Makin’ a state­ment has al­ways been the mu­si­cal mis­sion for rap­so col­lec­tive 3canal. Since their de­but in 1997 with the clas­sic song Blue, 3canal’s mu­si­cal state­ments have been flavoured with com­men­tary—so­cial and po­lit­i­cal. From Salt to Talk Yuh Talk to Ben Li­on, 3canal’s mu­sic has been known for pi­cong and satire pep­pered with plen­ty fire and right­eous ire.

In 2025, it’s no dif­fer­ent. How­ev­er, now shorn of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of bring­ing out a J’Ou­vert band, Wen­dell Man­war­ren, Roger Roberts and Stan­ton Kew­ley are now most keen­ly fo­cused on the mu­sic.

This year, 3canal has re­leased Rap­so To Kaiso, an EP fea­tur­ing four songs—Where We Go­ing?, An­swer The Call, Fight­in’ and Sedi­tion. These songs, along with oth­ers from their deep and ex­ten­sive cat­a­logue will be pre­sent­ed at the 21st edi­tion of their an­nu­al show. The 3canal Kaiso Show takes place from Feb­ru­ary 22 to 25 from 7 pm night­ly at the Winifred Atwell Au­di­to­ri­um, Queen’s Hall.

3canal lead vo­cal­ist Wen­dell Man­war­ren said sit­u­at­ing the con­cert with­in the con­text of kaiso is an in­ten­tion­al choice by 3canal as they are keen to il­lus­trate rap­so’s con­nec­tion to the ‘moth­er mu­sic’ of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Ca­lyp­so is at the root, from the gri­ot to the chantuelle to the ca­lyp­son­ian, to the rap­so man and the singers of so­ca in it’s many it­er­a­tions, from Trini­bad to zess, the tra­di­tion lives on, from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, con­stant­ly em­brac­ing in­no­va­tion.

“It’s very de­lib­er­ate, the idea of us­ing kaiso as op­posed to ca­lyp­so. We’re not ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, we’re not get­ting in­to all the pol­i­tics of genre-fi­ca­tion and what genre you rep­re­sent. I say, as Trinida­di­ans, we are born kaiso­ni­ans and it just so hap­pens that we come up through rap­so. We use the pow­er of the word and rhythm of the word, per­pe­trat­ing the oral tra­di­tion.”

Man­war­ren point­ed to a strong old time kaiso in­flu­ence on their spicy re­lease Sedi­tion, a song in­spired by an ar­ti­cle writ­ten by In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Suni­ty Ma­haraj ti­tled, A Law In Search of a Crime, which she wrote in 2024 af­ter the ar­rest of Cana­di­an so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer Chris Must List on sedi­tion charges.

Sedi­tion ref­er­ences the melody of and makes a play on lyrics from King Ra­dio’s 1930s clas­sic Warn­ing To Rich and Poor al­so known as Sedi­tion Law.

The 3canal Car­ni­val show has been usu­al­ly de­fined by a large cast of dancers and per­form­ers with what Man­war­ren refers to as a “big, dri­ving ma­chine sound”, how­ev­er this year, the group will be par­ing down and tak­ing the ma­chine out of the mu­sic in or­der to achieve the tex­ture of a kaiso or­ches­tra like those that played in the best tents back in the day.

As a re­sult this pro­duc­tion will fea­ture a new in­car­na­tion of the their tra­di­tion­al back­ing unit The Cut + Clear Crew, now rechris­tened The Cut + Clear Kaiso Crew. The band is led by mu­si­cal di­rec­tor and key­boardist Si­mon Men­doza with gui­tarists Dean Williams and Ki­wan Lan­dreth-Smith, bassist Joan­na Hu­sein, drum­mer Nick Thomas, per­cus­sion­ist Tam­ba Gwin­di and a brass sec­tion that con­sists of Bar­ry Homer on trum­pet, Ken­sa Paul on trom­bone and Tony Paul on sax.

They will al­so be sup­port­ed this year by their new­ly ex­pand­ed group of back up singers called The Pooy­ahs fea­tur­ing Diedre Ryan, David Williams, Man­disa Grander­son, Do­minique Doyle Sam­lals­ingh and Abeo Jack­son along with Kim­my Stoute-Robin­son as MC.

In prepa­ra­tion for The 3canal Kaiso Show, the group has been host­ing the pop­u­lar Back­yard Jam every Fri­day at their head­quar­ters, The Big Black on Mur­ray Street, Wood­brook. The fi­nal one takes place to­day.

Join 3canal as they pay trib­ute to the many pi­o­neers and cre­ators and in­no­va­tors of this most unique and en­dur­ing and ever evolv­ing art-form. As rap­so pi­o­neer Broth­er Re­sis­tance once said, “From rap­so to kaiso, swing the thing!”

Tick­ets for The 3canal Kaiso Show which runs from Feb­ru­ary 22 to 25 are on sale on Is­land Et­ick­ets and at the Queen’s Hall Box Of­fice.