New recording studio will be great asset for young musicians (From Malvern Gazette)

New recording studio will be great asset for young musicians

2:19pm Wednesday 5th November 2008 in Search By Tarik Al Rasheed

A MALVERN singer-songwriter is preparing to open a new recording studio that he hopes will help develop local artists.

Reggae artist Ben Okafor has finished work on Roadsweeper Studios, in St Ann’s Road, and now plans to open it in December.

Mr Okafor initially intended the live recording studio to be for his own personal use. But as work progressed his vision changed.

“It grew into something that I felt had to be more of a community facility,” he said. “My vision is to use it to support local artists in Malvern. This area has a lot of talented performers, many of them quite young, and it has never really been possible for them to access something like this easily.”

While artists will pay to use the studio, Mr Okafor will look to help support those performers who may struggle to meet the costs.

“For years I struggled to find a way of funding my recordings, and some of these guys now will be in the same position,” he said. “Opening this studio is a great feeling for me. It really is a fantastic feeling to know that the thing I have dreamed of has been achieved.

“It also means that a lot of the artists in Malvern will have a valuable resource.”

Mr Okafor was born in Nigeria and witnessed first hand the country’s civil war. He came to the UK in the 1980s and is now settled in Malvern, where he is a patron of the Home-Start Malvern Hills charity.

Mr Okafor recently used Roadsweeper Studios to record his latest album Diverted Traffic, which will be the first released on his own Roadsweeper Records label.

Anyone who would like to find out more about using the studio should call 01684 579125.