Singer and songwriter Rudy Grant has taken issue with NCN radio, but more specifically 98.1 fm over the poor exposure his new song “Like Oprah” has been getting. But NCN Music Coordinator Isaiah Chapelle says this is not the case.
“The statement that we are not playing his song enough is not true,” Chapelle told The Scene. “We have lots of Guyanese music playing,” he added in response to a charge by Grant that local music in general suffers from a lack of airplay on NCN radio.
The Guyanese international recording artiste told The Scene on Wednesday that it seemed like “98.1 fm radio wants to kill my song ‘Like Oprah’”.
Grant pointed out that the song is in the soft rock genre and 98.1 plays 60% soft rock music in its daytime programming. “The rest is Pop, Country, Reggae, Soca, Soul, Hip Hop and Oldies,” he said.
Grant said that after he finished the song, he gave copies of the CD to producers and DJs at NCN radio and the DJs started to play it. “But I found that the main music station, which is 98.1, that plays most of the Billboard chart music was just playing the song two times a week,” he said.
Chappelle in response said this was not the case. “That song flooded the airwaves so much,” he added, “that people started asking if that was the only song.”
Grant said he went and spoke to DJ Seegobin, who had stopped playing his song, and the DJ told him he had a problem because the song was in the computer at NCN and he doesn’t play music from the computer he takes in his own CDs. Grant said he reminded the DJ that he had given him a CD.
Grant said that DJ Casual who is on in the mornings, played “Like Oprah” a few times and then stopped. “He started back playing the song when I spoke to him and said that he should not be playing politics with my song,” Grant said. In a frank conversation, Grant said, DJ Casual admitted that he had “neglected the song” and he would be playing it soon.
“I said to DJ Casual if you don’t like the song and if the song is not of standard don’t play it,” Grant said. “I don’t like it when a DJ says he likes a song especially if it’s a Guyanese song and it is as good as any American soft rock song this year and then plays it two times a week or when he feels like it.”
Grant added that for this year, “I don’t think there has been another soft rock song made by a Guyanese artiste much less played on 98.1… If any of the NCN DJs tell me that my song “Like Oprah” is not a well made song and it is not of standard I will pull it from the airwaves.”
Stating that his beef is not with the other stations, Grant said he wanted to thank some of the DJ presenters on the Voice Of Guyana (VOG) for believing in his song and he singled out Langhorne, Oswald Singh, Colin Charles, Andrea Joseph, Michella Abraham Ali, Raymond Cummings, Ms Bose. He also thanked NCN television for supporting the song especially the two main operators Troy and Vandyke.
Grant noted that unlike VOG and Radio Roraima, 98.1 was being touted as ‘the music station’.
Turning to local music in general, which he is passionate about, Grant said, “Guyanese artistes must represent the Guyanese people at all times in all of the music genres on daytime radio if we are to survive.” He pointed out that in five hours some days one might hear just “two Guyanese songs [on 98.1] if you are lucky. But most of the Guyanese people don’t seem to care about what they hear and who they hear from once it sounds good. You cannot ask Guyanese artistes to spend money on recordings to make standard productions and when it’s presented you don’t play it.
“I will always agree with radio stations if they don’t play a song because the quality is bad. I hear songs from Jamaica, America and Trinidad like I am living in those countries. You would be lucky if any of these countries take pity on you even with a good song and play it because you are a Guyanese artiste.”
Asked to comment, Chappelle disputed this saying, that on Radio Roraima from 12:25 hrs to 13:00 hrs Guyanese music is played and on Fridays there is a segment called `Hear Guyanese Sing’ which lasts an hour.
“Saturday night on party time Franklin Langhorne plays a lot of Guyanese music from 21:00 hrs to midnight. Langhorne also plays a lot of Guyanese music during the week. On 98.1 there is a special slot from 7 pm to 7.30 pm just for Guyanese music,” Chappelle said.
He said that it is “our music policy that on 98.1 one Guyanese song must be played every 20 minutes. This is adhered to by all of the announcers.”
However, he added, rarely do we call the name of the song and because of the sound persons may not recognize the song as being Guyanese.
“We don’t have the frequency of new good music from Guyana,” Chappelle said. “My personal opinion is that we should not play music of a substandard level. This is a big problem because we are even on the internet. A lot of the music is not of a good quality but we do play a lot of Guyanese music.”
Meanwhile, harking back to the 60s and 70s, Grant pointed out that back then good Guyanese music was being produced and appreciated here. Nowadays he said, “Guyanese are being fed the music of America, England, Jamaica and Trinidad…” and that is why they love foreign music so much.
“The DJs have always said they would like to get a proper standard product from Guyanese artistes if they want radio exposure, but what they truly mean is that they would like you to stick to the genre that they expect you to be in and that is the Soca and Reggae,” Grant said. “The DJs feel that when they play Soul Hip Hop, Country, Pop, Rock and Soft Rock it must come from the United States or it is no good and it must be on the Billboard top 100 because if any listener calls in and say that the song is no good, the DJ will say that the song is on the charts and it has been certified by how many thousands of copies it has sold to the public.”
He made the analogy that if a child is fed one brand of milk and gets used to it, when its parents tries to introduce a different brand the child just spits it out.
Asked what he expects will happen now, Grant said Guyanese probably will not hear his music on Guyanese radio especially on 98.1 anymore. “But I don’t really care if they play or don’t play my songs any more. It would be Guyana’s loss not mine. When you speak the truth this is what happens and that is why the Guyanese musicians have failed in Guyana and abroad because we don’t care to speak the truth when it’s hurting us.
