Paula Lin­do

Now is the time for Caribbean Dance Mu­sic (CDM) pro­duc­ers, artists and DJs to come to­geth­er to de­ter­mine what the genre en­tails, says pro­mot­er Kar­rilee Fi­fi. It is for this rea­son she has or­ga­nized the sec­ond an­nu­al Caribbean Dance Mu­sic Con­fer­ence, sched­uled for Au­gust 12-14.

Fi­fi is the pro­mot­er be­hind some re­cent pop­u­lar dance par­ties, in­clud­ing Life in Colour, Sun­set Fes­ti­val and Light Re­pub­lic. In 2014, she es­tab­lished CDM Gen­er­a­tion, and the Turn­ing Point Arts & Mu­sic Foun­da­tion in 2016, as plat­forms for CDM prac­ti­tion­ers.

"Just for them to have an­oth­er av­enue to put their mu­sic out and re­al­ly sup­port them, be­cause in T&T specif­i­cal­ly there's re­al­ly on­ly sup­port for the so­ca in­dus­try, and there's a lot more tal­ent be­yond so­ca."

She said while CDM can vague­ly be de­fined as a fu­sion of Caribbean mu­sic el­e­ments and dance mu­sic el­e­ments, pro­duc­ers and artists dif­fer in their de­f­i­n­i­tions.

"The pro­duc­ers will al­ways say that it's the beat that de­fines what the genre is, but if we're try­ing to own this Caribbean Dance Mu­sic as one Caribbean, and re­al­ly put an um­brel­la term over it, the artists' ar­gu­ment is that when you put a Caribbean vo­cal on it, it should be al­so clas­si­fied as CDM, so it can go ei­ther way."

The con­fer­ence, which is geared to­wards DJs, pro­duc­ers, artists, song­writ­ers and mu­sic en­thu­si­asts, be­gins on Au­gust 12 from 1-7 pm at UTT Ch­aguara­mas. In the line­up of speak­ers are Jose Abreu from Sony En­ter­tain­ment speak­ing about dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion and Ja­son Gillette from Ul­tra Records speak­ing about li­cenc­ing and syn­chro­niza­tion.

The keynote speak­er is An­dreea Mag­dali­na, founder of she­said.so, an all-fe­male foun­da­tion that sup­ports women in the mu­sic in­dus­try, and for­mer VP of Con­tent at Mix­Cloud. Oth­er speak­ers in­clude Richard Bal­go­b­in, a cer­ti­fied Able­ton tech­ni­cian, and Jo­hann Seaton, part of the band Ul­ti­mate Re­jects.

Bad Royale, a four-man DJ pro­duc­er group and fea­tured DJs, will al­so be do­ing a work­shop-type pro­duc­tion sem­i­nar and Bun­ji Gar­lin and Fay-Ann Lyons are ex­pect­ed to per­form. Mu­si­cian Carl "Beaver" Hen­der­son will be the host and mod­er­a­tor.

Fol­low­ing the con­fer­ence, the group Chil­dren of the Coup will be pre­sent­ing an art, mu­sic and fash­ion event called Oil Down, from 4 pm-3 am at Eu­pho­ria Lounge.

The main event on Au­gust 13 is a par­ty fea­tur­ing DJ group Bad Royale, which will be held at Tzar Night­club & Roll Rooftop, Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­book. Be­tween 9 pm and mid­night there will be a live arts seg­ment, where peo­ple can come in and ex­press them­selves us­ing dif­fer­ent art ma­te­ri­als.

"Roll Rooftop is go­ing to be straight dance mu­sic, with DJs like Val­star, Jer­ry West, Matthew Charles and Nick Farah. Tzar Night­club will host a mix of CDM DJs, ra­dio DJs and the main act, Bad Royale, with the artists that will be per­form­ing with them, like Sys­tem 32, Ul­ti­mate Re­jects, Colony, 1st Klase, etc. We'll prob­a­bly have about 20 DJs in to­tal that night."

The Yacht Cruise on Au­gust 14 will be a cool-down ses­sion on Is­land Vibes' yacht, host­ed by DJ Val­star.

Fi­fi said she chose to mod­el the three-day event af­ter mu­sic fes­ti­vals she has at­tend­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. "The vibe you get there, it's all peace and love and good vibes, and you don't get that at the av­er­age cool­er par­ty, ex­cept dur­ing Car­ni­val. I think events need to strive more for that type of vibe, be­cause when you're bring­ing peo­ple to­geth­er it should be for some­thing more spe­cial and not just to make mon­ey."

Fi­fi chose the name Turn­ing Point be­cause she wants at­ten­dees to re­alise that now is the time for them to put in the work and build a ca­reer, as they have these dif­fer­ent plat­forms and sup­port sys­tems to ed­u­cate them on how to ac­tu­al­ly mon­e­tise and mar­ket their mu­sic

"The quick­er we can get them to re­al­ize that you can have a suc­cess­ful ca­reer in the mu­sic in­dus­try, the bet­ter it's go­ing to be for every­body."She said CDM isn't a fad or a trend, and it is ever evolv­ing.

"There are al­ready sub-gen­res of CDM, so you'll find there's a mix of trap, which is a sub-genre of dance mu­sic, and dance­hall: they're call­ing it trap-hall. Sim­i­lar­ly, heavy bass mu­sic and dance­hall, they call it bass-hall. Even Bun­ji had start­ed some­thing with Richie Stephens called ska-tech, which is a fu­sion of ska and tech­no. There's an­oth­er thing called fu­ture dance­hall."

Fi­fi said it is up to Caribbean mu­sic pro­fes­sion­als to un­der­stand there's a re­al­ly huge op­por­tu­ni­ty for col­lab­o­ra­tion.

"I've al­ready had peo­ple from Be­lize, Mar­tinique, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, reach­ing out, say­ing that they love this move­ment, they un­der­stand ex­act­ly what the vi­sion is, how can they get in­volved, how can we swap DJs, how can we sup­port each oth­er in terms of events, so I can al­ready see that it is some­thing that is go­ing to keep grow­ing.

"As Caribbean tal­ent, we know it bet­ter than any­body, we've grown up on this mu­sic our en­tire lives and even be­fore us, so there's no rea­son why we shouldn't be do­ing it the best, there's no rea­son why our artists or our pro­duc­ers shouldn't be work­ing with the in­ter­na­tion­al artists."