‘We are the world’ flair. The song is said to not only be appealing to Guyanese, but is hopefully something that would go far internationally, giving the artists greater recognition for their work.
“We want to see if this song can go outside and create a wider audience for some of the artistes and create more opportunities for them to work and do collaborations locally,” Yerrodin said.
He added that the project will go beyond aiming for recognition, but also seek to bring artistes to work together on projects in the future and create a variety music coming out of the local industry.
The six-minute track, titled ‘Together we can have it all’ will be launched today and all the artistes will appear on various radio stations to promote the song, while lyric videos will be broadcast on television. The song was composed and arranged by Earl Bishop and Christian Sobers and features the vocal talents of several artistes including: Lisa Punch, Kwasi Ace, Calvin Burnett, Gavin Mendonca, Lerone Souvenir, Josephine Mitchell, Anasha Dutchin, Tiffany Bonner, Ryan Samaroo, Christian and Jeremy Sobers, Taylor Jones, Nuriyyih Gerard, Charmaine Blackman and others. Yerrodin will also be providing a spoken word contribution at the beginning of the song.
Yerrodin stated that since the start of the project, the artistes have all become like a little family, proving that the aim of the Unity Project — that of having artistes work together and produce a better quality of music — is indeed one that can be achieved.
