Above (L-R): Marilyn Joshua, (songwriter) recording her demo song for the competition with musicians Daniel Leo on keyboards and Nick Clevely on guitar and Emma-Jane as recording technician.

Ralph (winning songwriter) and 'Ray-C' (winner of Saint FM IDOLS 07) receiving their prizes.

THANK YOU to everyone who voted over the  two week period, those who commented, gave suggestions and support. The show would not have been as successful without YOUR vote!

Raymond Cranfield or 'Ray-C was the first winner of the Saint FM IDOLS competition.

For 2007 Saint FM produced the first St Helena IDOLS competition in conjunction with world environment week.  Environmental issues might seem an unlikely topic to form a local talent show but as the station was already heavily involved with the weeks promotion and coverage of activates, we saw the week of awareness as a platform to showcase the first IDOLS competition.

Songwriters and musicians of the show were approached by producer, Emma-Jane Yon to write and compose original lyrics and music for a song especially for world environment week. Four local songwriters wrote for the competition: Tammy Williams, Baptist Minister Nick Clevely, Sharon Clingham, Ralph Peters and Marilyn Joshua.  All songwriters submitted and sung the melody of their song to a live backing track for the songs demos and then demos were sent to the 8 contestants handpicked for the show.  To ensure the first IDOLS show was a success If was felt that participants would have to be picked as apposed to advertising. Musical arrangements were done
initially with the songwriter and musician and finally with each individual singers resulting in eight very different styles showcasing everything from country to reggae inspired tracks and soft rock.

The 8 singers who took part in the show and listeners of Saint FM were asked to call and vote on their favourite singer over a two week voting period and one by one singers were eliminated from the competition.  Contestants were: Ray-C, Nick Clevely, Marilyn Joshua, Kaylee Young, Natalie Fowler, Wayne Yon, Noleen Stevens and Helen Joshua.  Contestant number seven, Raymond Cranfield, better known as 'Ray-C' was the overall winner with a total of 1,284 votes from listeners on Island, Ascension, Falklands and UK.  He sang the song “Legacy” written by Ralph Peters.
1st runner-up was singer number 2, Nick Clevely with “Winter’s song” and 2nd runner-up was singer number 6, Marilyn Joshua with singing the song “Climate Change” written by Sharon Clingham.

A huge thank you also to our sponsors, the Bank of St Helena, Saint FM, Agriculture and Natural Resources Department and Printech who respectively donated a total of £270 to prize’s for the winning singer, songwriter, 1st and 2nd runner up and all contributing songwriters.

Back to Part 5

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