Three awards for St. Lucian Producer

St. Lucian music producer and songwriter Courtney “Kurty” Louis was expectedly elated and excited on Thursday evening after walking away with three awards at the annual Copyright Organization of Trinidad and Tobago (COTT) annual awards. The awards ceremony which was held in Trinidad and Tobago under the theme “Ignite The Music” saw Kurty tie the event for the most awards with Machel Montano with whom he shared two of the awards. Kurty won for “Best New Songwriter Male,” “Soca Song Of The Year” “Jumbie” (co written by Kurty and sung by Machel Montano and “Song of The Year” for Jumbie. Jumbie incidentally is the Road March song of Trinidad and Tobago.
The young producer who is a member of COTT has created history in Trinidad by becoming the first non Trinidadian to top the prize list. Nominees were selected based on deliberations by COTT and are considered for songs registered prior to July 1, and the criteria involves the tallying of broadcast logs, play-lists, foreign royalty statements and recording statements supplied to COTT over the period January 2006 to June 2007 and royalty distributions between December 2006 and August 2007.
In 2006 Kurty was nominated for an International Soca Award by another organization for the “St. Lucian Riddim.” That production was Kurty’s first regional and international breakthrough. That year he worked with Trinidadian acts KMC and Naya George among others. He also had a number of major hits in St. Lucia in 2006 including Q-pid’s “Water,” Kakal’s “Pen Song,” and Ninja Dan’s “Outside Man.” He also produced Alpha’s winning Soca Monarch track “Happy Birthday” and also produced the winning Groovy Soca and Power Soca songs for Grenada’s Mr. Killa.

This year he again made his mark on the regional and international Soca scene having written and produced material for KMC and “Las lap” for Destra and Nya George. Locally he wrote and produced Marianne’s “Cheating” and Kerian’s “Don’t let go,” among several other hits. Kurty is presently in Trinidad where he is busy working on material for several prominent acts there for Trini Carnival 2008.
When asked about the awards Kurty says that he was very happy when he heard the news and felt pleased that his hard work was reaping rewards outside of St. Lucia.
The event was filmed and produced for international broadcast in the Caribbean from Jamaica to Guyana. The awards will be aired on CaribVision and on BET J in the US.