SAN­DRA L BLOOD

mindup.slblood@gmail.com

Mere days af­ter con­clud­ing their high­ly im­pact­ful Li­ki Ti­ki Tour in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da, the #1 trend­ing So­ca band, KES has an­nounced the of­fi­cial date for their 2023 Car­ni­val con­cert and cul­tur­al ex­trav­a­gan­za ti­tled IzWe. On Valen­tine’s Day, Feb­ru­ary 14, the band of broth­ers will be shar­ing big love at a venue to be an­nounced in the cap­i­tal city of Port-of-Spain. How­ev­er, be­fore Trinidad Car­ni­val kicks in its world-fa­mous gear, KES is sched­uled to make no­table ap­pear­ances at the To­ba­go Mu­sic, Arts and Cul­ture (TOMAC) Fes­ti­val and the World Cre­ole Fes­ti­val in Do­mini­ca.

Just last week­end, Oc­to­ber 8-9, Gram­my-award win­ning, Di­a­mond-sell­ing, Ja­maican su­per­star, Shag­gy, made a spe­cial guest ap­pear­ance and brought out so­ca star, Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller (Kes) to pre­miere their new col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing the first-ever Tip­sy Mu­sic Fes­ti­val held at the Bayfront Park in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da.

Head­lined by Afrobeats megas­tar, Bur­na Boy, the Tip­sy Mu­sic Fes­ti­val at­tract­ed thou­sands to down­town Mi­a­mi and in­clud­ed per­for­mances by Skin­ny Fab­u­lous from St Vin­cent, Hy­pa­sounds from Bar­ba­dos, as well as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s own, Machel Mon­tano: whose high-en­er­gy, nos­tal­gic set in­clud­ed many of his So­ca clas­sics, as well as ap­pear­ances from Voice, Farmer Nap­py and Vin­cent­ian singer/song­writer, Prob­lem Child.

Kees Dieffenthaller

Innis Francis

In the midst of all this live per­for­mance ac­tion, Kes’ hit col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hait­ian pro­duc­er, Michael Brun and singer/song­writer, Jonathan JPer­ry Per­ry, re­ceived Gram­my con­sid­er­a­tion from the Record­ing Acad­e­my in the cat­e­go­ry of Best Glob­al Mu­sic Per­for­mance.

Still amazed by this last achieve­ment es­pe­cial­ly, the band is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment ear­ly on the morn­ing of Oc­to­ber 14:

“We are very grate­ful to share this mo­ment with every­one. This is a pos­i­tive step in the di­rec­tion that we all want to see for the genre. We will con­tin­ue to push the bound­aries fur­ther­ing our mis­sion to spread So­ca to every cor­ner of the world. Big love and re­spect to J Per­ry, Micheal Brun, Neel Dwala, Maya Co­zi­er and her team; In­ef­fa­ble Records, our man­age­ment Evan Vo­gel and Da­mon De­Graff, as well as our whole mu­si­cal fam­i­ly for all mak­ing this im­por­tant mile­stone a re­al­i­ty. Of course, we can­not for­get all the sup­port­ers, fans, lovers of the band and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Do­mini­ca, Haiti, Be­lize and the en­tire Caribbean re­gion, for al­ways giv­ing us that sup­port and that en­er­gy to move for­ward.”

Shaggy

TOMAC is a five-day Afro-To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­ence in mu­sic, per­for­mance, pa­rades, food, ex­hibits, sem­i­nars and shops, which be­gins with a Cer­e­mo­ni­al Open­ing on Sun­day, Oc­to­ber 23 and runs through to the night of Thurs­day Oc­to­ber 27. Staged on the pic­turesque Ply­mouth Park Grounds, the Fes­ti­val will pay homage to liv­ing leg­end Lord Pa­pa Nel­son and will fea­ture two mar­quis con­certs: On Mon­day Oc­to­ber 24, Kes will head­line the Lord Nel­son Trib­ute Con­cert and on Thurs­day Oc­to­ber 27, in­ter­na­tion­al megas­tar, Bur­na Boy will close out the Fes­ti­val with a riv­et­ing Afro-Beats mu­si­cal cel­e­bra­tion.

The World Cre­ole Mu­sic Fes­ti­val in Do­mini­ca fea­tures the cre­ole cul­ture of cre­ole-speak­ing coun­tries in the Caribbean, Eu­rope and Africa. It seeks to aug­ment the cre­ole month fes­tiv­i­ties and In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions held in Oc­to­ber and boost vis­i­tor ar­rivals to the is­land. The fes­ti­val fea­tures var­i­ous mu­si­cal gen­res, in­clud­ing reg­gae, zouk, kom­pa, ca­dence, bouy­on, sal­sa, dance­hall, meringue and souk­ous zy­de­co.

Kees, left, and Haitian singer, JPerry, perform their hit song, Liki Tiki, at One Fete in Florida 2022. The cross Caribbean collab has been selected for Grammy consideration in the category of Best Global Music Performance.

The three nights of pul­sat­ing rhythms will be held from Oc­to­ber 28 to 30 and in­clude a di­verse cast of en­ter­tain­ers, in­clud­ing: from Do­mini­ca: Colton T, The Orig­i­nal WCK, First Ser­e­nade, Reo, Car­lyn XP, Sig­nal Band, Asa Ban­tan, Triple Kay In­ter­na­tion­al, Mid­night Groovers and Ex­ta­cy. From the French-speak­ing Caribbean: Chire Lakay, En­posib, Ad­mi­ral T and Kadi­lac and Bed­jine.

Bring­ing Reg­gae and Dance­hall mu­sic from Ja­maica are none oth­er than Christo­pher Mar­tin, Shenseea, Siz­zla and Dex­ta Daps, whilst Patrice Roberts (with the ATeam band) and Kes the Band will be bring­ing So­ca from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

With Trinidad Car­ni­val loom­ing on the hori­zon, it’s clear that So­ca mu­sic is on the rise with­in the glob­al mu­sic mar­kets and our ar­ti­sans are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to­ward ma­jor break­throughs, ac­claim and no­to­ri­ety for the genre, the is­land and the re­gion as a whole.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion: kesthe­band.com.