A red and white, inflatable robot. You’ve Been Warned!

Rhiannon Jones talks to Carvedeya

A young boy of four stands hesitantly in a music store, he carefully turns on the keyboard and begins to play. The owner hears the music, turns and seems surprised to see how young the boy is intently playing. The boy’s face is furrowed in concentration; his dark eyes following his hands across the cold keys. The man smiles and says, ‘I’m going see you on TV some day...’ Right now this could be an anonymous tale, but Carvadeya is determined to turn this memory into a piece of history: the spark to the explosion of his music career.


And the image or sound-scape for Carvadeya’s music is as arresting and ambitious as the songs themselves, describing his latest dance floor anthem ‘She Loves Me’ Carvadeya says:


‘That would look like a big, inflatable robot on your typical animated summers day with bright green grass, clouds big stereotypical, the epitome of animated clouds. This huge 20 ft inflatable robot, it’s quite big and quite hard but at the same time it’s light and it’s just running along towards the camera, and it’s red and white.’


This picture perfectly captures the exuberance of Carvadeya’s music, the softness of pop mixed with harder rap and electronic sounds all rather tongue in cheek. He’s embracing the pop label, as can be seen when describing his music,


‘It’s just pop really, people might say it’s urban and all that but at the end of the day its pop music… stuff that a lot of people would like – hopefully. Well that’s the idea isn’t it, yeah popular I think you’d call 50 Cent pop. Nice melodic music.’


Carvedeya (Jamal Hadaway) sits comfortably in his black cap and retro Nike high-tops. The obvious place to begin seems to be the meaning of his name, and it seems he’s been asked this a lot.


‘It has no meaning – I was at my old job sitting in front of the computer and it just came into my head and I Googled it and nothing came up, so if you Google that name all you get is pages of me.’


Having come to England, at the age of seven, from the sun drenched islands of Trinidad, has this affected his music?


‘Subliminally probably cus of where I’m from and stuff, the home of Calypso – the home of the steel drum - don’t let Jamaicans tell you otherwise. Yeah I suppose it has, and what my parents were listening to influenced me a lot, it sounds weird but when my mum used to drive me to school, that time when I was in the car and she was playing music that had a real affect on me, I still know all those cheesy love ballads off by heart, and they still hold a place in my heart.’


Carvadeya has very diverse influences: Bach, Milli Vanilli and John Cage, I ask him to elaborate on this interesting mix…


‘Those are the extremes – Milli Vanilli being really pop, John Cage being really… abstract and all in between as long as it’s good really.’


It seems he has turned somewhat from his classically trained youth and I wonder what sparked this.


‘I just like beats really, rhythm, although you can get that orchestrally I like electronic sounds. I still play I still compose I’ve not ditched it and if it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t be able to make and write the pop music that I do, so I still use it all the time.’


As an executive producer on a community music project Carvadeya was selected to go to America There he got the chance to work with Karl Heilbron and the Dungeon family. So how was this experience and did it affect his music?


‘I’ll tell you a weird thing about that – it changed my views on a lot of their music. I never was a big fan of Crunk they always use the same claps, I didn’t really understand it. And we got off the plane at Atlanta and we got a taxi in this quite typical American taxi in Atlanta and when we were going down through downtown, one of Ludacris’ tunes came on, one that I usually hate. I was looking out the window and it was playing and the window was down and you know you can get a feel for a city… looking out at the streets and stuff and it kind of made sense, it was really weird you look around at society and how they are and the size of their streets and the feel in the air and the climate and the people and the fact that that music came out of their made sense to me and I ended up liking it.’


Carvedeya, can sometimes be seen wearing experimental eye makeup and I wonder how he would describe his image.


‘I don’t know it fluctuates like my mood, it’s different all the time sometimes I dress quite flamboyantly other times I dress really normal – it fluctuates with my mood.’


I question whether this is like his eclectic music…


‘Yeah fully it’s like most things in my life actually, here and there and all over the place, yeah.’


And is his song making process rigid in contrast to his general attitude to life or does it just happen?


‘I sit down at the piano and I play and I play and just randomly, play a chord, play a chord and then I play something and it’ll catch. And I’ll think that’s nice change and from that change I’ll work out another change. And because I make pop music a lot of my chords result – the cadences are quite obvious. I’m starting writing with someone recently and that’s kind of changing because she’s a jazz pianist and jazz goes all over the shop. So that’s good. So usually I do that and while I’m playing it just happens it just comes I just start singing and it just comes out, so there you go. I can’t really explain it just happens – the magic!’


Carvadeya also works in a duo Inspector Sands and I put to him why he has chosen to also work alone…


‘My manager I think, cus I’ve always been working with other people and I love working with people. I started working with this guy Olos. And I’ve always kind of done the other thing and I played the she loves me song to my manager after I did it with Jeeday and he really liked it and he said let’s do something with it and I said ok. So there it is?’


It seems Carvadeya is making waves in the music industry and I put to him what his advice would be for someone just starting out – his reply is modest and thoughtful.


‘I’m not sure if I’m qualified to speak on that subject yet. But probably get a good manger cus they can just knock open doors just from affiliations. I think if you’re affiliated with people it helps a lot. Especially the press and stuff if you have any journalist friends keep in touch with them and just be yourself I suppose. I don’t think I can properly answer that question cus I’m in the process of finding out myself’


When I ask Carvadeya where he ideally sees himself in the future the unequivocal answer is ‘Massively huge’ I’m intrigued by this and question him further on the notion of fame and what it means to him, ‘Recognition. That’s deep read into that one, fame means recognition. I want recognition I think yeah.’ It seems he wants the whole shebang including the stadiums, ‘Oh yeah, I think any musician that says they don’t want to be would be lying. I would want to be, yeah.’


Carvadeya brings a new mix – fresh infectious pop tunes flavoured with the sunshine of Trinidad and the darker edge of electronica and rap. He has an interesting blend of contrasts and conflicts - a name which has no meaning, a classical background that has merged into pop, and a genuine modesty mixed with the desire to be huge. And I say why not - I think we could do with an inflatable robot on the music scene.


Carvadeya’s new single ‘She Loves Me’ featuring Jeeday Jawz is out now.