WESTERN BUREAU:
RECORDING ARTISTE and promoter Nutchell Millings, better known by his stage name ‘Grabba Musiq’, considers himself having taken upward steps from a poverty-led upbringing in the rural district of Perth Town, Trelawny, to performing on the same level as his long-time musical inspirations Bounty Killer and Beenie Man.
Sitting down with The Gleaner outside his Perth Town residence, 45-year-old Millings – whose hits include singles such as Blessings, Love Forever, and Finding – recounted how he developed a love for music while being raised alongside six other siblings in a poverty-stricken home.
“I have just been around sound systems and selectors, and I mastered my craft as a youth at that time. I still believe that the love that I got for music, it wasn’t just an inborn thing for me at the time. I am a reggae artiste, and my songs inspire so many people, from the one-year-old to the 91-year-old,” said Millings.
“I grew up poor, and we did not have a TV to look on; we would have to go next door. And if next door was locked, we would not have anything to look on. When everybody else lit a stove, we would have to go to the bush to look for wood to light. On Sunday daytime, when people were eating their chicken, we had to eat mackerel, or sometimes just the butter and dumpling,” Millings explained.
Millings, a past student of the Perth Town All-Age School and Cedric Titus High School, said that he got guidance from music producer Franklin Davis about how to determine his own unique sound while he was still attending school.
“When you’re young, everyone wants to be like Bounty Killer and Beenie Man, and my sound at that time was like Bounty Killer. Mr Davis pushed me back to just go learn the ‘real’ me and not just to work off someone else’s sound,” said Millings. “I went back to the drawing board and almost forgot music, but at the end of the day, the music rose back, because there was no other way for me.”
Millings’ decision to stick with music has since paid off, as he has been working on a number of musical projects and participated in entertainment bookings since 2019, and has established online platforms on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and iTunes.
His projects have included his first single, Love at First Sight, alongside Adena Myrie, and Every Gal a Mine, both released in 2019. His most recent musical endeavour was his live performance at the Momentum Reggae Festival in Alexandra, St Ann, on November 11 this year, where he performed alongside Bounty Killer, Queen Ifrica, and Richie Spice, along with other artistes.
“It’s just been great work, knowing that I came from nothing to something, and looking at Bounty Killer and Beenie Man. I looked at them as superstars, and now I have become a superstar and have been on the same platform with them. It is a great feeling for myself and my family, knowing that over the years, after eating so many bananas without anything, today we can maybe put some gravy on our food. It’s a different feeling, knowing we can consider that life has changed a bit,” Millings gushed.
Asked what advice he would give to aspiring young musicians, Millings noted that success comes with hard work and sacrifice.
“It takes a lot of dedication and necessary sacrifice that you have to make for yourself, for the good to come. It simply means if you have to buy five CDs tomorrow and you want to eat a piece of chicken today, you have to leave the chicken and buy the CDs, because the music has to continue. Those are the necessary hard works we have to put in ourselves to make the good come,” Millings said.
christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com
