Here’s The Ghost

The 20-year-old singer whose recent song, Gyal Who does Horn, from his Bad Thing series has brought him notoriety.

Until his recent success, Trinidad Ghost (Akel McLean) had not seen the inside of a studio. In fact, Gyal Who Does Horn was done using McLean’s desktop and promoted via YouTube.

“I started by just creating a YouTube account,” he told Newsday.

In fact, all of his songs released thus far were done using social media platform, YouTube. Mc- Lean said he played the piano from seven. This lead him to be able to read and write music.

As a pre-teen he began to write songs which he says numbers in the hundreds, since he writes daily.

After the song began gaining traction and shares via social media, the interviews and calls began to pour in.

For the St James resident this was not the life his father had initially envisioned for him. In fact, Joel’s McLean dream for his son would have been that he go on to university after completing sixth form at the Polytechnic Institute, St James, (before that he attended St James Secondary School) and follow in his career path of electrical engineering. But McLean’s love for music won and before he completed sixth form he left to pursue music.

His video has over 84,000 views on YouTube with 1,000 likes and 66 dislikes. But it has also drawn the attention of top music producers locally, regionally and internationally, he said.

The song has also landed him gigs at several spots including Soul Train J’Ouvert band launch in New York.

McLean defines his style of a mix of all Caribbean music but his style remains predominantly that of old-school dub (which evolved into today’s dancehall).

His journey to music fame and YouTube stardom was not always easy. “I had a lot of ups and downs,” he said. He recalled a popular radio DJ he sent his material to, did not respond until a year later, after Gyal Who Does Horn became a hit.

But what makes his story interesting and even speaks to the changing way in which music releases are done, is his releasing of his song via YouTube and then sharing it through his social media accounts (FaceBook, Instagram etc). “I never do songs and try to distribute it to the radio,” he said.

This, McLean said, opened the doors for other new artistes who were often ignored by more traditional forms of media.

The song has been a talking topic and has sparked “answer- back” by other artistes such female singer Danger, called Man Does Horn.

McLean will be seen at events in Guyana, Grenada, Baltimore and other regional and international Carnivals as his brand grows and develops and he intends to also spread the music of the country which bears his name. For 2018 Carnival, Trinidad Ghost intends to be one of the more popular names. While he is “willing to work with anyone” McLean admires and hopes to work with singers like this year’s reigning Soca Monarch, Voice.

McLean wanted the public to be aware of one important fact, he has no problems with women.

He instead fancies himself as a comedian and when he wrote Gyal Who Does Horn he wanted to find a humorous way to address a very serious topic. But he wanted to assure all of TT that he had no problem with women.