SAN­DRA L BLOOD

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Ten years af­ter first meet­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T), Japan­ese so­ca singer Ann G (An­gel­la Gius­ti­ni) and reg­gae star HAN-KUN (Takuro Han­za­wa) have re­unit­ed on a T&T-pro­duced track where so­ca, reg­gae and pan meet.

The pair teamed up on Radar—a Japan­ese-lan­guage love song—pro­duced by Ke­shav Chan­dra­dath Singh of Jus Now, which was re­leased on Au­gust 28 and is stream­ing on all plat­forms.

Built around the in­vis­i­ble con­nec­tion be­tween two peo­ple, Radar ex­plores the feel­ing of be­ing drawn to some­one across a vast dis­tance. How­ev­er, for Ann G, a reg­u­lar T&T Car­ni­val vis­i­tor for ten years, the col­lab­o­ra­tion car­ries a his­to­ry of its own.

“I first met HAN-KUN in Trinidad in 2016, so to be re­leas­ing a song to­geth­er ten years lat­er, with a T&T pro­duc­er, is a re­al full-cir­cle mo­ment,” Ann G said. “T&T is such an im­por­tant part of my own mu­si­cal jour­ney, and now we have HAN-KUN, Jus Now and me bring­ing Japan and the Caribbean to­geth­er on one record.”

Known as the Voice Ma­gi­cian, HAN-KUN is an es­tab­lished fig­ure in Japan­ese reg­gae and a mem­ber of Shonan no Kaze. Ja­maica and reg­gae cul­ture have re­mained cen­tral in­flu­ences through­out his ca­reer, both with the group and as a so­lo artiste. That his­to­ry gives Radar a Caribbean con­nec­tion that ex­tends be­yond Ann G’s so­ca back­ground.

“Every­body knows that feel­ing when some­one stays on your mind no mat­ter which part of the world they are in,” HAN-KUN said. “That is what Radar is about. You can­not see the per­son or touch them, but some­how you still feel that con­nec­tion. The so­ca, reg­gae and steel­pan el­e­ments gave us a dif­fer­ent way to ex­press that emo­tion while still mak­ing a record that is true to us.”

The T&T con­nec­tion shows up with T&T’s im­print on Radar, which goes be­yond its steel­pan melody. Jus Now be­gan as a part­ner­ship be­tween Singh and British pro­duc­er Sam In­ter­face, bring­ing so­ca and Caribbean rhythm in­to con­ver­sa­tion with UK bass mu­sic. Singh pro­duced, mixed and mas­tered Radar, us­ing reg­gae, so­ca and steel­pan to dri­ve the Japan­ese-lan­guage love song.

“The song is about two peo­ple feel­ing each oth­er across dis­tance, so the pro­duc­tion had to car­ry that same sense of their worlds meet­ing,” Singh said. “We didn’t want the steel­pan to feel past­ed on­to the record just be­cause there was a Trinidad con­nec­tion. It had to be­long there. So­ca, Reg­gae and pan all be­came part of the lan­guage of the song.”

For Ann G, the sin­gle con­tin­ues a re­la­tion­ship with T&T that has shaped more than a decade of her ca­reer. She has com­pet­ed in the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, served as Japan Caribbean Car­ni­val Am­bas­sador and cre­at­ed So­ca Mag­ic, a plat­form that in­tro­duced so­ca and Car­ni­val cul­ture to au­di­ences in Japan.

Her re­cent re­leas­es have al­so re­flect­ed that con­nec­tion. In 2024, she joined T&T so­ca artiste Lyrikal on Oideyo, while her col­lab­o­ra­tion Wasabi Wine with Japan­ese singer Aaayah (Ayako Hi­raya­ma) used so­ca to cel­e­brate Japan­ese fe­male iden­ti­ty.

Radar brings that sto­ry back to where it be­gan. It was writ­ten by Ann G and HAN-KUN, com­posed by Ann G, HAN-KUN and Jus Now, and pro­duced, mixed and mas­tered by Jus Now.

ABOUT: THE CARIBBEAN SOUND IN JAPAN

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween Japan and Caribbean mu­sic is not new. Over sev­er­al decades, reg­gae, dance­hall, ca­lyp­so and so­ca have found au­di­ences in Japan, where Caribbean-in­spired events, sound sys­tems and fes­ti­vals have helped cre­ate a ded­i­cat­ed fol­low­ing for mu­sic orig­i­nat­ing thou­sands of miles away.

Reg­gae, in par­tic­u­lar, has de­vel­oped a strong pres­ence in Japan. Japan­ese mu­si­cians have built ca­reers around the genre while main­tain­ing con­nec­tions with Ja­maica and oth­er parts of the Caribbean. That in­ter­est has al­so ex­tend­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly as so­ca and Car­ni­val cul­ture have be­come in­creas­ing­ly vis­i­ble in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

So­ca’s growth in Japan has been sup­port­ed by artistes, DJs, pro­mot­ers and cul­tur­al ad­vo­cates who have helped in­tro­duce the mu­sic be­yond its tra­di­tion­al Caribbean au­di­ence. The re­la­tion­ship works in both di­rec­tions, with Japan­ese per­form­ers in­creas­ing­ly be­com­ing part of the wider so­ca con­ver­sa­tion and Caribbean artistes find­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with Japan­ese au­di­ences.

Steel­pan adds an­oth­er di­men­sion to that cul­tur­al ex­change. Born in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the in­stru­ment has be­come one of the coun­try’s most recog­nis­able cul­tur­al ex­ports and is now played in coun­tries across the world. Its dis­tinc­tive sound has al­lowed it to move be­yond tra­di­tion­al pan set­tings and in­to pop, reg­gae, elec­tron­ic and oth­er con­tem­po­rary forms of mu­sic.

This in­ter­na­tion­al move­ment of Caribbean sounds has al­so been helped by dig­i­tal stream­ing and so­cial me­dia, al­low­ing mu­sic cre­at­ed in rel­a­tive­ly small ter­ri­to­ries to reach lis­ten­ers far be­yond the re­gion. Pro­duc­ers can now col­lab­o­rate across con­ti­nents with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly be­ing in the same stu­dio, while artistes can build au­di­ences in coun­tries they may nev­er have pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed.

For Trinidad and To­ba­go, such col­lab­o­ra­tions of­fer an­oth­er av­enue for the coun­try’s mu­si­cal iden­ti­ty to trav­el. So­ca and steel­pan are al­ready recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, but their in­cor­po­ra­tion in­to new gen­res and mar­kets al­lows the sounds to evolve while re­tain­ing their Caribbean roots.

Radar sits with­in that wider ex­change: not sim­ply as a Japan­ese-Caribbean col­lab­o­ra­tion, but as an­oth­er ex­am­ple of how Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mu­si­cal vo­cab­u­lary con­tin­ues to find new con­texts and au­di­ences be­yond the re­gion.