THE ECONOMIC RECESSION is taking a toll on local bands, several of which did not perform at any of the massive shows on Old Year’s Night.
Leading band krosfyah and a number of other groups made no appearances, since most hotels did not hire them and private promoters sought out deejays.
“The only entities which really hire bands on Old Year’s Night are hotels, but they usually hire hotel bands. That’s the situation. If bands understand what’s going on, they would know they have to be on the hotel circuit to get a gig. Mainstream bands don’t really get gigs on Old Year’s Night,” said krosfyah manager Michael “Mikey” Agard.
His view was emphasised by jazz guitarist and arranger Mike Sealy, who said some hotels would prefer to pay a DJ instead of a band. “I have recognized that early o’ clock and that is why I still try to perfect my art,” he pointed out.
“The hotels are not going to pay you and those DJs who would come and work for $400 a night. It’s not going to be financially beneficial for bands.”
Sealy said the “bands had lost it” and attributed this to the heavy concentration of Jamaican music on the airwaves that had forced local bands to work harder for recognition.
Marlon Murrell of Fox Studios also pointed to a lack of electronic media exposure for bands.
“If you [radio stations] are not playing the music of the bands, why would people come out to hear them? A demand must be created.… If the people in the tourism industry do not do the necessary thing to create the demand, tourists would not be checking,” said Murrell.
Agard said the bands’ challenge on Old Year’s Ñight was compounded by private promoters not hiring.
“For local promoters it doesn’t really make economic sense to hire a band. For example, a local promoter can get 1 000 people in a venue at $250 a head with three DJs. Three DJs! So why hire a band?” he asked.
Murrell also noted that hotels, instead of paying $10 000 for a band, would give a deejay $2 000 for a show.
Agard said, however, that for krosfyah, who decided to sit it out last Saturday after returning from a performance in St Kitts, the grim scenarios had been the case for years, and added: “For the last umpteen years, we are always the persons responsible for our Old Year’s Night shows, whether it’s in conjunction with the Boatyard or with Power X Four.”
Kirk Browne of the band Strategy said many clubs chose DJs as “the cheaper but weaker option”. However, he noted that while some DJs were “very good”, they could never replace live performances.
Murrell felt bands had a future as long as there was demand and the band offered good music, but Sealy was not confident that the bands would bounce back because the system did not cater to that kind of musical development.
Sealy said the emergence of the Festival Band at the inception of the Crop-Over Festival was a step in the right direction to create a viable industry “but it evolved into something seasonal”.
Meanwhile, krosfyah, once the island’s top band, is now mainly dependent on shows beyond Barbados. “We mainly depend on foreign shows … but promoters everywhere are crying out and there’s been a noticeable decline in shows all over the Caribbean and Europe,” Agard commented.
