Cherisse Moe

De­spite be­ing born and raised in Chica­go, USA, Jo Wheel­er is, in her own words, "a true Tri­ni to the bone." Ten years ago, she was in­tro­duced to the in­fec­tious sounds of this coun­try's in­dige­nous mu­si­cal gen­res while work­ing at a Chica­go-based ra­dio sta­tion, WKKC, which had a four-hour show ded­i­cat­ed to reg­gae and world mu­sic. She's still hooked. "So­ca and ca­lyp­so re­minds me a lot of House mu­sic, with the fast-paced, heavy bass lines and drum beats. Trinidad is like the Caribbean ver­sion of Chica­go House mu­sic," she says.

Re­lo­cat­ing to New York City in 2003, Wheel­er got an­oth­er po­tent taste of T&T cul­ture dur­ing Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions, where she played J'Ou­vert for the first time. Not yet sat­is­fied that she had ex­pe­ri­enced all that Trinidad had to of­fer, three years lat­er, a de­ter­mined Wheel­er, who has no fam­i­ly here, board­ed a plane bound for Port-of-Spain and "in­stant­ly fell in love" with the coun­try. "Since then, I've been back every year and every time I come I stay longer than the time be­fore. Even­tu­al­ly, when I come, I'm nev­er go­ing back," she de­clares, in her strong Amer­i­can ac­cent.

So­ca junkie

Vow­ing to do her part to pro­mote not on­ly T&T but the en­tire Caribbean re­gion, Wheel­er has used her ex­per­tise in me­dia to pro­vide much need­ed ex­po­sure for lo­cal and Caribbean artistes. Hav­ing worked at the Reg­gae and World Mu­sic Awards as a pro­duc­tion co-or­di­na­tor for the past six years, and with artistes such as Ja­maica's Bush­man, the self-pro­claimed "so­ca junkie," who's cov­ered sev­er­al Car­ni­val events over the years, has now turned her at­ten­tion to her lat­est project–em­bark­ing on a world tour with one of reg­gae's longest run­ning bands, Third World.

Cel­e­brat­ing 37 years in the mu­sic busi­ness, Third World is due to per­form in the US, Africa, Japan, Eu­rope and the Caribbean and Wheel­er says plans are to have the group vis­it Trinidad as well. Cur­rent­ly work­ing as a free­lance ra­dio pro­duc­er at New York's WWWRL Ra­dio, she says, "Once it's hap­pen­ing in the Caribbean, I'll be there. I've tak­en up the cru­sade." Wheel­er's work in the re­gion reach­es her Amer­i­can and in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence via the sta­tion's on­line edi­tion, www.carib­zone.com.

Hid­den gem

While not­ing that Trinida­di­ans are blessed with tal­ent, Wheel­er be­lieves that the time has come for artistes to mar­ket them­selves in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and take their craft to a high­er lev­el. "Mu­sic is the great con­nec­tor of peo­ple that cross­es all bar­ri­ers. "Trinida­di­ans should start look­ing at them­selves more glob­al­ly...It's eas­i­er now with the In­ter­net. "Trinidad is like a hid­den gem that shouldn't be hid­den." Be­sides the mu­sic and the cul­ture, there's one more thing that ex­cites the 39-year-old about Trinidad. "I love a Tri­ni man!" she pro­claims. "When­ev­er I'm leav­ing the air­port to go back home, I'm like 'damn, I should re­al­ly just get back in a taxi and go back up de road!'"