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Born to musically inclined parents Rupert & Sonia Cunningham, as Co-founder Ashanti & Bamboo Records it was through his father that Cezars musical journey began. The London based labels produced reggae that was geared towards the West Indian population, and fostering Europes love affair with Jamaican music. It was poring over his extensive record collection as a child that Cezar discovered the sounds of Marley, Tosh, Cliff, Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Armstrong, King Cole, Redding & a myriad of others. This early exposure fueled his own musical inclinations and later formed the basis of the originality, approach & delivery that would set him apart from others in the reggae and dancehall arena.
Interview conducted by: Heike Wollenweber
Peppa Pot: How is your career progressing at the moment?
Cezar: It-s progressing very well at the moment. It is probably the best part of my career so far. I am doing a lot more all over the place and not just limited to Jamaica anymore and just generally I am a lot more active now, writing for other artistes and doing my own productions, getting my song and videos out. It-s great. The best time of my career ever.
Peppa Pot: Who are you currently working with?
Cezar: Right now, management wise I am with Jeremy Harding and Steve Wilson and Jeremy is also the manager for Sean Paul and Steve is his road manager so in my case, they are both my managers and that-s excellent because they are basically working at the highest level of the industry on a day to day basis and they are really helping me to develop as an artiste on a more first world level, on a more international level. In terms of producers I have not really been limiting myself. I have done work with Jeremy who himself as everybody knows is a big producer, too. Then Andrew "Preggs" Thompson, David Kennedy, who is a Grammy winning engineer and producer, then Tony Kelly, Flabba, Birch, Alborosie at Geejam. Too many people to name, a bunch of people and a bunch of different styles.
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| Cezar | Peppa Pot: Do you have any concrete plans for this year?
Cezar: The immediate plan right now is to get the album out. My first album, my debut album and we are right now in the song selection process so we have a lot of songs and it is going to be hard to pick the best however many tracks for the album, because there are so many songs at this stage it could almost be a double album if we wanted it to be. I want it to be a good representation of me as an artiste, my style, so it would be a mix of the dancehall, the reggae and reggae-soul. We are in the song selection now so the album is essentially finished, it is just not finalized in terms of what is going to be on the album.
Peppa Pot: You are often labeled as an "uptown" artiste in Jamaica. How do you feel about that?
Cezar: Being an uptown artiste affects my career in Jamaica because in Jamaica we are building barriers and walls and everybody has a place and a name that they like to give to somebody else. In the grand scheme of thins though I don-t think it affects me that much. I mean, I love my country more than anything else but I have always hoped that my career would get to an international level and outside of Jamaica, the listener and the audience and the people going out and buying the music only care that you come from Jamaica. They don-t care that you come from uptown or downtown. They don-t see any of that and don-t know any of that. Nobody knows outside of Jamaica that Sean is an uptown youth. They just know that he is a Jamaican DJ. They don-t know Bounty is a downtown youth, they know he is a Jamaican DJ. That-s all I am really aiming to be, a solid Jamaican artiste and eventually we will get it and realize that the barriers are only holding us back.
Peppa Pot: Is recognition in Jamaica important to you though?
Cezar: Yes, very important. I was in the States before and I decided to come home because I wanted to see if my own people would appreciate my music even though it is different. It is not the average everyday thing that you go out there and find on the radio and I have been blessed so far that people embrace it same way. I am not on every single stage show because it is going be hard to put Cezar and Movado in the same line up, that is night and day. At the same time, when I am out on the streets, the average everyday person walks up to me to say "Mi love what you do" and that means everything to me, that means more than money to me right now. That just shows that Jamaican people are more open minded and are getting more open minded than they are getting credit for. They are embracing me on every level.
Peppa Pot: I realized that you are not on many stage shows. Is that intentionally so?
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| Cezar | Cezar: I don-t think it is intentionally so but the fact of the matter is that my music is a lot of love influenced songs, maybe there is some dancehall in there but I am a singer in the true sense of the word and a lot of the stage shows right now, they cast along thematic lines if I can put it that way. They have a stage show and it is a bad man thing a gwaan and you know Movado gon be there pon that and you know Vybz gon there pon it and Killa gon be there pon it, the whole Alliance and it is hard to fit artistes that don-t have similar content on the same show. That-s not to say that I haven-t done shows with Bounty and Beenie and everybody but at the same time it is more difficult. When the audience comes in there to listen to a certain type of music it is a bit more difficult, so I tend to do the stage shows that are more eclectic and have a greater mix and you have singers and djs.
Peppa Pot: How do you describe your music?
Cezar: My music is reggae-soul. I call it reggae-soul, which basically means that reggae is at the base of it or Jamaican music is at the base of it because I am Jamaican but my background is very varied. I spent a lot of time in the States and I spent a lot of time in England and there is a definite soul influence to it, some r&b and maybe even a little bit of alternative, if people want to call it that. Email This Q&A Back
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