Shereen Ali

One of the most mov­ing as­pects of Caribbean cul­ture is its mu­sic. And this mu­sic is rich­ly di­verse, with Cu­ba and Haiti be­ing es­pe­cial­ly vi­brant in mu­sic gen­res and styles.

San­te­ria drum­ming, rum­ba, son, sal­sa, mam­bo, Afro-Cuban jazz and clas­si­cal mu­sic rub shoul­ders with con­tem­po­rary hip hop-sal­sa-rock fu­sions and many oth­er eclec­tic con­tem­po­rary mix­es in Cu­ba; Haiti has its car­ni­val rara mu­sic, com­pas dance mu­sic, voudoun mu­sic, rap, rag­ga, hip hop kewyol, and many more; you can find merengue and bacha­ta in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic; dance to ca­lyp­so, so­ca, rap­so, tas­sa, pan and chut­ney mu­sic in Trinidad; and en­joy ku­mi­na, ska, reg­gae, rag­ga, and dance­hall in Ja­maica. And that's just graz­ing the sur­face. So amidst this mu­si­cal feast, what mu­sic in­dus­try lessons can we learn from our Caribbean neigh­bours?

Tak­ing tourism–and our cul­tur­al prod­ucts–se­ri­ous­ly

Singer/song­writer and ca­lyp­son­ian David Rud­der thinks mu­sic from oth­er Caribbean is­lands, such as Ja­maica and Cu­ba, have a greater im­pact out­side the Caribbean than Trinidad's mu­sic be­cause "they're hun­gri­er, they have huge tourist mar­kets, and we (Tri­nis) tend to oft­times stay out of the lime­light. There is no 'Brand T&T'."

Elec­tron­ic DJ mix­er Chris Lea­cock, speak­ing from a par­ty/dance mu­sic per­spec­tive, thinks we can learn a lot from col­lab­o­ra­tions with oth­er artists and styles, and ad­mits that some kinds of TT so­ca dance mu­sic may re­main in­com­pre­hen­si­ble to some for­eign au­di­ences who don't un­der­stand the TT par­ty scene. He says:

"For a long time, Trinida­di­an mu­sic re­quired con­text–it would be dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend 160bpm 'wave yuh rag' songs with­out com­ing to Car­ni­val and see­ing 10,000 peo­ple lose their minds at a fete. But the mu­sic we're mak­ing (in the DJ band Ma­jor Laz­er) is more akin to the pop mu­sic on the ra­dio–130bpms, with more uni­ver­sal lyri­cal con­tent." So he hints at the need to con­sid­er for­eign au­di­ences if you want to sell them mu­sic, and adapt to suit.

"Ja­maica has al­ways been a hotbed of cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ty," says Lea­cock, "but since the suc­cess of Dif­fer­en­tol­ogy and col­lab­o­ra­tions be­tween lo­cal so­ca stars (like Machel Mon­tano & Bun­ji Gar­lin) and in­ter­na­tion­al pro­duc­ers, more and more folks are be­com­ing in­ter­est­ed in the sound of T&T."

"I think it's im­por­tant for TT artists to make them­selves ac­ces­si­ble, and not to pi­geon­hole them­selves in­to a 'so­ca' mind­set," says Lea­cock.

Caribbean mu­sic hotspots: Cu­ba, Haiti, Ja­maica

Mean­while, mu­sic writer Si­mon Lee ad­dress­es cul­tur­al strengths with­in the Caribbean re­gion from which we here in T&T can learn a lot. He ob­serves that the Cuban mu­sic scene is strong be­cause they have ac­tive­ly re­searched and nur­tured their own dis­tinc­tive mu­sic forms:

"The Cubans cre­at­ed won­der­ful mu­sic out of ne­ces­si­ty–the em­bar­go and iso­la­tion forced them to look in­ward. And the Cuban state ini­ti­at­ed a whole re­search ef­fort in­to folk­loric re­gion­al forms of mu­sic."

He refers to the roots mu­sic of Haiti, Ja­maican ska and reg­gae, and the Gar­i­fu­na mu­sic of Be­lize as dif­fer­ent ex­am­ples of cul­tures valu­ing their own tra­di­tions to cre­ate tru­ly unique sounds that crossed over, at dif­fer­ent lev­els, in­to mass mu­sic mar­kets.

"Look at Haiti in the 1980s. The pop­u­lar mu­sic un­der Du­va­lier, com­pas (kon­pa), was stig­ma­tised. Young peo­ple looked to the voudoun roots of their own tra­di­tion–ei­ther sa­cred mu­sic, which be­came zouk, or sec­u­lar mu­sic, like the rara band. These were roots mu­sic or 'misik rasin'. They went to cer­e­monies, learned the voudoun rhythm, even sang tra­di­tion­al voudin songs, played the sa­cred drum with elec­tron­ic am­pli­fied in­stru­ments–an ex­am­ple is Bouk­man Eksperyans.

"Ja­maica has had the most suc­cess with reg­gae, which be­came linked with na­tion­al­ism and emerged with Ja­maican in­de­pen­dence ... Ear­ly mu­si­cians like Ska trom­bon­ist and com­pos­er Don Drum­mond of the Skatal­ites were all peo­ple who were high­ly com­pe­tent jazz mu­si­cians, ses­sion mu­si­cians who put down the first ska tracks. But too many of to­day's TT mu­si­cians feel if they can put down two chords and a syn­the­sised drum beat, they're good!"

Ze­ro­ing in on the im­por­tance of mu­sic artistry and com­pe­tence, Lee cites Jes�s Vald�s Ro­dr�guez, bet­ter known as Chu­cho Vald�s, the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed Cuban pi­anist, band­leader, com­pos­er and arranger whose ca­reer spans over 50 years. An orig­i­nal mem­ber of the Orques­ta Cubana de M�sica Mod­er­na, in 1973 Vald�s found­ed the group Irakere, one of Cu­ba's best-known Latin jazz bands. He has won five Gram­my Awards and three Latin Gram­my Awards. Says Lee:

"Chu­cho Vald�s found­ed the first Afro-Cuban Latin group; he can play clas­si­cal mu­sic, North Amer­i­can jazz, his own San­te­ria mu­sic, even cre­olized ver­sions of Chopin! Mu­sic train­ing in Cu­ba is very, very rig­or­ous. I have nev­er met a bad Cuban mu­si­cian yet!"

He next turns to the skill of Hait­ian mu­si­cians:

"In Haiti, every song can have a dif­fer­ent rhythm. There are sev­er­al thou­sand rhythms, so to call your­self a mas­ter drum­mer in Haiti means you can play them all. If you can't play the rhythms but pre­tend to ... it is a form of supreme dis­re­spect to show poor mu­si­cian­ship when you are play­ing sa­cred mu­sic and try­ing to in­voke a loa...That form of mu­sic is in­volved in a mu­tu­al re­la­tion­ship where the play­er is so­lic­it­ing help, in a cycli­cal tra­di­tion of ho­n­our and re­spect to the gods.

"This ap­plies to mu­sic–be­cause es­sen­tial­ly mu­sic is sa­cred. Whether it is re­li­gious or dance­hall, what is mu­sic? It is a cel­e­bra­tion and ex­plo­ration of life. Many have lost that con­cept of mu­sic. An­dre Tanker was root­ed in that.

Need to 'lis­ten to our­selves'

"Here, we don't lis­ten to our­selves, to the re­gion's mu­sic. So what too many peo­ple play is very re­strict­ed and too eas­i­ly in­flu­enced by glob­al pres­sures," be­lieves Lee.

"Of course you can com­pete in the glob­al mu­sic mar­ket, but you al­so have to be re­al, see the mu­sic from its own place...You have to work from where you are, and who you are, be­fore you can take on the world," be­lieves Lee.