Krista Henry, Staff Reporter

The DASECA and Music Box producers. From left: Serani, Venal Miligen (Music Box), Craig Harrisingh, Majah Bless, Courtney Swaby (Music Box) and David Harrisingh. - Krista Henry Photo

It was pure vibes as DASECA and the winner of the Producer's Pick competition Venal Miligen and his Music Box production family met up for the first time at DASECA's studio on Wednesday night.

DASECA picked the song Garrison, a haunting tale of life in the ghetto, from the 15 finalists from their STAR of the Month competition.

Before meeting up with the prolific trio, Venal Miligen told The STAR that he was a great admirer of their work and has seen them around often. He said, "They are basically doing what I want to do and have reached where I want to reach."

Venal and Ricardo Barrett, also from Music Box, were soon joined by Majah Bless, the singer of Garrison and also from the Music Box production crew Courtney Swaby - all of whom hail from Tivoli.

Majah Bless was shocked to find out that Garrison had won the competition, believing he was being pranked until he saw the announcement in The STAR.

Written by Majah Bless, 'Garrison' was inspired by life in Tivoli and was written last year after Hurricane Dean. The video for the song will soon be officially released.

The Music Box crew was soon joined by Serani, who had high praises for the song, "Yow da song yah bad," he said "...Yuh have a video coming out for the song yah already? That's mad, mi love how unnu do yuh ting."

Serani took the CD to his car and pumped up the volume on his stereo system as he nodded his head to the beat. Craig sang out to the song as everyone listened to the lyrics.

DASECA plans to help the crew get the song out there as best as possible. They lymed with the guys and gave them advice on the business.

Craig told The STAR why Garrison was chosen:

"Out of the 15 songs, we found four or five weh we seh, 'OK, di song is good. The production is a growth process ... is like we for seven years every day we learn something new, di ting only get better. Two out of the five songs were gun songs so automatically that out of the question cause it wouldn't be wise cause that's not where we are right now. The couple of other songs have on this auto tune effect that is being over used right now. This Garrison song di song bad and there's no auto tune on the voice is just raw talent yuh hearing right there and di production nice," he said.

As for the competition, according to DASECA, this is something they would like to continue doing to assist new talent.