Tom Holder in his LNS studio

Nowadays about 45% of the music coming out of the night clubs and on local radio stations are lyrically made of local Liberian slangs popularly known as LIB Hip-co unlike a few years back, Liberian hip-co songs are topping the local music chat, with children as young as 3 years old well able to sing along with the lyrics while dancing to the beat at the same time.

One Liberian who has been at the helm bringing music to this contemporary level, where it comes down to the understanding of even the kids in our communities, while maintaining the urban, is the man Tom Holder.

According to Tom, when he returned to Liberia, he wanted to make his contribution to the music industry which was then flooded with lots of foreign music.

“I and some other guys decided to come up with a recipe that would fit the new (hip-hop) generation and also be able to accommodate the culture of the Liberian people. That's how come we came up with the whole idea of mixing hip-hop with colloquial or everyday language,” he told Arts and Culture

Today, the dream of Tom to come up with a recipe that would fit the new generation seems to be very much realized with new LIB-Hip-co artistes coming to the lime light and new songs like One man one cup…, Old fire-trunk…, WWP…, Behold, behold.., Da technique, etc, etc, being played and enjoyed by people in every nook and corner of the country.

“Its not that Liberians do not like their own things but we have not been able to present what we have in a fashion that is easily understandable.”

Tom's belief that colloquial is part of our identity is indeed true given the acclaim colloquial rap songs have received from the younger generation. The CEO of the Light and Salt (LNS) studio said there are a lot of prospects in the Liberian music industry because, according to him, Liberia is endowed with a lot of great musical talents.

He said that government needs to enforce the copy right law because government has not really shown any interest along that line.

Tom Holder is a Liberian music artist, classical pianist, promoter and entrepreneur.

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