An edited version of this article was published in the May/June issue of Caribbean Beat as “Three Island Songbirds”.
Hundreds of travel writers have come to the Caribbean — these “Happy Isles”, this “Continent of Islands” — over the decades to describe the region to international audiences, to affirm or condemn our aesthetic and landscape. Much fewer music writers over that time have combed our cities, towns, and beaches looking for the essence of how we sing, how we dance, how we live. They have mainly settled into elucidating the rhythms and songs that propels island Carnivals, that provides sanctuary for minds elevated on the spirits of Bob Marley, Rastafari and Jamaica, and recently, that moves a global Latin music industry dancing between caliente spirit and Afro-Caribbean dembow beats. Among all these “musics from hot latitudes,” there exists a small section of original singer-songwriters making music that thrills with the idea that a metropolitan sound can work to bring recognition to island songcraft and originality, to a new Caribbean aesthetic.
To learn about new music, it works better sometimes to learn of the people behind what you hear. Recently, Caribbean Beat was able to visit island destinations that allowed for deeper conversations with singers who show a promising new take on how influences can become catalysts for new songs. While the recorded canon can signal reportable interest and popularity, the live experience of these singers in intimate venues that expose character adds charm and needs to be a part of the experience in the Caribbean.
Grenadian Sabrina Francis, Tobago-based Trinidadian Kye De Vere, and Barbadian Kellie Cadogan all serve as a cross-section to the possibilities of Caribbean song. With diverse origin and pathway stories that reflect the beauty of island life and opportunities, these women tap into the zeitgeist of a modern Caribbean both influenced by and influencing the world.
Sabrina Francis
Grenada
Sabrina Francis represents naive optimism built on new relationships, paralleling an aspect of our islands’ character. Not born yet to experience the odd and deadly 1983 American invasion of Maurice Bishop’s newly revolutionised Grenada, not old enough to fully register the emotional impact of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 on her island, she is a singer with an angelic voice. Her new concept recording and immersive live project, Meet Me at the Mango Tree, is a newly minted autobiography in songs that reflect her past journey through the pathos of “disappointment, abandonment and heartbreak” toward a promising future in a still evolving career.
The lyrics of her recent single, “Magical Life”, tell the story:
“I’m up in the middle of the night
Staring up at a window above me
But it does not lead outside
It’s a world on its own and I found it…
I asked your world my questions and woke to no reply
Maybe this is my why and my answer
To start living a magical life.”
Supported by the patronage of a pair of Swiss expatriates resident in Grenada, she is blessed by their seemingly endless enthusiasm and broader metropolitan vision. Her mother, a calypsonian, migrated to seek better fortunes for all, and Francis and her sisters and brothers having to make ends meet, her all-natural dulcet voice was heard by the Swiss couple when she sang a couple songs at their hotel Christmas party, and disappeared. “I’m from the very north of the island, deep deep country.” Reconnecting after a one-year search, the patrons worked the system here and abroad with goals of developing her songwriting skill, positioning her in a primary position among island singers, and spreading her talent Caribbean-wide and into the U.K.
“The biggest plan at the top of our list right now is to break into the U.K. with my new project, Meet Me at the Mango Tree,” she notes. She continues, “we want to take the year 2024 to build on it even more, and make it better, and tour with it in 2025.” Those first-person pronouns show that the team effort is ongoing since the 2019 rediscovery, and with over four dozen songs on streaming platforms, which she categorises as Afro-Caribbean pop, she can better gauge her catalogue and career. “The early songs was just me still trying to find what I now consider my sound. And just because I lived life, I’m older, I’m more experienced, I’m more confident in the things that I do. I feel that the songs I create now are truly my songs, my message, and I stand in front of them proudly,” she relates.
Kye De Vere
Tobago
On a concurrent path of self-discovery in a re-burgeoning career is Kye De Vere. Her origin story differs as she was the product of an English mother and Trinidadian father, which demands another way to understand Caribbean heritage and life. Her south-east London accent that dips in and out of her conversation exposes the fact that that dual heritage does not mar her reality as a self-described Tobago gyal.
In the first turbulent 18 years of her life — half her life really — she moved back and forth between England and Tobago, before settling permanently now in Tobago, giving her an attitude of forced-ripe maturity and earned identity. “As kids, we were out there, and of course, we were way too young.” De Vere says. She had to grow up fast and find her way in the world.
Her songcraft reflects these dual poles of here and there. Musically, she sits between modern island electronic beats and lately, stirring soul belting, and began recording in 2016. “The melody governs what I am feeling, how I am feeling, what I want to say, and then the lyrics kinda fit in,” she says of her writing process. Recently, on taking up the challenge to appear in a music industry showcase in Port of Spain, De Vere wowed the crowd with personal anecdotes set to melodies that channelled both Amy Winehouse’s honesty both in tone and topics, and Lauren Hill’s simple audacity. However, to shun the mask of mimicry, she declares, “the more I got to know myself, I am learning my voice and putting my own twist on the thing! I just started experimenting and that helped me discover my own voice. That is still happening.”
Kellie Cadogan
Barbados
The mirror of influence and imitation that pervades much Caribbean lifestyle has not always been a bad thing: the Caribbean’s biggest living music superstar sings pop music when not being the boss of her cosmetics empire, Fenty Beauty. Her countrywoman, Kellie Cadogan, represent a maturing career that looks, with one eye, to a future reinforced by years of intelligent endeavour to master her craft, and another eye to an upcoming legacy that placed her in the milieu of the Rihanna Effect in 2005, when Barbados was the music business epicentre of potential new talent discovery.
She began her recording career in 2002, and after three albums in 15 years, she admits that, “I had a lot of space in between the music, I was still gigging, but it’s quite exciting to create projects. It’s a journey I truly enjoy.” It’s never too late for a career and to continue it in earnest.
Her initial influences were the vocally reachable Olivia Newton-John and the message-laden calypsos of her Bajan counterpart, and pumpkin-vine family, Red Plastic Bag, while she later fell under the spell of Jill Scott and Alicia Keys. She has admitted that her catalogue spans genres: “If we had to look, the first album was definitely jazz, the second one has some jazz and R&B. It has been more along the lines of jazz, but I think within recent times, the gospel, which is the last project has really been coming out a lot more.” Cadogan continues, “the combination of gospel and jazz with some hints of R&B is a part of who I am. I’m at a stage now where I want to be able to do the music that speaks the messages that I believe.”
The Caribbean character reflected in these three island songbirds — “three little birds…singing sweet songs of melodies pure and true,” as Bob Marley sang — is best witnessed live. The resilience, the persistence, the overcoming of obstacles by fate, by favour, by force of nature are part of the DNA of Caribbean lives. Discovering new voices in intimate spaces or on festival stages is easier now — Caribbean Airlines flies to many islands — and the continuing efforts of singer-songwriters to blend global sounds, local lore and personal stories to make the new is rewarding.
© 2024, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.