‘D Journey’ brings Matthews back to life

Months after his death, the music video of late soca artiste Devon Matthews’ D Journey was launched. The video which shows Matthews and Ella Andall performing D Journey was released on October 1. The soca star and radio personality died of a heart attack on July 15 after performing at Tribe’s band launch.

The video, which has gathered over 500 likes on YouTube since its release, opens with shots of giraffes, rhinoceros and lions, almost like an African Safari. It then follows former Miss TT World Athaliah Samuel as she goes to a seated Andall. She whispers something in her ear and Andall grips her stomach. The song then begins and shows African-dressed dancers and then moves to Andall and Matthews seated in African Trophies store on Tragarete Road, Woodbrook, singing. There are scenes throughout of Matthews in white African clothing singing and dancing. There are also depictions of various parts of the song of Matthew’s life experiences.

The video was completed by Colin Smith-Ramsden of CSL Studio, Vistabella, Aaron Hodge Alexis of Progressive Studios and Mark Joseph.

In an interview with Newsday on the video’s completion, Smith-Ramsden said the video was supposed to have been launched on Emancipation Day this year.

However, due to Matthews’ passing “was pushed back.” Smith-Ramsden said there weren’t enough clips to complete the video after his death. There was also a “slight” delay of the video’s release as the song’s music producer, Anson Soverall, was abroad. Although Smith-Ramsden said many of the original production members left because they were “spooked” by the strong spiritual element in the song, he and Hodge-Alexis decided to finish it since many “people kept calling and telling us, you all have to do this for him.”

“We started working on it the next week after his passing. Everybody [sic] was spooked, the video was a very spiritual video and there was a lot of spiritual content in the video, it spooked the team that was working and people started pulling out. It was only two [Hodge-Alexis, the video’s editor] of us who stayed together and said we were going to push with it and finish it.”

Smith-Ramsden said the most difficult part of completing the video was getting the list of names to complete credits since Matthews had the list of names for the credits. Although the team had received some payment for the video, the team completed it simply for his mother and family members.

Many had asked them, Smith-Ramsden said: “To bring him back to life.”

He said the team has received positive feedback since the video’s release, with many calling and congratulating them for completing it.

Hodge-Alexis, however, said for him it was a hard task to complete since there was a short space of time to do so, only four days.

He said there was really only two days to work with Matthews. After completing one day of shooting with Matthews at 8 pm, word was brought four hours after of Matthews’ death, which “spooked” the team.

Both Smith-Ramsden and Hodge-Alexis were happy to complete the video, particularly for Matthews’ mother, Gloria.