This Week We Feature Young Professional Alton A. Bertie
He had made a career in the music industry and today at the still youthful age of 31 years our Young Professional for the Week Mr Alton A. Bertie is musical director, keyboardist, guitarist, saxophonist, studio engineer, producer and most recently the sample technician for the international soca artist in Trinidad and Tobago Shurwayne Winchester.
Being involved in all aspects of music in the Virgin Islands he has come to defy the odds and the naysayers to prove that there is a music industry that thrives in the Territory and that locals can go places in a big way. “A lot of people say that there isn’t a music industry in the BVI but there is, I am a living example of that,” he said with all confidence, and the evidence to back his statement was no less impressive.
Everything that involves music he has been doing to the extent that today he is at the stage where he is doing it at a corporate level. “Music is not just going out and playing and singing. There is a lot more behind the scenes and I am one of the behind the scenes guys because I mostly do producing and studio work…” said Bertie.
“In this industry I have to handle business stuff all the time, spread sheets, invoices and all of that,” he said.
He attended the BVI High School now the Elmore Stout High School after which at the tender age of 16 years he went straight on to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA where he was a music business major from the beginning. “Those courses entailed regular business things like economics, business financing ...” he said. Bertie graduated in the areas of Film Scoring and Song Writing.
He had returned to these shores and served as a music teacher at the Elmore Stoutt High School before moving on to the international market.
For the past six years he has been one of the very sought after music professionals in Trinidad and Tobago where he now works. “The BVI is my home. Every opportunity I am home, I love my country, I love my people, this is home but we know this is a small community and to expand we have to leave these shores,” he said.
In 2008 Mr Bertie won the soca monarch in Trinidad. He had also received several other awards so numerous that today it is hard to keep track of them. One he recalled was local, for something in the Top 7@7.
Apart from his close ties and working relationship with Winchester he has expanded and has been in demand by other prominent artists including Destra and Bunji Garlin. “And he (Bunji) expressed interest in using me for other projects as well and next year we have even more acts from the Caribbean teaming up with [VI's] Kamau A. Georges who is an excellent songwriter. It’s not just soca, it’s everything… we are targeting reggae acts, we are targeting R&B and hip hop,” he said.
“So it’s basically a global movement based right here in the BVI,” he said.
Alton A. Bertie was born into a family of music especially on the side of his dad. “My father was a musician and I guess I came with it. I had no choice. It was there even before. I was born with it into my genes,” he said. But his love for music took off while in primary school when he was into steel pan playing. “With that I was kind of advanced more than the others even though I didn’t know it – the instructor never one day had to show me the parts as is customary in teaching steel pan music, naturally I had already known them.”
He is quite impressed that he has stuck with his goal for 2014 which was to be more of a businessman. “There is a big business surrounding the music industry and I am trying to focus more on the business side of it because I have spent basically most of my life working on creating music, now it’s time to sell the product.”
“The music industry is a global movement and with the aid of technology it is definitely happening because there are people like myself and Kamau A. Georges who are doing this and it is working whether we are here (in the VI) or all the way in New York, Trinidad, anywhere, its working so there is an industry. It’s just not up front on the local scene,” he said.
The extent of what he had been able to accomplish as a local Caribbean Boy in the music industry has resulted in him recently being invited to be an inspiration to youths at a career fair held in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands (USVI) in November of this year.
When he is not doing music Alton A. Bertie says one can be sure to find him doing something in the area of technology, something he said he is into big time. His icons are persons like Bob Marley, the band Cold Play of UK, Sir Richard Branson and Michael Jackson. “These are people I see have accomplished and I use them as my inspiration.. I am aspiring for great things.”
His advice to youths was, “Be a nerd, yes be a nerd. Nerds are the type of people that long for more and more information that helps them to come as close as possible to whatever is before them. And if we adopt that kind of nerd way we can go very far in life.”
18 Responses to “This Week We Feature Young Professional Alton A. Bertie”
Don't forget mommy and the East End/ Long Look
gang. One Love