PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

On In­de­pen­dence Day, the mu­sic video for Lost in Trin­ba­go pre­miered on YouTube, al­most a year af­ter the song, pro­duced by Sher­man de Vries and DJ Pri­vate Ryan and fea­tur­ing Mela Caribe and Ze­bee, was first re­leased ahead of the 2026 Car­ni­val.

The video fur­ther ac­cen­tu­at­ed the song’s pa­tri­ot­ic theme, which may ex­plain the date of its un­veil­ing.

How­ev­er, DJ Pri­vate Ryan (Ryan Alexan­der) and Mela Caribe (Shereese Ed­mund) ex­plained that they strate­gi­cal­ly planned a mul­ti-phased re­lease that would not al­low the track to fade af­ter Car­ni­val, but al­so cre­ate new mo­men­tum head­ing to­wards oth­er im­por­tant dates in T&T.

“Well, what hap­pened was that Lost in Trin­ba­go or­gan­i­cal­ly over the past few months grew to a mil­lion views; we want­ed to take the ap­proach of mak­ing some­thing icon­ic that Trinidad and To­ba­go could be very proud of,” said Ryan in a Zoom in­ter­view with We Life and Cul­ture days af­ter the video’s pre­miere.

“We want­ed to find an icon­ic time to re­lease it, and the best day, ob­vi­ous­ly, that we thought, why not cel­e­brate In­de­pen­dence with it, and then use that as a cat­a­lyst to go through to oth­er icon­ic times; Re­pub­lic Day, To­ba­go Car­ni­val,” said Ryan, “all those things to let the song ac­tu­al­ly have a sec­ond life and al­so be ce­ment­ed as one of the icon­ic Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian songs. So you have Tri­ni to the Bone, and you have Tri­ni by Ben­jai. You know, you would want Lost in Trin­ba­go to live on, as those songs do live on.”

The song has been one of the biggest of Mela Caribe’s ca­reer so far.

“Cre­at­ing this mu­sic video was very im­por­tant for us be­cause, as artistes, we want to be seen, we want to be felt, and we want to be heard. And es­pe­cial­ly for the Tri­ni peo­ple, I don’t think that they would have let us live if we didn’t do vi­su­als for this song, to be hon­est,” she said. She added the video was craft­ed so that Trinidad “didn’t feel just like a back­drop” but func­tioned as “an ac­tu­al char­ac­ter” in the video.

The vi­su­al has Saint Mar­tin-based co-pro­duc­er DJ Sher­man play­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tor “get­ting lost” in the au­then­tic, lived-in tex­tures of Trin­ba­go—from eat­ing dou­bles and drink­ing co­conut wa­ter around the Sa­van­nah to vis­it­ing the 100 Steps in San Fer­nan­do, pan yards with BP Rene­gades, and Ny­lon Pool with Mela as his guide on the jour­ney as the search to con­nect pen­dants rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous parts of T&T.

The tim­ing of the video’s re­lease al­so fol­lows a se­ries of mid-year mu­si­cal re­leas­es from lo­cal artistes, with the fo­cus not nec­es­sar­i­ly on the up­com­ing Car­ni­val sea­son. In the past three months, there have been re­leas­es such as Kes the Band’s “Mas­ter­piece” on the Hill and Gul­ly dance­hall rid­dim, Patrice Roberts “Bounce” on the Rose Rid­dim, Full Blown’s “No Stress”, Nes­sa Prep­py’s “Warm Up” and “Hot Gyal” on the Hot Hole Rid­dim.

Ryan felt this was a good tran­si­tion for the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try.

He said, “Well, it’s good be­cause that cre­ates in­dus­try, and in­dus­try, you know, will have dif­fer­ent pock­ets for dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ics and dif­fer­ent top­ic mat­ters.”

Ryan con­tin­ued, “You can see how a lot of artistes know when they re­lease any mu­sic out­side of Car­ni­val. That is good be­cause that means they’ll be re­cep­tive to year-long re­leas­es as op­posed to sea­son­al, which is part of the chal­lenge of so­ca; you’re try­ing to push 500 or 600 songs for peo­ple to learn in two months.”

He said spac­ing out re­leas­es could help songs grow greater con­nec­tions with the wider au­di­ence and ben­e­fit the artistes in the long run.

“I em­brace the year-long re­leas­es be­cause it gives time to breathe.”

Caribbean Mu­sic Awards spark ex­cite­ment

The duo, while speak­ing in the Zoom meet­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by en­ter­tain­ment en­tre­pre­neur Ker­ra Denel, al­so ex­plained that the de­ci­sion to host the Caribbean Mu­sic Awards (CMA) in Trinidad and To­ba­go rep­re­sents a ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture and eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try.

It is the first time the awards will be held in T&T, with the pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tions host­ed in New York City.

Both Ryan and Mela felt bring­ing to­geth­er top-tier tal­ent from So­ca, Dance­hall, Reg­gae, Bouy­on, and Kom­pa was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case T&T’s abil­i­ty to host and present an awards show which could val­i­date Caribbean mu­sic with the same pres­tige seen at the Gram­mys or Acad­e­my Awards.

“It will be a good thing be­cause I think it will fea­ture some of our lo­cal stars along­side a cast of in­ter­na­tion­al peo­ple that have been seen in that con­text be­fore,” said Ryan, who won In­ter­na­tion­al DJ of the Year last year at the event and is nom­i­nat­ed again this year.

“Hav­ing the likes of, let’s say, Machel Mon­tano, Mela, Kes, Bun­ji Gar­lin, the event pro­duc­ers, the Ja­maican artistes, the Bouy­on artistes, the Trini­bad artistes, all be­ing in Trinidad to cel­e­brate Caribbean cul­ture is not just good for the mu­sic be­cause Trinidad will al­so be rep­re­sent­ed,” he said.

“I think it’s good for in­dus­try. It’s re­al­ly putting a spot­light on the great­ness and the rich­ness of Caribbean cul­ture. So, I see it as a good thing, and I see it as a good thing for Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause, as well, it will in­tro­duce peo­ple who may nev­er have been here to our coun­try be­cause, of course, it’s a week­ender.”

From a busi­ness and tourism per­spec­tive, Mela ex­plained the event could serve as a pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic mul­ti­pli­er.

She said, “I feel like we are a very fit­ting place to host that con­ver­sa­tion, and I al­so think about what it can be­come with­in the wider mu­si­cal econ­o­my. Artistes com­ing in­to Trinidad, the me­dia, styl­ists, de­sign­ers, dancers-you know, even the ho­tels and the whole tourism ecosys­tem. We all ben­e­fit from this, and if we con­tin­ue to build this type of in­fra­struc­ture around events like this, Trinidad and To­ba­go can be­come an even big­ger hub for Caribbean en­ter­tain­ment. “

Be­yond the event, DJ Pri­vate Ryan and Mela Caribe are work­ing on projects ahead of the up­com­ing Car­ni­val sea­son, with the songstress stat­ing that she had at least three re­leas­es planned. Ryan said he too was work­ing on new mu­sic with Mela, while teas­ing po­ten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tions with Machel Mon­tano, Er­phaan Alves and Ter­ri Lyons as he con­tin­ued work with his Bat­tal­ion Mu­sic la­bel.