Establishing rapport with his large audience, coordinating hand waves, encouraging the pair of hornsmen to 'take it', talking about his history in and approach to music and laughing at his own dance moves in progress, Gavinchi Brown looked the part of a seasoned - though young - performer on Saturday night.
Not only was Gavinchi launching his debut album, Release Di Truth ... Volume One, at the Jonkanoo Lounge, Wyndham hotel, New Kingston, but he later told The Gleaner that it was his first extended performance in Jamaica.
Among the tracks he performed, coordinating with the band which included a trio of harmony singers who at times synced in movement as they did in voice, were We Deh Ya, A Million (along with Edi Fitzroy),War (without Luciano and Krayzie Bone, who are featured on the record), the title track and the intro to the 21-track CD, Rockfort Rock.
While the audience showed appreciation for all the tracks, the youngsters in the mixed-age audience especially appreciated Don't Tell Me, Chevaughn Clayton coming onstage for the combination. And Gavinchi sat on the edge of the stage to sing Burning Spear's Jah No Dead, before standing to do his own Jah Love.
He even took a shot at singing the R&B of Grover Washington Jr's Just The Two Of Us.
Linked albums
Release Di Truth ... Volume One is the first album Gavinchi has released, but not the first he has done. There is, however, a link between the unreleased projects in Dry 4 Me, which features LaToya Hall and Noel Wills Jr. It was the last song he recorded for the initial album in the middle years of the last decade - and one of two to make the set launched on Saturday night. The other is Really Sorry (Kerry).
He was recording gradually as, "If I had done it over three months or four months, there is no way I could afford the production cost. We just take we time. You find that the tours and the shows, it help support the thing. Every dollar me make is reinvested in me thing."
But the overseas shows, which Brown started doing in November 2006 with a promotional slot at the Renaissance Hotel, Hollywood, California, also changed Gavinchi's musical perspective and led to the scrapping of what would have been his debut album.
"When me do the first show abroad, I see the response and I see how powerful it is. We scrap the original album," he said.
The last song he recorded for Release Di Truth ... Volume One is the first on the CD - Rockfort Rock (Di Intro).
An extensive list of Gavinchi's music activities over the past five years was included in the press kit handed out at Saturday's launch and accounted for his 'seasoned' showing on Saturday night. There were numerous entries for the United States, including a series of shows and interviews in California between December 9, 2010, and January 16, 2011. Between October 5 and December 5 last year he was very active in Hawaii and in late 2009 Gavinchi was in Germany and the Czech Republic. There are also entries for Montreal and Ottawa in Canada.
Work paying off
The dates listed for Jamaica are sparse - Limelight, Half-Way Tree, in May 2007 and an East Kingston Kiwanis show in March 2009.
Gavinchi laughed as he told The Gleaner that "is not a foreign mind thing". He pointed out, though, that, "Some of the people abroad, them more receptive to the one drop thing we doing ... . Wherever you work and you sow the seed and you work at it every day, you going to get growth. It just happen that way."
Having worked on his debut album over some years, Gavinchi says Volume II of Release the Truth will be released in November.
"You find that after you go somewhere two, three times with the same set, you have to come with something new. So from now, everything will be once a year," he said.
There is also a book in the pipeline, as Gavinchi says he wants to put his approach to his musical development on record.
"Everything we do so far, we have been documenting it. We want to show it to people," he said. Plus, he says, "I never develop it myself. I learn from people."
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