This is a young musician’s story about his love of music and the efforts he invested in transforming an incomplete bush material house into a music home production studio, even though he does not have proper equipment to set up a home production.
Young Samuel Robert hails from the Tewai Siassi District of Morobe province. He did not complete his grade ten studies in 2014 because he had leave school to stay home following the closure of his school due to continuous fights in the area.
His love for music started when he was still a little boy, spending time with his mother and learning to play the ukulele at the age of six in Aronai village.
He then learnt to play the guitar and other musical instruments and when he was 15 years of age, his brother, who leads a local band called “Arona Waves,” identified his talent and engaged him to play with his band in and around the area. Samuel’s musical skills gradually grew as he demonstrated his willingness to learn on playing at open settings and gatherings.
One of the country’s famous local artists Luke Banag from Madang also identified his talent in Tewai Siassi when he made a tour around the area in 2014. Luke Banag identified Samuel when he played one of his local hit song after his brother went for a break at a concert. Samuel later enjoyed a tour around Tewai Siassi with Luke Banag for a month before Luke returned to Madang.
After that experience, that feeling of playing with the famous local artist gave him confidence to continue to develop his musical skills. Not only this, Samuel also learnt on how to fix electronic items like radios, calculators and hand watches. He then learnt to fix mobile phones and laptops.
He used his musical and technical skills to earn a living in the village during his teenage years and in 2015 he left his home and moved on to Lae city to look for better means to further his studies, but he couldn’t. He ended up deciding to have a family and to make a living out of his skills. He met a young girl from Kapmewang village in Wain Erap Local Level Government in Nawaeb district, got married that same year and travelled to Lae.
The young skilled man then got an opportunity to market his skills through his marriage connection.
He got himself into church and social activities in the area and that enabled him to market his talents. Samuel started getting recognition from the communities for his technical and musical talents and youths would arrive at his home for him to serve them.
He then saw youths’ interests from his in laws area and Erap together. Most of the youths’ interests were mostly in music and so he started a mini home production using scrap materials he owned. Samuel installed a musical recording software on a laptop and tried it out and it worked. Youths would flood his home to see for themselves on how he would handle the recording software.
Samuel continuously played on the FL Studio demo version and discovered the secrets of its operations. He then downloaded the version 12 of the same software and installed it on his laptop and started working on few songs he knew of. Gradually, the young boys from villages who share the same border with Kabwum, invited him to go do their recording.
He travelled with his laptop, made a setup and completed their recording within a month. He learnt from his own experiences and started a little production fee of K50 with the local boys. When Samuel returned home, youths from his wife’s village showed interests also to do recording.
He did a small set up within the house where he lives and started recording music for free to engage interested youths. In 2019, Samuel recorded an awareness information about one of the World Visions program on public health, which was scripted and voice by a young boy in the same village where he lives.
In 2022, he recorded a campaign song for the current Nawaeb Member of Parliament Theo Pelgen, when he first showed his intention to contest the seat. Two of his audio recordings went viral in the area, which then saw more youths flooded his home showing interests to do recording.
Just recently, Samuel sourced the assistance of a freelance journalist to help him to connect with the radio stations, so that he could share his music recordings for them to air on the respective platforms and programs.
The young musician currently has in his possession four channel amplifier and mixer, Rhodes microphone condenser, one sided low beam speaker, one sided woofer and a laptop with FL 21 version for recording music.
Samuel said these equipment are not enough to create a best recording studio but this won’t stop him. He said he will continue to do what he loves doing despite major challenges he is facing in terms of having proper a setup. His current production fees for music alone is K100 and K50 for video production.