Trinidad and Tobago watched on proudly as Machel Montano and Marge Blackman performed their new single at the Maha ShivRatri celebrations in India on March 1.
Touch the Ground was done collaboratively between Montano, Blackman and Ryan “DJ Private Ryan” Alexander. It is also a part of the wider Save Soil Movement.
DJ Private Ryan said people can expect songs from a number of regional artistes in support of the movement.
Talking about his involvement in the project, Private Ryan said the movement highlights the global soil crisis.
[caption id="attachment_946550" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Soca superstar Machel Montano performs at the Maha Shiv Raatri show in India on March 1.[/caption]
Montano and yogi Sadhguru were recently on tour in the region to promote Conscious Planet’s Save Soil Movement. Opindia.com says, “Conscious Planet is a Global Movement, launched by Isha Foundation that is led by global spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev that promotes a more conscious attitude to the soil and the planet.”
Private Ryan said he received a call from Montano’s team earlier this year who said it wanted to work with him on a project with Sadhguru.
“They gave me information on the cause. So I watched a video on it and I saw what the grand purpose was and the idea was to unite the Caribbean too and highlight this crisis.”
He got a briefing about the type of song the team wanted to present and then he started to build the riddim from there, he said.
Private Ryan began by building the beat and then began crafting the kind of song he wanted to hear on the riddim. That was when Marge Blackman was approached.
“Marge Blackman then wrote this beautiful song called Touch the Ground which then became the song that was Machel and Marge Blackman.
“To expand on that project, the project is one that is actually going to feature artistes from around the Caribbean. So it is not actually just Marge and Machel. It is going to include artistes from Belize, Guyana, St Vincent, Grenada, Antigua.
“So you are going to see those things being released over time. So you’re going to see artistes like V’ghn, Alison Hinds, Ricardo Drue, Freetown Collective. There are a lot of different people who are going to be on this riddim project which is going to be highlighting this problem that the world is facing if we don’t reverse it.”
[caption id="attachment_946551" align="alignnone" width="800"] DJ PRIVATE RYAN: Conscious Planet is a Global Movement, launched by Isha Foundation that is led by global spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, centre, that promotes a more conscious attitude to the soil and the planet.[/caption]
He is also co-producing the project and Machel is its executive producer. Apart from the Save Soil riddim he has a lot of music that is coming. It is all fusions because it is based on his ability to use his knowledge of music from around the world and then fuse it with soca to make a global sound, he said.
In 2021, despite there not being a Carnival, he developed a lot of projects such as The S
