It cannot be news to anyone who pays attention to our various news media that a column on one topic can trigger, and will trigger, topics for another column. Just in the past weeks, for instance, after a column I wrote offering some suggestions for young writers of popular music, I heard from three readers who were pleased with my discussing the musical ingredients in Caribbean songs but chided me for not treating the lyrical side of the compositions appearing on our popular music charts in recent years. In writing that earlier column, I had taken care not to overload the potential songwriters, to whom it was aimed, with too much detail at once, but in retrospect I consider the criticism to be fair. Furthermore, one of the readers, my long-time friend Vic Fernandes, a radio guru in his home country of Barbados, is someone I consider as being very au fait with the music business in the Caribbean, so I’m giving some space this week to what I should have included in the previous column.
