CREATIVE Titans, owned by Guyanese-American music executive Ron André Elvis Telford, is expected to be fully operational in Guyana in January 2023 and has already purchased space for an office and professional studio in Kingston, Georgetown.

It’s surely a welcomed initiative by creatives in the local music industry, especially as Guyana does not have too many professional studios. “We will be creating international-level songs. We want to develop songwriters, producers and other artistes from the country,” Telford related during an interview with Pepperpot Magazine.

The goal of Creative Titans, based in the United States of America, is to find talent from all across the world, including Guyana, and hone such talent to the point that the artist may be able to secure a record or publishing deal.

Its aim is also to create a distribution company to provide a platform for artistes to release their music easily in Guyana, even if they do not get signed by the company.
So far, Telford has been in touch with various digital service platforms to get things like playlists streamlined. “Play listing is the most important part of music streaming because it creates a central location with some of the top songs for whatever music category you’re into. It increases your chances of getting more streams which equate to more money for the artiste,” he explained, adding, “As of now, Guyana doesn’t really exist on the music analytics chart because there’s not much data coming from it due to a lack of copyright.”

As such, the next few months will be spent promoting the importance of copyright. With Guyana’s laws left unchanged for decades, many aspects of it would need to be updated so that the company can be able to operate in an effective manner.

Helping local musicians is something Telford is especially interested in owing to the fact that Guyana is close to his heart. Leaving Guyana at about four years old, he has chosen not to forsake the land of his birth, hence would often travel home. “I have an immense love for Guyana and I see a lot of creatives who have a ceiling as to how far they can go when it comes to being an artist because they don’t have that many resources,” Telford explained. “There are two forms of music which work for the Guyanese audience: Soca and Reggae/Dancehall. But the audience in Guyana isn’t the paying consumer. There are artistes that don’t want to do Soca or dancehall; they can do rock, pop, R&B, all these different genres that may not be number one in the country, but what happens is that they don’t have the resources to get their music out to other markets and that’s where we’ll come along.”

While not promising to save everyone’s career, the company will be there to give persons direction on what they need to do to get to the next level. “Once you have one paying market outside of Guyana, you can potentially be making money for the rest of your life,” Telford pointed out.

He plans to involve other overseas-based Guyanese in the music industry to help with the education process and create a pathway for local artistes. “To see people in Guyana making it to a superstar level and giving them motivational information; to have these young kids understand that there is a way for them to move forward; they don’t have a ceiling in terms of their career,” Telford said.

The company will be looking to train local persons to become specialists in different aspects of the music business in Guyana so that seasoned persons will eventually be on hand to handle things here. “It expands into tourism as well because I’m going to be bringing a lot of international friends into the country. We want to be able to attract artists, producers and writers from across the West Indies and the Caribbean,” Telford shared.

He has had various roles across the music industry since 2008, and the team has been putting emphasis on finding and procuring talent from Guyana, the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America and territories outside of North America.

“Our mission is to go after Guyanese talent, and we do have our eyes set on a few persons, but we will have to first sit down with them,” Telford had told this publication in a previous interview. At the time, his company had the capacity to sign an artist upward of US$5M. “With this capacity, we can go after writers, producers, artistes, from all across the world,” he noted.

Telford had played a key role in putting together Vybz Kartel’s “Watch Over Us”, Koffee’s “Toast”, Jorja Smith’s “Be Honest”, Koffee feat Gunna’s “W” and Ludmilla’s “Verdinha”. He also worked with Kim Frankiewicz, Harri Davies, Tom Desavia, and Jeremy Yohai in closing the deal to bring Walshy Fire (of Major Lazer) to Concord Music Publishing.

Apart from finding Guyanese singers and songwriters, Telford had said he was interested in creating a performing rights organisation in Guyana. He said because the country has no such organisation, it makes it difficult for major companies across the world to come and do business here. It also hinders local artistes from being adequately compensated for their work.