In 1997 Sanch released the compact disc One Caribbean Voice® featuring folklore calypso performances by Tobago’s Signal Hill Alumni Choir. The theme song with the same name was composed by John Arnold, Musical Director of the group. The album was the second of two productions recorded and mastered that year using the new (at the time), proprietary HDCD® format after Sanch had acquired a Model One Processor from Pacific Microsonics of Berkeley, California.

Graphic artist Kenneth Scott’s pristine artwork featured an elegant, barefooted, bikini-clad model wearing a beach wrap that unfolded into the islands of the archipelago and ‘things Caribbean.’ He used Rastafarian motifs to signify the struggles, determination and resolve of a fiercely proud people. Intuitively, we felt that the concept One Caribbean Voice® was powerful enough to further unify the region by transcending cultural, economic, ethnic, political, religious and social barriers. We also concluded that it needed to embrace West Indies Cricket, The Caribbean Examinations Council and The University of the West Indies.

I subsequently registered the artwork as a trademark of Sanch Electronix and predicted that the Internet could eventually become an invaluable vehicle for marketing a sustainable catalogue of high-end Caribbean cultural products and services in the global arena. The One Caribbean Voice® logo was deemed a natural ‘certification mark’ through which such products and services could be readily identified.

The initiative would seek to create new, sustainable avenues of self-employment, earn foreign exchange through cultural innovation and empower the people of the islands, especially the feminine gender. As such I developed an entire curriculum module for the Pan in Education Business Model identifying marketable cultural facets in Art and Craft, Cuisine, Education, Literature, Music, People, as well as Sport and Recreation. These would be subsumed into the diverging portfolio of One Caribbean Voice®.

Fifteen years later, The Sanch Marketplace has been officially launched in August 2012 beginning with our catalogue of CDs for physical distribution and digital downloads in MP3 format. The facility is being managed by Innovative Entertainment Solutions and will soon be offering many of the gourmet selections in our repertoire as 24-bit FLAC files for your listening pleasure. These will be supplemented by other carefully selected music from other labels and merchandise from the categories outlined above.

The world has been astounded by Caribbean domination of the major events at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. Technology now presents intriguing possibilities to promote and market of our unique cultural rhythms. The Sanch Marketplace andOne Caribbean Voice® are poised to become an enabling environment for such an initiative. If not, why not?

Simeon L. Sandiford
Managing Director
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