Germaine Smith, Staff ReporterAAH, YES. Carnival is here. The country's dancehall party venues gave way to the cymbal-clanging trumpet-blowing super-speed music of calypso and soca fans, as well as the euphoric, drunken revelry that often accompanies this music. The television and cable stations run hours of carnival footage, calypso and soca music videos and the radio stations run blocks of the music.
But while the hype is great for the promoters of the events and for the personal trainers whose clients experience rapid weight loss, the hype and attention seems to have missed the record stores.
According to some major retailers, sales have been flat over the Easter season despite the carnival hype and euphoria that has encapsulated the nation.
With the exception of one music store, it would seem that though soca is being played on radio much more frequently, CD sales remain the same. As a result, the radio attention has not been reflected in the local music charts. Ten years ago, at about this time, Soca Butterfly by Byron Lee and the Dragonaires and Admiral Bailey was soaring close to the top five songs on THE STAR's charts. Now the local charts are dominated by reggae/dancehall numbers.
All the fans' spending it seems, is being pumped into tickets to the soca sessions and in buying alcohol and water to replenish body fluids after sweating from hours of dry humping to soca music.
"They have been selling very rarely. In fact, we don't even get them that often," stated a representative of the Rockers Record Store in downtown Kingston this week. "The records do not come in from the islands again like one time, so we generally don't have much to sell. Differently from that, everybody has the CDs already and don't buy them; you find that they are taking them from their friends. One person just buys and makes copies for the others."
This contradiction has already played out with dancehall music. On May 23 last year, The Sunday Gleaner published a story which explored the situation that despite the hype dancehall was enjoying internationally and the surge in street sessions, CD sales did not reflect the passion of the fans. Derrick Harriott stated then that despite the Billboard rampages of Sean Paul, Elephant Man, Wayne Wonder et al., the hype around the music does not necessarily translate into sales locally. He noted that at the time only oldies CDs were being whisked off the shelves.
However, in 2005, he has a different Carnival song to sing. Of all the music stores contacted islandwide, his was the only one experiencing increased sales of the calypso and soca music. "They have been selling like hot bread since this season," said store clerk Kamesha earlier this week.
RATING
"On a scale of one to 10, I would put our soca sales at about seven. Some people have even called in and ordered the tunes before we get them, so as they get here they are gone. If we get a set Monday, by Tuesday they are gone or most of them are gone."
The buyers, she noted, were older folk looking to boogie down and lose weight. "We mostly have older folks buying them, like people 27 and up. These people work out to the tunes at their socarobics sessions." Favourites were oldies from Fab Five and modern socarobics music by Byron Lee and the Dragonaires.
This store's bright outlook is starkly different from that of Disc and Dat Record Store in Ocho Rios, St. Ann, as well as several other stores who were contacted this week. Sales representative at Disc an Dat, Fiona, stated that sales during the season were just as flat as before it started. ""The people who come to buy are more into reggae and not calypso or soca music. They are mostly white tourists who are looking for music to carry back to their country."
Pressed about why the hype does not translate into figures, Fiona stated that Jamaicans do not yet embrace the music forms enough to spend their money on CDs.
"We are a reggae people, I think, so they will listen it but not buy as much music," she explained.
Patrice Thorpe of Record Plaza in Tropical Plaza, Half-Way Tree, noted that foreigners are their biggest buyers of soca and calypso music. "It is people who come from other countries who are buying them, rather than our people... When they come here and are going to leave they come for them to buy."
