New Trinidadian artists and musicians have started making new sounds like Trinibad and Zess, while others are even converting to RnB and Afrobeats. Where are the younger soca and calypso artists? Where is the 17 year old boy who everyone is saying would be the next Kes or Machel, or the 18 year old girl to be the next Destra or Fay Ann Lyons? 

It seems as though we have turned away from our original sound to cope with the music industry on the outside, forgetting about the songs that influenced our islands. I mean take a look at the top 10 songs on Apple Music in Trinidad today, or this month. How many artists do you see from our country? How many of those artists do soca? Let’s look at the top 50 maybe. Any calypso music?  Take note of the time of year. Compare it to the month of carnival, do you notice the drastic drop in charting and listening? Some argue that, “Obviously soca would be played more during carnival.” But you’re missing the point. Some soca fans have admitted to the genre sounding “watered down” compared to previous years and decades, to the point where part of the consensus is that current Soca music only sounds good during carnival because it’s soca and every other genre takes their place for the rest of the year.” The listening value of soca has drastically gone down in our own country.

There has also been rumors of a gatekeeping culture within the local music industry (a recent major example was Trinidad Killa’s “ESKIMO”) barring local artists from having a stage or an audience without buying in. Local music producers and engineers, only working with who they know, are not interning or even allowing the younger generation to showcase and develop their talents. Could this be the effect of commercialising culture? This has caused so many young aspiring artists to switch to Trinibad and Dancehall—the same genres that have been quoted by industry professionals and the general population to be damaging to the youth, promoting crime, violence, hyper sexualism and misogyny. More on this topic needs to be addressed if we are to return to the genre that we are all supposed to have loved and grew up with as a country or we will fall victim to being a country that has lost its tune.