NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Clifford Hepburn is a musician and a Cat Island native who is hoping that his music will reinvent Rake n’ Scrape.
Hepburn, in a recent interview with Eyewitness News Online, said he is aspiring to bring Rake n’ Scrape to the local and international forefront, having recently released two songs: ‘We’ll be alright’ and ‘Come go with me to Cat Island’.
The two songs, Hepburn said, engages Bahamians and tourists in a new, interactive way, which Hepburn believes will reimagine and enliven the Rake n’ Scrape scene.
“For quite a while now, I was thinking of getting into Rake n’ Scrape and doing some sounds,” Hepburn explained.
“I started writing quite a while ago and recently, about last year, I showed my brother some of my work and he told me to go and see if I can get them produced because they seemed as though they were worth something.
“My first song was ‘we’ll be alright’ and my second song, just released lately, is ‘come go with me to Cat Island.’”
Hepburn said when he was writing his first song, ‘we’ll be alright’, he wanted to offer solace to Bahamians who may be struggling as a result of today’s social and economic climate.
“[There are] a lot of things going on in The Bahamas; unemployment, crime, a lot of things going on in the family, and lots of social ills, so I was thinking a song like ‘we’ll be alright’ would be some sort of encouragement,” Hepburn said.
As for his second song, “Come go with me to Cat Island,” the musician took on a more business-oriented approach.
He said, “The second song I started to write about… I was thinking more of advertisement, where a song could be on the international market and it would encourage the tourists and all those to come to The Bahamas and come to Cat Island and see what Cat Island is all about…”
For the local market, Hepburn said, “I intend to do a number of sounds and I would hope that we’d be encouraged to bring it back so the school kids and the young ones could like it and appreciate it for what it is.”
Hepburn said he is hopeful about his reinvention of his music and Rake n’ Scrape.
“My hope is that it would do well on the international scene as well as here in The Bahamas, and as people, especially foreigners, get to know it, they would know more of our culture and want to see more of Cat Island,” Hepburn said.
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This article was written by Whitley Cargill – Eyewitness News Online Intern
