Harding: "You need smart people around you to market the product (music) effectively."
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Germaine Smith, Staff Reporter
RAW TALENT is one of the most important ingredients in making the successful dancehall batter. Mixing in the ingredients of the right rhythms the right lyrics and the proper marketing, the successful dancehall artiste is created and all concerned get a slice of the cake when it rises.
Where does the management team fit in, though? How important is it for a dancehall artiste to have a competent team of professionals around him or her? Isn't talent alone enough to carry an artiste through?
In dancehall's earlier days, the situation with artistes and their managers was rather peculiar. Many managers were only known to follow the artistes around and collect the money at performances. Today, managers and management teams are slowly becoming recognised as being necessary to making a big mark in the dancehall business.
SEAN PAUL'S MAGIC FORMULA
In a lecture in November last year at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, Sean Paul's manager Jeremy Harding insisted that one of the secrets to an artiste's big break overseas lies in the team assembled to represent him or her. The team, he said, was needed for two broad reasons.
"You need smart people around you to market the product (music) effectively," he noted. "Part of Sean's success is because we have assembled a good team around him over the years. People to handle the money, manage his schedules, constantly book flights and hotels and to handle the affairs are important. It was not a perfect team at first, but it is close. The accountants, lawyers, road managers, A&R directors are all important to the success."
This team apparently has worked. They have propelled Sean Paul to rock the Billboard charts and American television and radio networks to the extent that he won a Grammy Award last week.
The team, Harding continued, is not there just to handle the day to day affairs of the artiste but to negotiate on their behalf with international record companies when the time comes.
"Some of these companies do not take the music seriously, while others will try to pull the wool over your eyes," he pointed out. "You need smart people around you to represent you and market your product. You need the good professionals, because there is a lot of trickery in the business. Artistes need a good team around them to handle the business."
IMPORTANCE OF TEAMS
Musician and producer Mickey Bennett is aware of the importance of having these teams and has even started to take steps to address it. He and his associates have formed C-MAD (Caribbean Management and Artiste Development), a company designed to fully prepare artistes and producers for the real world of music business. Through their classes, they teach the principles and skills which are essential to success, both from the artiste and management sides.
Bennett's reason for this move is that not enough emphasis is placed on the team that is supposed to be grooming the artistes before they break big. "We need to look at this thing as a global thing and not just as a Jamaican thing," he said. "We are under the world microscope again, so we need to find the youngsters on the cutting edge, people capable of going out there and representing the music properly. They have to be smart to know what is happening out there."
At least one fast-rising deejay, Predator, recognises the importance of a good management team. Though considered a young artiste, he seems to already understand the benefits of a solid unit around him.
"When you have a conscious manager it's a good thing," he notes. "Certain things don't reach you a' yard and when you go overseas they don't let certain things happen to you. You can relax and know seh they will take care of the hotel booking, the per diem and everyt'ing else about the business."
To him, with the proper team in place, he is not distracted by too many day-to-day activities around him and can focus on the music.
"Writing songs and voicing the tunes is work enough. If you had to do the business as well, that would be extra hard. You need people roun' you to do these things. That's why me give thanks for my management Solid, and Sharon Burke," Predator said.
Another sign that things are changing is the professional approach to the business of successfully managing artistes. In a Sunday Gleaner article published on November 30, 2003, Professor Carolyn Cooper of the UWI, Mona campus, stated that in the near future university plans to implement a degree course in Entertainment and Cultural Enterprise Management. This programme would essentially produce certified dancehall/reggae producers and road managers, based on the programme of study.
Academically, therefore, things are looking up for the business of managing dancehall/reggae artistes. With them seeming to understand the importance of handing their business affairs over to competent people, one can only hope that they will find these people, so that their success will eventually reflect well on Jamaica.
