Did the Caribbean music market really fumble the bag?
“The Caribbean music market fumbled the bag…”
What a provocative way for Guyanese-born, Brooklyn-raised, Emmy Award-winning entertainment executive Nolan Baynes to start his Op-Ed blog post for World Music Views. Provocative but quite conventional for anyone who researches the Caribbean music industry. This is basically the usual contradictory thinking reflecting the lack of clear goals mixed with strong hope for change that I hear Caribbean music professionals express in France and in the US. However, I never thought he’d present his perspective in such… ruthless (?) way when he sounded so motivating in a previous interview in 2022. In this 2025 article, he asked some valid questions that French Caribbean artists ask as well. Please allow me to reframe the conversation with my Karukerament perspective.
“Why isn’t Caribbean music — and our artists — truly mainstream?”, Nolan Baynes asks. What does truly mainstream mean here? In the Caribbean region/diaspora or strictly in the USA? And truly mainstream to whom? To their multilingual Caribbean audience around or to a White audience that consumes the Black music that the US (French) industry has always exploited? He counts about 54 million people. I don’t know if the non-English-speaking diasporas count in his estimate. However, if we extend the potential target to the Afro global market, we can even add the African audience and their diasporas, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s stick to the Caribbean market. As of today, are Caribbean artists mainstream across the region and the diaspora? I mean, in the past 30 years, have Dancehall or Soca artists put in the work to build a fanbase in their own communities and then in the French/Spanish/Dutch-speaking Caribbean communities? Have Bachata or Zouk artists put in the work to build a fanbase in their communities and then outside of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean communities or French/Kréyol-speaking Caribbean communities? Potential consumers don’t mean actual consumers who can become dedicated fans.
“How does a region of 50+ million brilliant people not command a real seat in the global mainstream?” What does global mean here when all the criteria to measure success are related strictly to the US market? And I’m not asking this to be obtuse. I see the same reasoning in French discussions, and I’m genuinely confused. Does this mean that global mainstream success can only be claimed when the US market validates us? So let’s take a group like Kassav’ that has been touring all around the world (Asia included) in the past four decades. The group members were validated by US big musicians like Miles Davis, Marcus Miller, Peter Gabriel, but they never promoted themselves in the US and didn’t get “US mainstream recognition”. Does it mean Kassav’ doesn’t matter as a contribution to the global scene? Let’s take pre-BTS K-pop acts such as BIGBANG who won the Best World Wide Act Award at the MTV Europe Awards in 2011 and held several world (minus Africa) tours… The US industry wasn’t checking for them back then. Yet, couldn’t they be called global superstars? And it took a very long time for the US industry/media to give BTS the respect they deserve… Most of K-Pop artists are still overlooked by the US industry, but they hold successful world tours. Does it mean they aren’t global superstars?
So I ask again: what does global here mean through the Caribbean lens? Why the success of Bob Marley, Kassav’, Shaggy, Sean Paul, Rihanna, and now Bad Bunny on an individual level can’t count to say that Caribbean artists keep redefining how to become a global (super)star? Why aren’t they enough to say we do command a seat in the global mainstream, but not in the way that the U.S does? But I understand that after saying that we command a seat in the global mainstream, the follow-up question would be: so what are we doing with it, then? I guess the first thing would be that we can stop complaining. The second thing would be to study all these trajectories and be clear about what worked for everybody and what didn’t for each of them, which aspects could have been improved. It would be nice for such think tanks to take place under the supervision of governments, but passionate creatives sharing the same vision for the future of Caribbean music can start the building process.
“But tell me: how many music business programs exist in the Caribbean compared to the 50+ universities offering them in the U.S.?” Well, what would have been the point of having local music business programs if the vision for the past 30 years was to make it in the US while using US infrastructure? The same can be said about France and its music infrastructure. I mean, why would Caribbean governments invest in a local creative sector when the creative professionals don’t invest in their local and regional market? If anything, it makes sense that Caribbean professionals would get their music business education in the US or in France now and go back with the accurate vision to develop local talents for the regional market. To be quite honest, they don’t even need a degree. A self-taught expert willing to gain knowledge through trial and error may end up being just as qualified as someone who got a degree following another culture’s standards. Only when we get a few acts with sustainable careers in the region would it make sense to have local music business programs in our universities. College degrees should be based on studying also our own data instead of learning only from other people’s perspective…
I agree that the Caribbean market can be sustainable today. I keep saying that Caribbean artists should give their local fanbase the premium treatment. Not just out of patriotism. Building a strong fanbase at home is just marketing strategy 101. And yet, as Nolan Baynes said, “we got lost” for the past 30 years by following strictly the US protocol (or the French protocol). Saying that “we were content walking red carpets, basking in proximity to the “popular kids,” instead of seizing the chance to launch companies that could nurture homegrown talent for generations” would make us look superficial at first glance, but he isn’t wrong. “We lacked a collective vision to build infrastructure and push our music forward” is also a true statement, although I’d argue that “collective” is too vague in a Caribbean multilingual and multicultural context. I see this aspect keeps being brushed off in our business discussions, but connecting with a multilingual and multicultural audience doesn’t just happen in a flash. This is a conversation for another day.
Again, when it comes to the causes of our situation, I agree “the biggest [reason is] us.” However, his recalling of how we got here doesn’t reflect on why Caribbean artists and professionals were so focused on the US (or French in my case) market for the past 30 years. Because this was where the money was? I hear that, so let me rephrase that. Why did Caribbean artists and professionals trust a foreign creative industry with their careers? If “because this was where the money was” is still your answer, then you have the root of the issue right here. It’s never just about the money. These choices weren’t (just) made out of greed. They were made out of scarcity. And where does this mindset come from? Well, my guess is it comes from low self-esteem. I’m not talking about confidence. Caribbean people are confident in what they can do. Do they value what they can do, though? Do they have the fundamental conviction that they should invest in themselves just because they’re worth it and not because someone else validates them?
It’s easy to say “every Caribbean artist today needs to see themselves as a small business — some, not so small. With the right strategy and effort, they can scale into global competitors in this new landscape.” I agree, but do Caribbean artists actually want to go global? It is okay to stay at the regional level. It’s no excuse not to be professional, though. They might want to stay “small” or go “big”, but it can only work if artists build their self-esteem first.
Self-esteem is what allows you to make the right choices.
Self-esteem is what makes you walk away from the wrong people.
Self-esteem is what gives you the discipline to implement what’s required to sell your brand.
Self-esteem is what makes you rectify what you did wrong.
Self-esteem is what makes you recognize and appreciate what you do right when others tell you that you do wrong.
That’s why I don’t think “we were slow to embrace the DIY wave”. I believe we were pioneers, the vanguard of the current indie business model. The difference is that we didn’t have the technology to keep pushing in this direction. Production costs were too high, and major labels outside of the Caribbean were the viable option in the 70’s, 80’s and the early 90’s to take your career to the next level. If artists like Kassav’ (Guadeloupe + Martinique), Exile One (Dominica), Calypso Rose (Tobago), or Tabou Combo (Haïti) in the 20th century had the technology we have today, then they would have been right next to Bob Marley to get the Caribbean market ready to uplift the wave of Jamaican singers like Patra, Shaggy and Shabba Ranks whose “Dancehall was the shiny new toy of the ’90s” for the U.S industry. The Caribbean market would have been strong enough to sustain more global stars. In the 2000’s, Sean Paul, Kevin Lyttle (St Vincent), Wayne Wonder, Beenie Man, Elephant Man wouldn’t have been on their own on the U.S market. With the technology that we have today, artists like Carimi (Haïti), Machel Montano (Trinidad), Admiral T (Guadeloupe), Rihanna (Barbados) would have had more leverage to build their careers on their own terms through the U.S or French infrastructure. Am I naïve to think there would have been three or four Caribbean artists like Bad Bunny (Porto Rico) actively leading the global scene today? Nah.
When I say getting the Caribbean market ready, I mean traveling across the region to network and develop our own marketing/branding/storytelling/media training expertise. I mean, if back then we had today’s technology, all the time and energy we spent on the US and the French markets? We would have used them to build our own systems, launch our companies, and tell our governments which infrastructure is needed. That’s how the K-pop industry went global. While they used local infrastructures to operate in other Asian countries, they still built their artists at home. That’s why I ain’t looking at African artists going global as a success story to get inspired by. For now. Afrobeats and amapiano get mixed up all the time. Getting billions of streams through other people’s infrastructure isn’t power. It’s dependency. Collectively, do they look organized? Do international media present them in a positive light? Do they own their masters? We all know they’re being preyed on, so this is not what we should aspire to.
As Nolan Baynes said in 2022, “They [the Grammys committee] created the system and it was not for us. Strategically, if the gold is to be accepted by them and their system we have to be better at working their system. If we choose not to, we can not be mad.” Agreed and this perspective can be applied to every aspect of the music business industry. So, no, I don’t think we should have been in the room when “a new wave of independent business people was reshaping the industry”. I think we created that room and left it unattended to visit the more luxurious and seemingly comfortable rooms of our neighbors. The thing is, we also saw the dirty work to build their rooms. “Yep — our creative superheroes, music-business gurus, and the people we were counting on to build infrastructure? They royally fucked it up.” And the lesson to learn here is how important it is to have the right business mindset, to lead with integrity, and to surround yourself with like-minded people. That’s why I think it isn’t just about having “the foundation for a Caribbean music renaissance — one that’s self-powered, not reliant on major labels like before.” But what does self-power mean? Indeed, we shouldn’t want to recreate the 20th century unhealthy and rigid business model. Technology is helping us to restore the global balance that circumstances such as 400 years of slavery and two World Wars 20 years apart had totally messed up for us, but what is the right vision for us?
It’s about dreaming big, setting clear goals (going global is too vague for me), identifying our current resources, planning, and executing with discipline, patience, and consistency. Nolan Baynes refuses “to believe that buried within this 50M+ is not the next generation of moguls, visionaries, and platinum-selling acts — just waiting for a shot to spread their wings closer to home”. Yes, may Bad Bunny be an inspiration to get creative in the way only Caribbean people can get.
As guests, we helped the neighbors get bigger rooms, and we forgot ourselves in the process. It’s time to go home and take care of the room that was always ours.
For more Karukerament ideas on what Caribbean music needs: https://www.karukerament.com/english-blog/caribbean-music-to-the-world-what-we-need-is