Local musician making waves and breaking boundaries

In this new decade when one thinks of music in Guyana, Drew Thoven is the name that comes mind. Making waves and breaking down barriers, he has managed to put Guyana on the international arena and has been making hit after hit. Known as one of the youngest and most talented producers in the country, Drew Thoven has worked along with some of the biggest names in the Caribbean music industry, writing and producing timeless pieces of art through music. The producer, composer, singer and songwriter told the Buzz that he grew up in the church and was always surrounded by music. At a tender age he stated he had already known how to play at least seven different instruments. The young artist stated that while he loves what he does, he wanted to do more with his talents to expand Guyana’s music industry hence he began testing the waters with dancehall music in Guyana, producing, writing and featuring on hit songs like ‘Eggball’, ‘Hardball’ and ‘Dunce Thugs’ with many Guyanese Artistes.

“I felt like I was writing everybody else’s story and I felt like I wanted to also express myself. When you write songs in the perspective of a woman for a female artist and then you write songs in different people telling different stories it kind of is a conflict because at some point you want to write stuff that pertains to you and I have been working on my vocals for two years trying to find styles of music,” Drew Thoven told the Buzz. He added, “When Trinidad started taking over the dancehall scene with their version of dancehall which is called ‘TriniBad’ I think that is when I felt like this was my opportunity to do Guyanese dancehall,” he said. However, the musician, who describes himself as an introvert disclosed that he was only planning on writing and producing a few songs. Nevertheless with the encouragement of a few other artistes like Gully Ras and cKush, along with his mentor Kerwin Bollers, Drew released a few songs which are today still topping the charts in the Guyanese music industry. One of his first hits ‘Eggball’ raked in over 400,000 views on YouTube. “I think that song kind of paved the way for local Guyanese music that song is the made the way for other Guyanese fellow young artistes to put out their music with confidence,” he said adding: “From the time that song started, it was getting traction from New York, Atlanta, Europe and the Uk, even Beijing our song was played I feel like a lot of young artistes got the confidence to put out their music.”

He further added, “Other people start putting put music and finally in Guyana you have a collection of different artistes and different sounds that can be played and mixed with international artistes.” When asked what can be expected for the New Year, Drew said that Guyanese can look for the music videos of the some of his biggest and trending hit songs of 2020.
“I want to make sure that the video represents the song well and that the video represents Guyana, the many other regions and territories [and that] the song is a very good example of Guyanese culture and so I need to make sure that the video does it justice,” he said.