Nigel Teles­ford

Kes The Band touched hearts and unit­ed bod­ies in move­ments and melodies when they cel­e­brat­ed their 20th an­niver­sary in fine style at the IzWe Fes­ti­val last Tues­day night.

The Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah was a sea of rags and flags, phone lights and raised hands as the band of broth­ers from south Trinidad pre­sent­ed their ul­ti­mate con­cert per­for­mance of the 2025 Car­ni­val sea­son.

“I just have to ap­plaud and thank my en­tire team,” Kees said af­ter­wards.

“I give thanks to my fam­i­ly and all the peo­ple who came out to sup­port us. I feel very blessed and grate­ful to be able to do some­thing like this—on this scale and mag­ni­tude—in the midst of the crazy Car­ni­val sea­son no less... and to be able to cel­e­brate 20 years in this way, it feels re­al­ly amaz­ing.”

Com­plete with guest ap­pear­ances from the top so­ca stars, in­clud­ing GBM Nu­tron, Coutain, Ravi B, Nailah Black­man, Er­phaan Alves, Full Blown En­ter­tain­ment, Yung Bred­da, Mi­cal Te­ja, Patrice Roberts, Na­dia Bat­son and Voice, the Iz We Fes­ti­val was one of the biggest and most dy­nam­ic and unique con­cert events of the Car­ni­val sea­son.

The fes­ti­val com­po­nent cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs as well as up-and-com­ing tal­ents and gave pa­trons a more whole­some ex­pe­ri­ence be­yond the mu­si­cal and per­for­mance artistry on­stage.

In cel­e­brat­ing their 20th an­niver­sary, Kes The Band al­so pub­lished a spe­cial pull­out in the Guardian News­pa­per last week and com­plet­ed their fam­i­ly cir­cle with a spe­cial guest ap­pear­ance and per­for­mance by Kees’ daugh­ter, Zion, and the ma­tri­arch of the Di­ef­fen­thaller clan, Dean­na Di­ef­fen­thaller, who de­liv­ered a pow­er­ful ren­di­tion of Ride on King Je­sus.

The band closed their set with Sa­van­nah Grass.

With a chart-top­ping sin­gle in Co­coa Tea and the mo­men­tum of their suc­cess­ful US East Coast Tour last De­cem­ber, look out for more huge de­vel­op­ments from Kees as they con­tin­ue their mis­sion to take so­ca across the globe.