The Style & Vibes Podcast
The Style & Vibes Podcast
Our love for dancehall remains, but our relationship with the music has changed
Remember when discovering new dancehall and reggae tracks happened effortlessly through dedicated radio shows, mixtapes passed between friends, and family gatherings? Today's fragmented landscape requires intentional effort many adults simply can't prioritize amidst growing responsibilities. With 120,000 new tracks uploaded daily to streaming platforms, the sheer volume makes keeping pace nearly impossible.
The discussion challenges common complaints about modern music's "slackness," noting every generation has pushed boundaries that seemed shocking at the time. What's really happening isn't cultural disconnection but evolution – a transition from trend-followers to cultural preservationists focused on passing foundational elements to the next generation.
Artists bridging these generational divides, like Koffee, Busy Signal and Agent Sasco, succeed by creating music with universal themes and clear delivery. Meanwhile, streaming algorithms and the decline of riddim based collections in dancehall have removed key structures that once helped listeners organize and discover new songs.
Whether you're feeling guilty about not knowing the latest tracks or wondering how to maintain authentic cultural connections while aging, this conversation offers validating perspectives on how our relationship with Caribbean music changes but never diminishes. What aspects of Caribbean culture have you found yourself evolving with rather than keeping up with?
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Produced by Breadfruit Media
Welcome to the Style and Vibes podcast. With me, Makayla, I'll be giving you the inside scoop on music, fashion, culture and more from Caribbean celebrities and tastemakers across the globe, pushing our culture with authenticity and, of course, style and vibes.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the Style and Vibes podcast with yours truly Makayla. If you are new here, welcome to the family. If you're returning, welcome back family. And today is really a family thing because the executive producer in the building today, kerianne, tell the people who are going.
Speaker 3:Boy, everything are going and nothing are on at the same time. But everything is everything. It's typical jamaicans are speaking parables. What everything? I'll go on and nothing now everything is everything I understand.
Speaker 2:Still, you know and then you say everything is everything, and I know the cmt boy, so I had to tap you because we have so many different offline conversations around today's music and keeping up and with your carry on friends community. You kind of pose this question, um, from a cultural standpoint. So rather than, as we do, always chat out an episode versus recording the episode, I say you know what may not chat it out today, we're gonna record it and and produce it for the people then. So let's start with, I think, I have something to say.
Speaker 3:I want to say that was a very proud moment. You know self restraints to say zip it, let's record it, let's put it on wax. Well, you don't put nothing on wax.
Speaker 2:I like it. I thought music where I put it on wax.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, we are getting better. We are getting better because you know you and I would talk out a whole entire topic and then can't record the episode because we already don't talk, and then you and I know like it's not the same energy that then when we have the conversation the first time and I think this one is particularly interesting because we've had tidbits of this conversation but we haven't had a holistic conversation and it's really sparked by the question from a cultural standpoint that you pose to your community. So I want you to share it with the Style and Vibes family so we can kick off the right way.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, as you know, you know I've long since been talking about and I've recorded multiple podcasts where I mentioned some matriculate altar, you dance, all dancing and stuff, because a large part of my identity growing up in high school and even for a while, was like I was that girl who had the metro media, the stone, love cassette, then manure, all at a new dance, and that was still well into aspects of my adulthood and it was during times producing style and vibes. I realized that I was relying on what you were suggesting to the audience in that season where you were talking about the songs that you enjoyed, and I kind of said to you like I don't know if I could keep up with this, and what really triggered the recent conversation was um liquor cause uh, our niece you know the title rotate depending on our mood sent me a text that idonia is celebrating his 20 years in the in dancehall and it's at UBS.
Speaker 3:Arena or whatever and then in the same breath she sent me say carter la com, i'ma look funny. The first, the first one that really got me, was idonia, because I was like I remember, and then I'm ahead, I'm like tune, true, true like. And I was like, oh, one year when I went to ati before it was dream weekend, whatever. I remember seeing him down there and I'm like yo, 20 years, like that's really a stark seeing him down there and I'm like yo, 20 years, like that's really a stark, like yo, 20 years. And then messian Noah no good, even though the lineup have other people that I would want to see.
Speaker 3:But I was like the last idonia song I'm literally singing was pre-pandemic. That is a song that's in my phone. I'm not hearing anything new idonia and I was like nah, I'm good, because me no want going at the arena, everybody are vice out new tune. And then me stand up there. You know, like when you sing song and you know somebody they flop the word of the song and they nah sing it right. I don't want to be that auntie. I don't want to be that auntie when I know the tune and they mumble and they replace lyrics with what? Lyrics is not there and I was like I'm cool and so I posed this to my audience am I the only one who's experiencing this? And you know there were people who replied and said no, I wasn't the only one, and we kind of talked about how they were finding new music. So different people told me different ways they were listening to new music or how some people are just sticking to what they are familiar with, what was in their era, and that era varies. And then I actually had a follow up poll that says which aspects of your culture that you are not necessarily leaving behind but not keeping up with not necessarily leaving behind, but not keeping up with and I gave multiple options and an overwhelming amount over almost 67% said they weren't keeping up with music.
Speaker 3:And I remember I called you and I was like yo, we have some data to have the conversation. And on top of that, so I could round out the story, I sent the results in the newsletter follow-up and one of my engaged audience members, mikey T, said listen, I have a lot to say about this music thing. And I said I'm sure you know we'll get into that. But he talked about, you know, the slattness argument, which makes sense because that's what people use. But you and I know that the slattness argument is easily makes sense because that's what people use. But you and I know that the slattness argument is easily debunked. You understand and I said no, it's actually more nuanced than that, and so in this conversation we're going to go into the nuance from an identity perspective and the other things that are impacting that, why we are like not keeping up with music and and the. The survey actually highlighted something else that I'm excited to get into.
Speaker 2:I think what, what was interesting when you came to me and I was just like, okay, now let's really have a conversation about it, because even myself, you know, I'm not a spring chicken. I'm not necessarily hanging out in the different spaces and places, but I do like to discover new music. So I'm constantly looking for new music and I'm on the lookout. And, because of the nature of the podcast, I do get a lot of like submissions of new music, whether they be well known or or not well-known at all. I get the gamut of it and I can definitely tell you, you know, the digital age has allowed for so much new music to be released and I think it's not the sole issue around keeping up with new music, but I think that it's the biggest one that we have, particularly in the Napster and LimeWire.
Speaker 2:And after timeframe, right, because you know, during that era you went from having a cassette tape that had 45 to 90 minute, 120 minute time span on two sides of the tape. Previously you also had CDs. Vinyl can only hold but so many different songs and now you literally have so many songs at your fingertips. So the share volume of music in 2024, there was more music released in a single day than the entire year of 1989. So it's like just putting that into perspective 120,000 new tracks are uploaded on average every day to these DSPs and these streaming services.
Speaker 2:Not to say that all of that is good music and we can have the quality conversation all day. But I think that that is one of the biggest barriers to kind of keeping up quote unquote with new music is the sheer volume. And then when you look at caribbean music, particularly reggae and dancehall, we've always been a singles driven market where tunes after tunes after tunes, they're just released. They're not tied to a particular project or you know. Now, with rhythms not being a thing, it's not like it's not as big of a deal as it once was in terms of identifying the rhythms and knowing that aspect of the culture, because juggling doesn't happen in the same way anymore either. So I think there's a lot in terms of keeping up with new music feels like a different task now.
Speaker 3:That is also coupled with us getting older, yeah, so you touched on a couple of things and you talk about the technology and you talk about rhythms. Right, rhythms was a marker by which people would have some kind of familiarity with music. So you may not like all the songs on a rhythm, but you were able to identify that this is that rhythm, the Diwali rhythm, or this rhythm, or that rhythm, the stink or whatever buzz, whatever it was right. You kind of had a general understanding. So if once the rhythm instrumental kind of come on, you kind of were open to the song to hear what else would come on that rhythm, that's one. So with the fragmentation of the music industry, you know it shifted from passive discovery, right.
Speaker 3:So growing up, we're in the car, we're listening to music and we had, in addition to shifting from radio, we have, a contraction of the number of Caribbean radio stations or even the shows that were on mainstream radio. Specifically. I'm in Brooklyn, so you know, like David Levy is pushed much later into the night, I think he's like on late Saturday night, but he was on Sunday night versus I can't remember no more versus Bobby Kandas and Jabba. I knew that four o'clock, five o'clock on a Sunday growing up, that was the slot right and they're not in that slot anymore. You have the modern DJs who are Caribbean inspired, that will play a tune, but you don't really have the same dedication on those frequency that we can easily get. And then with internet radio, most people don't have that. And I also want to point out, as I was thinking about this and maybe I'm really aging myself I used to work in a law firm and everybody had a little radio at their desk, you know, or in their office, and it wasn't loud to the point where. Why are all these radios on right? It was so low because we were sitting in cubicles that you had to really be in the person's cubicle space to kind of hear what was playing on the radio. And so I constantly knew that from the morning to the afternoon I was going to be on kiss, and then, when Michael Bay's then came on in the afternoon, we have a switch to. You know what I mean. And so because we're not listening via radio, which was our main source of being introduced to music, because the technology is great and it's given access to many people, but there's this element of human curation in a way that we really validated, and so I told you the story and I know I'm calling a bunch of names, but it really illustrates the point right. This happened story and I know I'm calling a bunch of names, but it really illustrates the point right.
Speaker 3:This happened over a year ago. I'm picking up my mother from the airport and we're driving home and it's on hot 97 and Funkmaster Flex is introducing a new track. He plays 30 seconds of the track and pull up the tune the whole way, the whole 15 minute ride back home. He pulls up the track and at one point my mama said am I gonna play the full song? We haven't changed the station because we're waiting for the whole song to play, but it brought us back to an era where the the dj on the radio not gonna dash out a song for me. I'm going to tease it, I'm going to pull it up again, I'm going to get a new tune. He's excited, it's integrated into that show, and so we kind of lose all of that.
Speaker 3:Now me, I have to go actively, intentionally, figure out I want a new song. Then I have to go through the social media door and I can't bother with it, and then what happens is it becomes an echo chamber of whatever the algorithm is feeding and whatever people are using on their reels and tick, tock, that's what everybody is hearing. And then people say this song and then you know it's really, um, a selection of, maybe a fraction of what's really out there. So technology has really disrupted how we as a people listen to music. And this last point Mikey T had kind of said that it is not our job to keep up with music unless it's somebody's job, so like for you running this podcast or for a DJ.
Speaker 3:And this is where I wanted to disagree. We keep up with music because it's so much part of our identity. We love music. So what I wanted to go back to, on the surveys, over 67% said they weren't keeping up with the music. One option was are you keeping up with concerts, fests, carnival? Nobody responded to that, right. So that means that they may not be actively going out and seeking new music, but they're still going out to party and enjoy themselves, right? So it's like on one end it's exhausting, and you know this, exhausting to find out what's the new song, but they're still engaging with culture and where they potentially could hear music, they just want to be able to be fed or introduced to music in a way that doesn't feel like it's so much work to do.
Speaker 2:I think you said a lot of different things. So we are a generation that had been fed and I think with every generation we have to put age, place and space into the positioning where. When you were younger, how did you learn about new music? It was radio, it was parties, it was other people sharing. My friend is a DJ, so they got me the latest I'm buying a mixtape or all of those things we no longer do. Right, and that also has to do with age, because if you're not actively buying a mixtape or seeking out new mixes, in a way you're not actively partying in spaces to hear new music, specifically for new music, because you can go out and go to old school parties where you know, like when you get older, your experiences in terms of going out needs to be valuable because you have less time. When you are younger, you have more time discretionary time to have a bad time, but you're having a bad time with people that you love. And so you and I remember we all go party thursday, friday, saturday, sometimes sunday and industry tuesday, and we just no longer do them as you get older and so you're no longer in this place or place and radio radio hasn't broken new artists in a very long time, like it's always really been. You already had to have a, a bubble in the streets. You had to have some sort of recognition of people already talking about you from an industry perspective, or you had to have the backing of some industry gatekeeper, big promoter, dj, somebody to put a stamp on it and recommend it. And radio right now is the last place.
Speaker 2:So if a song from TikTok ends up on the radio, that means it's already been played out in that arena of younger consumers as well, and so, in addition to it being fragmented as we get older, we're no longer not to say that we're not interested in learning about new music. We're just not in a position to prioritize it over the lifestyle of. You know, I'm running my business or I'm focused in my career, and so some of those social gatherings become premium spots where you're like I wanna go, where I'm guaranteed to have a good time. I'm not necessarily guaranteed a good time to go listen to this new artist that I've never heard on a Wednesday evening, like is it valuable and is it a best use of my time? And so we are as a people. If you're interested, there are really limited places to discover new music and it's keeping up with podcasts or music people, curators but there's so many more curators now or it's really the streaming services and their recommendations, and that's a whole other conversation around.
Speaker 2:Recommendation because you still hear new music, right, you still know something when you like it, when you do hear it, or you don't like it, and it could be playing all over the radio or playing all over whatever your timeline, anywhere else, and it could be popular and you're not really that crazy about it.
Speaker 2:But I think also, as we get older, we just have more priorities on your plate and so music, even though it's this thing that you truly, truly love and you want to engage it, it becomes a chore, whereas it wasn't a chore when you were 20. Like, I remember telling Kirk I was like I can't even remember the last time I played music to get ready to go out and I still go out. But I'm like somebody got to go to know one is watching tv. I don't want to disturb the little one, so I have to wait till I get into my car. By that time I'm in my car, I'm like I haven't created my mix and I'm like, well, I just, I'm just gonna go back to whatever is familiar, because I want to hear good music as I'm about to touch the road. But it's not as seamless. It is more effort, right, part of us we're sad that it's so much more effort, because this used to be this effortless thing.
Speaker 3:So what you're talking about is what I, you know, I've been working on and what we're experiencing and I've been experiencing for a very long time Everybody always I'm all up myself been experiencing for a very long time. Everybody, always I'm all up myself. But it's this transition from youth to, like, adulthood we're not quite elder yet but youth to adulthood where we feel like, okay, we don't want to keep up with current, um, music and dance trends, and I mean dance trends, because that was big for us. Like you know, I keep saying when was the last dance me? Feel like me can do as big auntie, not the dance, because I'm very, you know, I'm very mindful. I don't want going to the young people them dance and look like the big woman who not really supposed to. They, not the young people them dance. You understand what I'm saying, but anyway, and then we start shifting to well, we are more conscious of it because we know what that looks like looks, oh we for sure know what
Speaker 3:it looks like Like uh-uh, this won't be me, but we're shifting from keeping up with the current dance trends and music and we're shifting to the cultural classics and kind of what you talked about. We're doing more, you know, family-centered activities so we can't really vibes up with self before the party. There are certain songs we can't play. I remember, you know, I used to go to jamaica. A lot of my friend would give me like some mix cds and this was before, you know, apple and all these things because he would give me the clean version that plays on jamaican radio. Because you know, say you know, that's the only ones that can play in other hosts are with the kids them in other hosts you can't play the racha version, and so these are like the many ways where it feels hard to keep up and how we can truly say, okay, let us all go listen to the mix cd here and go and clean up the holes. You can't really do that, you know, because of putting them the boat and it's just like, yeah, you can't do that.
Speaker 3:So I wanted to come back to this idea of the quality of music. So Mikey T was, as a youth, he was defensive because and I said yeah, the argument about the music to slack is for social media. You know, when you post it, everybody bone to get some level of engagement. And I said we can debunk that myth. Everybody is looking at the 90s right now through Rose colored lens and it wasn't like that, me know. Some artists where yo, we are still say the song are really, when they're playing, like even going back even to the 80s.
Speaker 2:You know, even before that like some watching two videos on Instagram, and one is this girl is singing. She got a. She looks young younger than younger than me, for sure and she's singing. Uh, lady saw a family. She's singing it like she. She knows the entire lyrics. That's an old song, it's not a new song that was the era of power man.
Speaker 3:I need you to go hear some of the power man song them. You're like what I remember where I was in high school in ninth grade when one of my classmates she was just funny all she came in and she was like cock up, cock up. I was like what is she talking about? Only position, just come out as a song. And everybody I was like what you know. So, and even going into the 80s there was this song. I can't remember the name. The song is so creepy because basically the dj, I sing about him, I look funny. Mother and father, they do adult things right.
Speaker 3:And the argument about the music today is more slack. It doesn't land for me and I'll tell you a story. So in 2008 there was a 50th birthday party. Can you imagine 2008? And this older couple love them because you know them vibes you when them go, it's you know, because it's a mixed thing, and you just hear come on, hear my song when you're coming on my rampage, like that was their song, and so the slackness.
Speaker 3:And whether a song is slack, I think it's just relative to the person and, of course, as you get older, you kind of find it jarring because now you have kids a certain age and as moms, you're like oh you know, you start think about what you was doing. Now you have Pitney at a certain age. But music, if music is introduced in a way where people can get to know it and to experience it, if they're first hearing about it at a party, you're not going to dance to it, you're going to stop and you're going to try to take it in the song. And that's not what people want when they go to a party. They want to feel like they're constantly dancing, which is why, yes, Now.
Speaker 2:But when you were 20 and the DJ was like, let me play that new tune. But when you were 20 and the DJ was like you're listening because you know that the selector is going to as much here, at least in my experiences like breaking of new records and a lot of times people just don't want to be bothered and I don't know if that's a generational thing or if that is actually factual across the board. So I'd have to ask somebody who's a little bit younger than me, like what their scene is looking like. I think, even going back to the slackness, I think what Mikey T and I don't wanna like interpret, interpret his understanding of it is there was still a sense of creativity, lyrically right, and I think that, yes, it is more raunchy, it is more in your face, but there was a certain level of creativity when they were like vibes cartel to me is the last of an era because he would make a distinct clean version and a distinct explicit version and they both were top tier lyrical wordplay innuendo.
Speaker 2:So you could play the entire. It was still slack, but you could play the clean version and lyrically it still sounds the same. The problem I think a lot of young artists are having is they just bleep it out and they think that that's the clean version and they're not taking the lessons of the older generation and creating a more creative, explicit and clean version. Because I haven't heard.
Speaker 3:They just bleep them out. But I thought, in order to get radio play in jamaica, it's by law that you needed a version that didn't have the bleeps in it.
Speaker 2:A lot of these songs don't even play on jamaica radio, but this is what I'm saying that's why you you can tell the difference.
Speaker 3:In order to get radio played, the song had to be an entirely different version, because there were no bleeps allowed but here in the states you could just bleep it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not just jamaican music, reggae dance, el soca. It's american music too, like sexy red. They just bleep out the words megan the stallion same thing. Cardi b same thing the. The rules are a little bit more lenient now than they were before.
Speaker 2:But you know there were definitive clean versions and explicit versions and that, I think, has changed pretty drastically in the listening experience. And I really really noticed it when TikTok came into play, because I remember when Sinai got on TikTok and I was like they don't have clean versions of these songs Cause, like I get it, she's not really listening too much for the lyrics, she's really just dancing, she's trying to do the whatever the dance trend is, but now they've become so accustomed to that they don't really understand the difference between there's a time and place and I think our generation was the last of understanding between there's a time and place, and I think our generation was the last of understanding that there's a time and a place of where to play. There are certain songs. Let me just skip them, even when my mother in another room is there, like I. I know she probably listens to the song and I listen to the song, but I don't, I don't feel like it's the right situation when I make it serving Sunday dinner, for God's sake, you know.
Speaker 3:This reminds me of a story. Christine is a very generic name, but Christine had told me this was years ago. Christine had told me Sarah's mother come visit and she's in the house and the song just come on me a drive in from grand jail with a phone and she walked us up but she said you know she locked it up.
Speaker 2:You guys just have that be carried. But it's like the, the it's. It's those really raunchy songs. And even I remember I was watching this video and I'm gonna send it to you. I was watching this video on instagram and this group of for older women you could clearly tell I think they're like of asian descent. I don't know where exactly they're from, but they're dancing to gauges dunganaya truett.
Speaker 2:I'm old enough to remember when that song was initially released how much backlash it got like I'm that old because it was. I remember when it was released and radio people did not want to play it. People were like what kind of slackness is this? This is not our culture. And blah, blah, blah, noitarein spon tiktok, everybody has seen it. It get like this new surgeons and they're literally dancing because it's. It's been like what they call now a mashup. They they've kind of made it like a remix, but it's pretty popular and I'm just like poor gage. I remember he, he got all the backlash from Dong In A Ye Truth and then come full circle. Everything at Dong In A Ye Truth, like that feels tamed compared to what we hear coming out of the current dancehall sound now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I'm not hearing it, but I just also want to say I'm not hearing it.
Speaker 3:But I just also want to say I'm not hearing it, I don't. So my husband hears music a lot because we're when he's in the car, and when I'm in the car for long rides, like I told you about the throwback radio station I was like, oh shoot, I'm, I'm on this. But one of the ways that I discover music not just new music but music that came out years ago but I'm just hearing is through music choice, and the integration of Pandora on these smart TVs is one of the ways that I hear music. So, like the other day, one chronic supply and I'm like, oh, which chronic song this. And I looked and this was like chronic supply. And I'm like, oh, which chronic song this. And I looked and this was like a older track and I was like I've never heard this song, so it's. It's also again, just all these different ways that we have available to consume music and I'm just like this is what makes it really hard I do think that the algorithms are getting better in terms of for.
Speaker 2:For that reason right, because even I listen, I do apple music occasionally, I'll do stuff on spotify or even, um, some stuff on youtube just to kind of see, like, what is there and the recommendation. They're good about recommending like similar, like artists, whether it be like you. You have to scroll to the bottom or like if you get to the end of a playlist and it plays two or three songs at the end, but the the, the trap there is that it plays similar. It's not necessarily that you're going to always discover new music, but I do find that that has been a good angle to kind of passively discover new songs. And they have key playlists that they change frequently. That's probably the easiest, least work-related, like follow a playlist that changes frequently and you can hear some new sounds.
Speaker 3:You might not like it, but at least you're still listening to some of it I think what has worked for me because I'm not even following nobody playlist in anyway um, because I have apple music. Apple music is constantly telling me when new music is out and that's largely based on what's in it. So the last music you tell me about a Bounty Killer song come out the other day as we were recording this, let me see which song, because I left it on my alerts If a Bounty song, a Beanie song come out. I've seen it tell me about luciana, but it's mostly bounty and beanie. It suggests to me which tells you almost a lot about your ability.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes about your beanie, but the challenge it's not gonna recommend a shancia song or it's not gonna recommend a stock ashley or a ctr, skillet bang or you know what I mean. Like those are the the younger crap of of artists, a chronic law. But they do have some other dancehall playlists, specifically um again.
Speaker 3:Oh, I remember what I wanted to say. So, not because I stick to a particular era. I typically tell people say, listen 2012 and earlier. I'm solidly in that area. I will listen to other songs past you know 2010. But I know 2010. Going back, I solidly knew a lot of the songs that were out. I could even push it to you know 2012, because by then we have the second opinion, so it's hard to really keep up. But it doesn't mean a song doesn't break through periodically, and a lot of songs break through. It's just where I hear them for the songs to break through. The other thing, too, is that in the survey what's captured is keeping up with language like we don't know the new slang, them anymore, and so you're not gonna know the new saying, you know but this is what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:We don't know the new slang, and so that sometimes creates a disconnect in how we feel. Like, oh, it feel weird for this hebrafin in this, because I know I know my thing, this and if the song is, you understand, those are like some of the things that came out in the survey, and so what I've been finding are songs that have an intergenerational appeal. I'll I'll put this out here. Barris is on my whiteboard Michaela knows this like circled and circled, because Barris is a good example of what happens when people transition from youth to adult. That they go to familiar cultural hits will always have him garnering new audiences every year, because every year people are graduating into a different level of maturity and you won't go to enjoy yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you go see Berris at Brooklyn. You go up on cruise you understand what I'm saying up on cruise and like, you understand what I'm saying and, um, I told you the story about somebody who, um, after church, it was his birthday and you know I said what was your birthday? And I'm saying, yeah, man, and then the person who is also as old as him started happy birthday, my friend, and then me say one more like, but these are like in their 70s, but they are aware because I mean, yes, it's a catching song, but also more time in the understand what are young people, I say. And so the the clarity in diction of the song helps when there's an intergenerational appeal to the song. And I'm not saying every artist needs to have an intergenerational appeal. But if virality and getting music, you know your young, the young listeners, they might integrate the granny and the grandpas and the aunties. And if there's a music they feel like yo, grandma, you're a song yet then you know that's kind of what they're looking for.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, and even to that point, there are younger artists that have broken through, like Chronix and coffee, like those are. Especially coffee is a really good example because she's young young, you know and she was able to bridge the gap in terms of, just like you said, being intergenerational, like the topic. The topics of her songs aren't um far-fetched are highly youth focused yeah, they're not.
Speaker 2:Highly it's youth driven because it's coming from her as a young person.
Speaker 2:However, she's delivering her style, but the content and the context of what she is talking about uh transcends that, because you know me and Sanai went to a coffee concert and she had to know a good part of her catalog and she's fairly new in terms of that, a younger crop of artists. So every and then, every now and again, like we get a busy signal song or we get an agent sasko song or we get like something that kind of epitomizes that. So I think that the next crop of dance artists they're not young, you know, they're going to have to think about that too and their fans will have to transition with them, similarly to how we have transitioned with artists of our era. I think it feels like work, because there's just so many different ways and so many different things that we no longer feel as connected to it and I think in part it saddens us because it was such a huge part of who we were that we then turn around and like, oh, now we are the aunties of the generation.
Speaker 2:Like what is happening that we don't know, or like or like. You know you feel yourself complaining like, but this isn't good and I don't consider it good. But it's also the same. When you eating really good food, you're not really gonna go back to the bad, bad drinks. You food, you're not really going to go back to the bad, bad drinks you know. Like you're not going to order a whiskey sour, that was like the ninth. A lemon cello Like you're not going to order that when you've been drinking for 20 plus years. A martini that you saw on sex in the city. Like it's okay to grow and still yearn for that connection, but it doesn't have to be forced.
Speaker 3:I don't think it's not a disconnection, it's an evolution right. We're still connected to the culture.
Speaker 3:Say it one more time for the people, then it's not a disconnection, it's an evolution, right, and we are moving from a place of keeping up with the music to now into a preservation mode, because we're still playing the old tracks in the way of the way that we're playing 90s, that bad light, 90s dancehall before 90s, dancehall, 80s. You remember that some fest we did watch I guess it was 2018 and then in interview, spraga and Spraga did say yeah, me now, while the young people then because when him did company scene I remember him saying same way then they thought about we too, exactly.
Speaker 3:So you know like it's just an evolution and how we adjust to that is different. But it doesn't mean that we're locked off with ears and say we don't want to hear no more dancehall. That's not what we're saying. But we have a sound that we gravitate to and it's not just dancehall For me. I love R&B and you know know, I don't listen to r&b. The same way, when I did find a song that I like, that is reminiscent of a particular era that I liked and I will lock into that. But it's not a thing. And I even listen to some young people who will say, hmm, this is not my style. Like, what's the concert that you? Jason Bryson, Tiller, yeah, somebody who was young was like, yeah, I can't get with that, you know, and I was just like. At the end of the day, we have to remember that people have taste and, you know, everyone has their own taste and they will gravitate to what they like. But me not keeping up with the latest in music doesn't mean that I don't still enjoy music. It's just that how I identify with it evolved and of course I want to talk about the preservation stage because that's important.
Speaker 3:I was known as the one who had the latest music and the dances and know the latest dances. You know that I want ethan to learn to do the dances. He has the potential, but me, no, no the dance. Then we're not gonna know if you do the dance them and I will leave a video out there with dan. So who's supposed to do the dance? And that's why I was disappointed when you had you had told me that somebody was keeping a class to teach the young kids the new dances. They canceled that class, but it's a great opportunity. Whatever is the, the latest dance craze out of jamaica and people over there like I would love ethan to to kind of catch it, because I'm not saying what I've done the place. You know something I said, but that is what I fear that he doesn't know what the latest?
Speaker 2:also, you gotta go back to. How did you learn all those dances? Yeah, no, no. But what I'm saying is we don't necessarily have to seek and force, because he'll eventually find it right. No, I know, that's it. You know what I mean. Like we had my.
Speaker 3:My mom, you know, didn't force me to to yeah, but it's different because our wally pa cousin did another house. We don't even live the way we used to live back then. Yes, you know. So it's not even the same. Listen, I can't count Well on the one, two, three, four. Yo, I went seven years away in the house one time. All of the cousins are in the house. You're lucky if you get the four of them in one space, right? So even the way we congregate as a family is different. So, yes, he will eventually see it with his friends, but right now, ethan, no offer to all of the American. Dance them when in my party, everybody there part way and they film him.
Speaker 2:Why you can't do the new Jamaican one, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3:Why aren't you up on the new Jamaican dance and bust the place? Same way, you're not doing your cultural duty, son, exactly, you know it. You know me. You know me. You're Carrie Ann's son. You're supposed to know all of the latest dance.
Speaker 2:I know all of them, ariel, if you take over and teach me now.
Speaker 3:Ariel, oh my God.
Speaker 2:The other thing I think that we have to kind of talk about is and I say I say this to you all the time I hear a lot that there's no good music.
Speaker 2:I know that's not true and it's just simply not true, right? I think we also, as we age, we have to get away from the idea that there is no good music coming from our artists, because it does a disservice to the catalog that they're continuing to try to do. While you might not like it, you know, beanie man is still releasing new music. That's for his fans, that's for his tried and true, who really want to listen and hear what he and grow with him.
Speaker 2:And I get one alert last week, but I I think, I think that the challenge that particularly would dance on I think hip-hop is having it too is it was built off of that youthful energy. So if we look at hip-hop, you look at, like LL Cool J, ja Rule, nelly, jay-z, nas they all have this following but have elevated out of the things that they used to talk about. And we as dancehall artists we as dancehall artists let me add artists we are growing up with our generation as well, and so I think when they do release music, it is a challenge for an artist because the hype is really with the younger artists. However, the artists that are their age, because I mean Sham Bonte, agents of Vegas they've all released, released music and Spice. She's not young. She came out when we were in our teens, early twenties, but she's been around since Lady Saw days, later days in the 90s.
Speaker 2:Later days, like the early 2000s, she was part of that crop in the 2000s that came up and she really didn't get her big break until a little bit later in her life. Very similar to a lot of these artists, they've been doing music for a while and they don't necessarily get all of their hits in their early careers and while they're young. So I think, you know, we have to kind of consider that those artists are aging and we owe it to them to to listen to whatever they release as well.
Speaker 3:Go ahead like there are two examples that come to mind um, I think, agent sasco I've, I believe yes, I've been maturing with.
Speaker 3:Yes I've been maturing with, like some girl don't like you, like you know, come all the way up like local, like I feel like we're maturing on and keeping pace and I think that's an example other than Bujo album, with this one Baga song. I think Bujo also and sasco does it with his collaboration with Lila IK, I think would you also does that in a different way. That was always Bujo from voice of Jamaica, where you will, you will see him do collaborations with John Legend, from what?
Speaker 2:a girl named again Victoria Monet, right, and, and you know, still kind of make songs like up to this day I still play, beat them, but they might go feel a bit like I love that song, yes, yes, but know there are examples and I try to but again, you're a music person, right, and I think we got to also look at it from the everyday person who doesn't like you're looking out for it because it's still of interest to you Like, passive listening just doesn't move the needle for anybody in our category. You know what I mean. So it's better to talk about not liking it than just not saying anything you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's like you and I talk about it all the time if you're just releasing to crickets, then I'm gonna go where I'm gonna get the response, and if the young people are responding, even though I'm older, I'm gonna go there, because that's exactly where I'm getting the best response. Like, everybody isn't going, like, I think Beanie man is in that weird space of he's not necessarily getting the response from his core fans, but he also isn't saying much that is new or relevant to his target audience, and so he's trying to rally back for the young people, and the young people is like nah, come out there, you have to work for this, and I think that's really what is happening. But they also, like you know, artists got egos, so it's like I don't know.
Speaker 3:But I think overall, as we are maturing our culture, identity is shifting, but it's not a loss, it's just evolving and how we then move to passing down culture. And again, an example is me wanting my son to be able to do the latest dance moves. Even my mother would call because we know he danced right. So my mom would constantly Ethan you know how to do the latest dance moves. Even my mother would call because we know he danced right. So my mom would constantly Ethan you know how to do the new dance, because growing up the adults watched us dancing. So she's like waiting to watch him do the dance.
Speaker 3:When he go, he doing the this, whatever drill dance and all this stuff, and I'm like all right, I see you, you can move, but which part the movement there? You know how much work I had to do to teach him gennavose back in the day. You know this, right, I get all the videos. All right, come, let's do it. Line up, line up, let's do this. And he caught it One, two, three gennavose, gennavose, gennavose, like. And he got it and I was recording him and I would say look, because your foot up and go lean exactly dancer to dancer. You understood, we have to get it right right so it's it's so.
Speaker 3:So it's about how are we passing some of this culture to the kids, so it goes away from us consuming it and to us, you know, handing it over or trying to pass it off to our kids and I've seen how that works, you know. So they're catching aspects of it, but the parts that I really want them to get. Like even my cousin and said all right, ethan, you know to do this dance. All right, I forgot to the basics you have to know for the bogle, right. It's almost like and I want people to understand that the minute you can do bogle and you can move your body a certain way, you're able to do most of the other dance them yeah right, we're simplistic in a sense.
Speaker 3:It's just exactly makeup and these newer dances are just a reconstruction of some of these older dances. So once you can do bogle at a very minimum, right it's. I feel like that's just a like in ballet.
Speaker 2:You know what we did not talk about, what the visual elements, which visual element, videos I mean. But like the way, the way, the way that we used to convene to watch videos, whether it be party dvds, videos on tv, video music box, caribbean rhythms, all of those that just doesn't happen.
Speaker 3:But also I come from an era where that wasn't a thing the biggest. I mean, there are many videos you used to watch at Jamaica, but I don't think that on Saturday in Jamaica you'd have something on JBC called Music, Music, Music and that's where you got all the videos, Not just Jamaican videos. So I remember certain videos, but it wasn't tied to the video, I think I think maybe that was a diaspora thing.
Speaker 3:It's a diaspora thing, for sure. I was okay without the video, but that all changed with two videos One Shabba Chela Lord and Shaka Dimas and Pliers Murder. She Wrote two videos one shabba trailer lord and um shakadima sam pliers murder. She wrote because they were I hate to say this but I'm just going to use the term that people were responding. It looked foreign like in the production quality or the production value. Yeah, it was shabba's trailer lord and then ending tingaling, and then it was also around the time with Chaka Dimas and Playa Murder. She Wrote right, so those videos had this very high production value that people are like Whoa. And now we were, you know, paying attention to dance off video specifically and no, I said dance off videos because Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers been making videos, but that's marley and the melody makers been making videos, but that's reggae and that's always been treated separately. Um versus dancehall videos. That had like this high um production value in in terms of the music videos yeah, there's definitely a whole era of sean paul videos, elephant man videos.
Speaker 3:Give me the lights that give me like I think every generation, every decade has a defining video and I think the trilla lord and um video and the shakadimas and pliers and then if we move it, the give me the light video set off a whole new set of visuals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then even, but even like before that, like I remember watching um party videos like dvd bus ride videos. Yeah, all of them, yeah yes, and we used to, like you know, sit and watch and see who we're gonna see, and that kind of.
Speaker 2:Thing like those things, just nostalgically don't really happen anymore. So it it kind of goes back to like also, like where are the spaces and places where you consume in community, to kind of discover the dance portion of the culture that is music shifted and I think we're just finding new ways based off how technology has shifted, how to consume and share and keep up. Quote unquote. I think we're trying, we can make a concerted effort to do a little bit more, but I do think some of the technological advances help with the discovery. But again, we're a generation that is used to being fed and in this current climate it's almost like you have to find.
Speaker 3:And I also want to say there's exceptions to the rule, right, in terms of there are some people or age that will keep up with the new music, the new artists. Not everyone is like, oh, I can't keep up. So you have those who aren't music heads but they just want to feel, you know, make sure that they're still connected to culture, right. And then you're those who are like all right, I love music, I'm a music head. And those who are like all right, this is industry, this is part of the job. But you know, again, again, all of that to say is there are different ways. Like you said, juggling is gone.
Speaker 3:I think one way djs can mix it up a little bit.
Speaker 3:We went to an event and you know they were playing all the good music when they're sitting on that eat and I'm like, mix up some of that.
Speaker 3:Because if you look into the audience, I'm not, I know pure spring chicken, another player, some big people. So when people are sitting down and enjoying their meals, it's a balance between a particular pace of music, but that's also when you introduce some new songs, because, um, I feel like they can sit and listen and say what kind of song this you know and you run it back, if it's a dance tune, a little bit later. But we can't go from the way that dj select music that you start with your early warm and the older tunes and work your way up to the newer tunes. You can't really do that when you have like a mixed crowd or a dinner thing where you have bigger people. You have to kind of flip that, that mix or how you juggle a little bit around like your front load some of the newer songs. When people are sit down and a mill around before the team start, I get to play it again.
Speaker 2:So that's just a thought for me absolutely, and I feel like we could talk even more about this. We're already at an hour. This is crazy, so you and I can definitely talk music, um, and I think this conversation almost I'm thinking about a part two yeah, that could be interesting. Yeah, all right, my peeps. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Kerianne, thank you for lending your time as well. I appreciate you always for coming and chatting to the people, lynn.
Speaker 3:I appreciate being invited.
Speaker 2:Well, until next time, lea tamme peeps.
