Positive wins 8 Marlin awards again

It is his hope that his music restores some semblance of God’s deep love, especially to TT. Positive won in eight categories at the Caribbean Gospel Music Marlin Awards held on February 25 at the Atlantis Theatre on Paradise Island in The Bahamas. This year’s ceremony, according to a release on Positive’s wins, was attended by, “hundreds of industry aficionados and enthusiasts from the Caribbean, Canada, London and other territories ... to celebrate the achievements of Positive and other entertainers.” Among them were Gozzy, Romancia Kingston, Marc Isaac, Neesha Woodz and Ke Ke Lewis.

Positive won in the categories of Album of the Year, calypso/ soca vocal performance of the year, contemporary recording of the year, contemporary vocal performance of the year, packaging of the year, praise and worship recording of the year, reggae recording of the year and song of the year. He previously won eight awards in the 2014 Marlin awards for his album, Forever My King.

The winning songs are from his album, Stand and Be Counted, which he described as being “closest to his heart.” The album was done in late 2015.

Positive has evolved since entering the gospel arena in 2007. When asked how he felt about winning the eight awards again he said: “To win eight Marlin awards, I feel specifically proud, because of the project that took me to the Marlin awards this time around. It is my new album Stand and Be Counted.” The album debuted at number nine on the Billboard Reggae Album Chart in 2015.

In a phone interview, Positive said he felt “uniquely proud” of this album and what it had accomplished thus far. His pride coming from having done most of the production work on the album as well as writing the songs.

“I say this one was closest to my heart because for the first album I was under a record label under the name of Lion of Judah sounds. We had a one album deal and that is where it began. The second album I tried to explore doing new styles of music. But with this album I was hands-on, in terms of the production of the music, writing all the songs. In other albums I wrote all the songs, yes, but in this album I wrote not just the lyrics but the music.” Positive said he has seen “tremendous growth” in the local gospel music industry. Since his start in 2007, production levels within the music niche have improved. “Everyone is now intentional with their delivery of the music and it has grown.

It was very immature before. It has come to a place where it is still evolving and growing but it is more of a mature market right now.” Positive is now working on a new album. One which speaks to the central tenet of Christianity, love. Although the release on his wins identified August as the release period for his new album, Murray said he was not certain about August.

He said, however, “It is to talk about the different layers of the word love. Sometimes we are so quick to cast people aside, or we are so quick to separate ourselves, when the true definition of love speaks about being patient, speaks about being kind, holding nor record or wrong, always believes but what we exude in the world now is a far cry from the true definition of love.” For him, award ceremonies like Marlin helped to boost the local gospel music industry and open it up to new audiences and market.

Ultimately, Positive wants to be able to be all things to all men, to have his music reach people that it did not reach before.

“I want to be able to be all things to all men. I want to be able to let my music reach people that hasn’t already reach before. It is one thing to have music coming out every single month or year but it is another thing to have new audiences out every single month or single year. So I think that now my main goal is to reach the lost. To reach the people that have not been found as yet. New markets.

New territories.” He hopes to impact a troubled TT. “Where we are at as a nation right now, we need to get back to the foundation of how we were created.

La Trinidad, La Trinity speaks about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I think we have drifted so far from it. I think if we could let gospel itself, not just the music but the written word, lifestyle and everything that exudes Christianity penetrate the atmosphere a little bit more we would be able to see a greater change for the nation,” he said.