BAhead of Bajan Superstar Rihanna – The Right Robyn Rihanna Fenty Shine, “if you’re bad”! – played the Super Bowl Half Time Show in February to an audience of millions, Trinidadian Nicki Minaj boldly rapped with Madonna on the 2012 edition of that show. (Rihanna and Nicki, incidentally, graced the cover Caribbean Beat.)
Across the region, there was pride and passion for Caribbean talent on a world stage. But the continued lack of editorial space in mainstream metropolitan media, underscoring the strength of that connection to the Caribbean, harkens back to another time decades ago. Then, children in the West Indian diaspora were experimenting with music that would blaze new trails for global entertainment.
According to the accepted timeline, 50 years ago, in the summer of 1973, a Jamaican DJ who had immigrated to the United States almost seven years earlier played at his sister’s party in the Bronx – giving birth to hip-hop. DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell) was not yet 20 years old.
in 2003, Caribbean Beat gave notice of hip-hop’s musical roots in the Caribbean. With their DJs toasting and talking into the microphone over ska and dub beats, the influence of Jamaican sound systems of the 1950s and 60s on the development of rap music that emerged during those Bronx summer parties of the 1970s is codified by musicologists.
Herc’s Caribbean-American peers developed and grew the genre into a major US music export. A roll call of these founding fathers includes Grandmaster Flash (born in Barbados, raised in Brooklyn), KRS-One (Barbadian father, American mother, born in Brooklyn) and Afrika Bambaataa (Jamaican and Barbadian parents, raised in the Bronx ). among others.
In a new century, Caribbean-American artists have embraced hip-hop and its variations. Riding on the shoulders of pioneering rappers, Foxy Brown (Trinidad parents, born in Brooklyn), Nicki Minaj and Cardi B (Dominican Republican father, Trinidadian mother, born in Manhattan) have taken on the role of female MC in the genre in superstar status. .
Their influence can be found in rising stars like Young Devyn, who represents a modern incarnation of hip-hop — training in Brooklyn — and who proudly “waves her Trini flag, [as] it fuses soca, hip-hop and R&B.”
The evolution of Hip-Hop was global. Across the pond in the UK, bleak and jungle music had its genesis among West Indian children there, post-Windrush. And on both sides of the Atlantic, a new generation of artists born into Caribbean families was influenced by the music and spirit of an island environment – the food, the family, the parties – but has gone “beyond the boundaries of cultural heritage”.
Ttoday, the music industry looks to social media to discover talent and tap into the buying power of the influential general Z. A Los Angeles-based, self-described American-Trinidadian duo – Bryce Drew and TRISHES – are fearlessly tapping into the mainstream market independent online singer-songwriter to describe the impact of dual heritage on a modern music career in the US.
Bryce Drew Davidson (Trinidadian mother, American father) was born and raised in Miami before moving to Nashville, Tennessee—first for a degree from Belmont University, then to launch her music career—then west to LA. Trinidadian heritage is an important part of her identity as an artist.
“I grew up listening to calypso music,” she says Caribbean Beat. “In my lyrics and songwriting, I feel the nature of conversational storytelling stems from that. Trinidadian music is based around connection, and that is at the core of what I do… There is a common thread between the central themes of balance, hope and love in Caribbean music and the messages found in my songs. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
Trinidad’s memories of dancing to the music of Kes and David Rudder at her grandparents’ house live on.
Since partnering with multi-Grammy-winning producer Greg Wells several years ago, Bryce’s deeply personal and narrative songs have taken on a distinctly pop sensibility that she admits is only a first step toward a more inclusive cultural embrace.
“Although it may not be obvious to the average listener, for me the influence of Caribbean music is in everything I do,” she explains. “It’s deeply ingrained in who I am and I would absolutely love to lean more into my Caribbean music heritage in the future.”
Meanwhile, TRISHES is the alter ego of Trish Hosein, whose album Id was reviewed in Caribbean Beat in 2021. She is the child of a Trinidadian immigrant computer genius who moved with his family to the US when she was about seven years old.
The Berklee College of Music graduate challenges the boundaries of art and constructs of the self using live looping, visual art and spoken word, and defines her music as “experimental conceptual pop.”
Her undeniably original songwriting, embodied by hip-hop beats and pop hooks, examines the human struggle to invite listeners on a journey of self-discovery.
She also knows her place in the world. Of her career in the crowded California market, she notes, “I think it’s just hard to hear. It’s the act of being blindfolded and taking an ax to a tree. Sometimes it can seem like nothing is happening because the tree hasn’t fallen, even when you’re just one swing away.”
Unlike many of her peers, she makes a living from her creative endeavors and has never had a “day job.” She is looking to work with some Trinidadian artists who do more traditional Caribbean styles on a project, be it new music or remixes.
Her migration from a childhood in Trinidad to an American adulthood has given her a unique perspective on privilege, ethnicity, and race.
“I think it is my reason as well [TRISHES] the project focuses on seemingly contradictory aspects of the self,” she says. “I think a lot of that probably comes from being of two countries in a way that I had to decide if I belonged to neither or both. And I decided I belonged to both.”
Sthe search for and acceptance of a new identity is the constant exercise of these musical artists with a legacy that spans regions. Mirroring the genesis of hip-hop half a century ago in the US, Caribbean-British youth are leading a new kind of renaissance in music – what The Guardian (UK) called “a new and exciting jazz movement… born of fresh experimentalism [that] it’s reaching a much younger, more diverse audience and doesn’t care about plagiarism.”
Nubya Garcia (Trinidadian father, Guyanese mother), Theon Cross (Jamaican father, St Lucian mother) and Moses Boyd (Dominican and Jamaican grandparents) have been among its leaders since the 2010s.
There is an old Caribbean wit: “If a dog has puppies in the oven, do you call it bread?” This question mirrors the question asked by sociologists thinking about nationhood and identity: what does it mean to be Caribbean if you were not born there, but your parents were?
Garcia pointed out a few years ago that, “I’m Caribbean and I play jazz.” However, she would never use the term “Caribbean jazz” to describe her brand of music, which draws freely from the sounds of the African and Caribbean diaspora – calypso, dub, Afrobeat.
“I didn’t grow up in the Caribbean,” she explains. “I honestly have no first-hand knowledge of what it is. I really don’t know enough about Caribbean jazz to call myself a part of it.”
Caribbean people hold heritage as a badge of honor. A metropolitan experience shaped by ties to that heritage has proven to be a powerful force, expanding the Caribbean’s footprint in new music globally.
The migrations of colonial Caribbean people to “Mother England” from the late 1940s – a metaphorical movement from the periphery to the center – sparked a cultural shift in the UK that continues today. In America, the legacy of Caribbean immigrants has in turn transformed the musical landscape and subtly added new twists to the popular music canon there.
The creation of new musical legacies by Caribbean musicians across the diaspora is happening before our eyes – and their stories have yet to be told.
