Fay­ola Fras­er

In a re­gion­al con­text where nightlife and en­ter­tain­ment have tra­di­tion­al­ly been the purview of male se­lec­tors, pro­mot­ers and cu­ra­tors, a new move­ment in T&T is ask­ing a dif­fer­ent ques­tion: what hap­pens when women con­trol the sound, the space and the sto­ry? Gyal Dem, a women-cen­tred nightlife ex­pe­ri­ence cu­rat­ed by the pow­er­house team con­sist­ing of mu­sic pub­lish­ing and en­ter­tain­ment com­pa­ny Sound­line Mu­sic Caribbean founder Melanie Jones-Pow­ell (al­so known as DJ Hon­ey Co­la­da), along­side Toron­to-based Caribbean DJ Lis­sa Mon­et, has burst on­to the lo­cal scene. This team, seek­ing to fill the gap in women-led en­ter­tain­ment ex­pe­ri­ences, has launched not sim­ply an­oth­er par­ty, but a state­ment about fe­male own­er­ship, vis­i­bil­i­ty and cul­tur­al pow­er.

With their first two of­fi­cial events in May 2026, Jones-Pow­ell and Mon­et are ex­plor­ing lega­cy while cre­at­ing in­no­v­a­tive cul­tur­al spaces. Their first event, held on Tues­day, May 19, was the screen­ing of Bam Bam: The Sis­ter Nan­cy Sto­ry, a doc­u­men­tary ex­plor­ing the jour­ney of a pi­o­neer­ing woman in dance­hall mu­sic. The doc­u­men­tary boasts fe­male di­rec­tor­ship and cen­tres the fe­male nar­ra­tive in dance­hall mu­sic, trac­ing the jour­ney of dance­hall icon Sis­ter Nan­cy, whose voice shaped gen­er­a­tions of Caribbean sound while rais­ing en­dur­ing con­ver­sa­tions around recog­ni­tion and own­er­ship.

Gyal Dem, the nightlife ex­pe­ri­ence, takes those themes off the screen and in­to a live cul­tur­al space. Ac­cord­ing to Jones-Pow­ell, the event, held on Sat­ur­day, May 23, “is a plat­form spot­light­ing women artists shap­ing Caribbean sound, and it is DJ-led, fea­tur­ing live per­for­mances by Tri­ni Ba­by and Mela Caribe.”

At the cen­tre of this project is the idea that women are no longer sat­is­fied with mere­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in Caribbean nightlife. They are in­creas­ing­ly in­ter­est­ed in build­ing the in­fra­struc­ture around it by cu­rat­ing stages, con­trol­ling pro­gram­ming, lead­ing mu­sic busi­ness­es and shap­ing the eco­nom­ics of cul­ture it­self. Jones-Pow­ell be­lieves deeply in the pow­er of fe­male own­er­ship, say­ing that Gyal Dem is de­signed to high­light women as “cre­ators, cu­ra­tors, and own­ers of sound and nar­ra­tive.”

That dis­tinc­tion mat­ters in a re­gion where Caribbean mu­sic has achieved mas­sive glob­al in­flu­ence, while many of the con­ver­sa­tions around pub­lish­ing, rights man­age­ment and long-term own­er­ship re­main un­der­de­vel­oped. For decades, Caribbean artists, par­tic­u­lar­ly women, have been vis­i­ble faces of move­ments with­out ful­ly ben­e­fit­ing from the sys­tems sur­round­ing them. Gyal Dem po­si­tions it­self as part of a grow­ing push to al­ter that im­bal­ance.

The event or­gan­is­ers in­sist the Gyal Dem stage is not sim­ply about rep­re­sen­ta­tion. It is about lead­er­ship. As Caribbean women con­tin­ue to take a more cen­tral role in po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and cor­po­rate spheres, we are wit­ness­ing a par­al­lel cul­tur­al shift un­fold­ing across the Caribbean cre­ative in­dus­try. Women are in­creas­ing­ly step­ping in­to ex­ec­u­tive and strate­gic roles once seen as in­ac­ces­si­ble, from mu­sic pub­lish­ing and fes­ti­val pro­duc­tion to artist man­age­ment and cul­tur­al con­sult­ing. In that con­text, nightlife be­comes more than en­ter­tain­ment. It be­comes a site of in­fra­struc­ture: a place where net­works are built, au­di­ences are cul­ti­vat­ed and cul­tur­al in­flu­ence is mon­e­tised.

For Jones-Pow­ell, whose work spans mu­sic pub­lish­ing, DJ-ing and cul­tur­al strat­e­gy, the ini­tia­tive is deeply tied to ques­tions of sus­tain­abil­i­ty with­in Caribbean cre­ativ­i­ty. She hopes that this is part of a wider move­ment to­wards Caribbean cul­ture be­ing ap­proached with both “cre­ative and eco­nom­ic in­ten­tion.” That em­pha­sis sig­nals a shift away from the long-held no­tion that Caribbean cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion ex­ists pure­ly for en­joy­ment, de­tached from sus­tain­abil­i­ty, own­er­ship or long-term val­ue.

The tim­ing al­so feels sig­nif­i­cant. Glob­al­ly, con­ver­sa­tions around women’s safe­ty, agency and vis­i­bil­i­ty with­in nightlife and en­ter­tain­ment have in­ten­si­fied in re­cent years. Across many coun­tries, women-led par­ties and col­lec­tives have emerged as al­ter­na­tives to tra­di­tion­al nightlife struc­tures, cre­at­ing en­vi­ron­ments that pri­ori­tise com­mu­ni­ty, ex­pres­sion and au­ton­o­my. Gyal Dem taps in­to that wider re­al­i­ty while ground­ing it­self firm­ly with­in Caribbean iden­ti­ty and sound.

Yet the plat­form does not po­si­tion it­self in op­po­si­tion to Caribbean nightlife cul­ture. In­stead, it seeks to ex­pand it. The at­mos­phere re­mains root­ed in cel­e­bra­tion, mu­sic and per­for­mance, but with an added lay­er of in­ten­tion­al­i­ty. The par­ty it­self be­comes part of the mes­sage: women are not on­ly con­tribut­ing to Caribbean cul­ture, they are ac­tive­ly shap­ing its fu­ture and defin­ing the terms un­der which it evolves.