Collaborative effort leads to victory

A combination of teamwork and the ability to step aside and recognise someone else’s talent, along with one’s own creativity in composing music, are the three main ingredients that enabled Composer and Writer, Darin Holder, to beat 64 other participants to win the jingle competition that will be used to market CARIFESTA 13.

 

 Speaking at a press conference to announce the winner of the jingle competition recently at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre (LESC), Holder said that he usually does not enter competitions, however, his wife persuaded him to enter after hearing about the competition.

 

He said that he has been involved with music since he was a teenage and had entered the “Richard Stoute Teen Talent” Competition. He has also already written jingles for a number of organisations across this island.

 

“I have been writing and producing jingles for over ten years. I have been involved in the music industry since 1982 when I won the Richard Stoute Teen Talent Competition. I have done jingles for the Barbados Public Workers Credit Union, Sunpower, and numerous other companies around this island.”

 

One of the things that he kept in mind after he decided to enter the competition was to heed the advice of Calypsonian, Stedson “Red Plastic Bag” Wiltshire, who told him that the one of the keys to winning a competition is to always adhere to the criteria.

 

 “So I read the criteria; Red Plastic Bag always told me the key to winning competitions is to follow the criteria – so I followed the criteria carefully. I worked with numerous producers over the course of my jingle career and over the last year I have been working with “Dwaingerous” and we have been producing some good work together, so I decided to do the jingle with Dwaingerous”.

 

From this point, he would have designed a melody and then collaborated with Dwaingerous to perfect it.

 

“My process for creating jingles is – a melody first, so I got to come up with a catchy melody. All of them – any jingle that I write – is always done in very rough stages, so I will have them in my phone. I did that and I sent it to Dwaingerous who put down a really nice music bed.”

 

When he got together with Dwaingerous and sang the song, he decided that it would be better if a young and up-and-coming artiste were to sing it; and that is when Dwaingerous recommended Joaquin Brewster, who came to the studio at 11 pm in the night, as Holder finished the jingle in the same week as the deadline.

 

Holder appreciated the humility and respect that the young man showed him as well as his determination to reach perfection and when Brewster was finished, Dwaingerous mixed it in with the rest of the song “and the rest is history,” said the Composer to applause.