Lynch­pin (aka LYNCH­PiN) is on a mis­sion. The mis­sion is to get to Ger­many, specif­i­cal­ly the small vil­lage of Wack­en in Schleswig-Hol­stein in north­ern Ger­many. The rea­son? To par­tic­i­pate and per­form in Wack­en Open Air 2016 (W:O:A) in Au­gust, the biggest heavy met­al mu­sic fes­ti­val in the world held there an­nu­al­ly.

Seems sim­ple enough un­til one recog­nis­es the hoops lo­cal bands, re­gard­less of genre, have to go through to show­case their mu­sic in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, to tour and to con­nect with au­di­ences be­yond the bor­ders.

Lynch­pin is Trinidad's pre­mier death­core met­al band–death­core is de­scribed as a fu­sion genre of a few more ag­gres­sive and abra­sive forms of heavy met­al char­ac­terised by dark some­times ob­scene lyrics and a gut­tur­al singing style–formed back in 2009 by four alum­ni of the lo­cal rock scene–Sievan Siewsar­ran, Ger­ard Fer­reira, Jig­nesh Kha­tri and Aaron Ma­haraj–with a two-fold plan to cre­ate "heav­ier" mu­sic and to re­vi­talise the at­ti­tude and en­er­gy of the 1990s lo­cal rock scene that was wan­ing in the new mil­len­ni­um. The band's tag line seems apt: "Lynch­pin is a band...an at­ti­tude."

Sieven (pro­nounced SEE-van), Lynch­pin's lead vo­cal­ist, ex­plains that Wack­en is the best met­al fes­ti­val in the world and they are the best death­core met­al band in our coun­try so they are aim­ing for a place at Wack­en next year.

There has nev­er been a Caribbean band on the Wack­en stage be­fore. Lynch­pin would be the first and it would be an ho­n­our to cre­ate his­to­ry on the Wack­en stage in the name of our coun­try and our mu­sic. The band has grown in­to its own blend of death, hard­core, pro­gres­sive and groove met­al and has con­tin­ued to evolve its style. This is a style we aim to share at the Wack­en Open Air."

The road to Wack­en is not as smooth as it sounds though. To get there, for un­signed bands not on ma­jor la­bels, they must com­pete in re­gion­al Met­al Bat­tles. The Met­al Bat­tles bring to­geth­er met­al bands from all re­gions of the world, es­pe­cial­ly those who have not yet been heard. The fi­nal­ists of each and every re­gion get to com­pete at the world fi­nals at Wack­en. The Caribbean re­gion will de­but its Bat­tle in Para­mari­bo, Suri­name in April 2016. Lynch­pin will be among five bands, if picked from sub­mis­sions, com­pet­ing in Suri­name for the sin­gle spot in W:O:A.

The idea of com­pe­ti­tion for a lim­it­ed space on a big­ger stage is a re­cur­ring theme in the mu­sic scene glob­al­ly, and a sim­i­lar path was tak­en by lo­cal bands try­ing to get to South by South­west Mu­sic Con­fer­ence & Fes­ti­val (SXSW) in Austin, Texas in March 2016.

Get­ting there is easy enough with plan­ning and skill. Rais­ing the mon­ey to pay to get there high­lights the de­fi­cien­cies in the busi­ness of mu­sic in these is­lands. Economies of scale lim­it cer­tain busi­ness mod­els, and fund­ing pat­terns in the past are not trans­fer­able in these harsh eco­nom­ic times and for many bands, more so a band in a niche genre like death­core.

Siewsar­ran not­ed that de­spite fund­ing strug­gles and dis­ap­point­ments, both with the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor, he and his band mates would be go­ing to Suri­name on their own coin if se­lect­ed, and on­to Ger­many if they were the even­tu­al win­ners of the Caribbean Met­al Bat­tle.

That dogged de­ter­mi­na­tion re­flects a spir­it that is re­flect­ed in the band's vi­sion for it­self. "Lynch­pin, as a Caribbean death­core met­al band, is a unique en­ti­ty that de­mands an at­ti­tude of re­silience, con­fi­dence and in­tense pas­sion...This band is rep­re­sent­ing us, we have to be se­ri­ous."

The band is in a bet­ter po­si­tion than some oth­er Caribbean met­al bands that have reached out to Lynch­pin let­ting them know that fund­ing for those oth­er bands is in such dire straits that it does not even make sense try­ing to get to Suri­name since the Ger­many trip, if suc­cess­ful, would be nigh im­pos­si­ble. Siewsar­ran sug­gest­ed that about TT$100,000 would be need­ed for the Eu­ro­pean trip to cov­er air­fare, ground trav­el, equip­ment ship­ping and ac­com­mo­da­tion. Iron­i­cal­ly the band has nev­er toured out­side of Trinidad.

De­spite this, the mem­bers who all have day jobs, have net­worked ef­fec­tive­ly with their fans lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly to se­cure tracks on in­ter­na­tion­al met­al com­pi­la­tions, ac­co­lades in in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia and to sell copies of their CDs (a two-song maxi sin­gle and a six-song EP God Com­plex). They per­se­vere de­spite it all re­main­ing sin­gle-fo­cused: Wack­en or bust! From see­ing the re­al thing in 2014 as a spec­ta­tor to po­ten­tial­ly be­ing a per­former in 2016, Lynch­pin hangs in there de­bat­ing naysay­ers and cyn­ics who chal­lenge their choice of song top­ics–"the world has gone too po­lit­i­cal­ly cor­rect. We read about death dai­ly here in the press, but to sing about it is wrong?"–and com­ing to terms with the strug­gles to move our mu­sic, in­dige­nous or ap­pro­pri­at­ed, be­yond the bound­ary.

In March 2016, ASK Pro­mo­tions once again was able to se­cure a T&T stage at the an­nu­al SXSW Mu­sic Fes­ti­val and Con­fer­ence in Austin, Texas. Fol­low­ing from the 2015 event where the T&T stage de­buted with Mighty Spar­row and Trinidad Jame$ head­lin­ing, Amer­i­can mu­sic pro­duc­er Todd Puck­haber via ASK Pro­mo­tions se­lect­ed six acts to get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reg­is­ter to show­case at the fes­ti­val "for over 25,000 in­dus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives and fel­low mu­si­cians com­bined, plus near­ly 3,000 me­dia mem­bers and thou­sands of fans in at­ten­dance."

By at­tri­tion, four acts are now set to be in a po­si­tion to go to Austin with head­lin­ers De­stra Gar­cia and Trinida­di­an-Ger­man Eu­ro­dance artist Had­daway, fa­mous for his 1992 in­ter­na­tion­al hit What is Love: rock bands Joint­pop, 5 Miles to Mid­night, Side­kick En­vy and hip hop in­no­va­tors Inzey and Dopeskis­D­a­Band. This eclec­tic mix of tal­ent seems to con­tra­dict a sen­ti­ment ear­li­er in 2015 by Stephen Howard, ASK Pro­mo­tions CEO, about the dif­fi­cul­ty of lo­cal rock and R&B acts to com­pete ef­fec­tive­ly in the US with­in those gen­res. That said, the ad­di­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ty on the bands for SXSW 2016 is the fund­ing op­tions that seem to have dried up com­plete­ly.

In 2015, the Min­istry of the Arts fund­ed the artists par­tic­i­pa­tion at SXSW to the tune of $1 mil­lion plus. In 2016, Ask Pro­mo­tions de­cid­ed that the risk was not worth the re­wards in terms of busi­ness en­gage­ment, pub­lic re­la­tions and per­son­al in­ter­ac­tion, so the com­pa­ny has asked the acts to pay for their ex­pens­es in­clud­ing trav­el and ac­com­mo­da­tion, mar­ket­ing and PR, some pro­duc­tion costs and reg­is­tra­tion fees, all sourced by ASK. Char­lene Bel­fon, ASK COO told the T&T Guardian that the to­tal fig­ure is close to $1.2 mil­lion for 44 per­sons con­sist­ing of artists, film crew, PR, tour man­ag­er. to go for four days. ASK has a rec­i­p­ro­cal arrange­ment with SXSW where they do not have to pay, and the fig­ure does not in­clude ASK per­son­nel. Any spon­sor­ship gained by Ask would off­set any down­pay­ments al­ready made by acts.

Bands have al­ready not­ed the dif­fi­cul­ty in sourc­ing in­vest­ments of more than $100,000 for their in­di­vid­ual con­tin­gents to trav­el to Texas. Gary Hec­tor of Joint­pop ad­mit­ted that he had two coupons for SXSW, but even with the in­creased odds, cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship is al­most closed to his band be­cause of the genre. Rock is shunned lo­cal­ly for prac­ti­cal (small niche mar­ket) and per­ceived (it's too risky) rea­sons by cor­po­rate in­vestors. (A coupon is the "tick­et" to reg­is­ter in the data­base for the fes­ti­val. An "in­vi­ta­tion to per­form" is the de­sired piece of pa­per for any act. No in­vite, no SXSW per­for­mance. Gueril­la mar­ket­ing and per­for­mances are not al­lowed.)

All bands left of the ini­tial six recog­nise the po­ten­tial to get to SXSW. "Show­cas­es lead to tour­ing," says Hec­tor, a vet­er­an of tour­ing on the UK cir­cuit but some 15 years out of a US tour. Thomp­son say that if the band can't raise the funds, he will still go to par­tic­i­pate in the fes­ti­val as a means of con­nect­ing and net­work­ing via the con­fer­ence route. These re­spons­es beg the ques­tion, what was the pur­pose of Mu­sicTT and Cre­ativeTT in­vest­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in 2015 to do a par­al­lel SXSW jaunt with just a rem­i­nis­cence of the trip as a pair of video ex­cerpts on Face­book?

Pub­lic sec­tor fi­nanc­ing of these show­cas­ing tours was a func­tion of the state en­ter­prise, but the shod­dy per­for­mance has cast doubt on the ef­fi­ca­cy of the busi­ness mod­el in the fu­ture.