Caribbean music in Canada

Caribbean music in Canada has existed since the early 1920s, becoming increasingly prominent after the 1960s as Caribbean immigration to Canada increased. The role of music in the Caribbean Canadian

1960s and 1970s#

Beginning in the mid-1960s, a wave of Caribbean musicians, especially but not exclusively from Jamaica, began to move to Toronto. Some of these, such as Jay Douglas, Jo Jo Bennett and Jackie Mittoo, pioneered the development of a reggae scene in the city, while others, such as Wayne McGhie, performed rhythm and blues, soul and funk in accordance with the dominant Toronto sound of the era.

1980s#

Caribbean music began to actively break through into the Canadian cultural mainstream in the 1980s when Parachute Club, a band who incorporated reggae and soca rhythms into a mainstream new wave dance-pop style, broke through to mass popularity with their 1983 hit single “Rise Up”. Their success in turn paved the way for reggae and dub poetry artists such as Leroy Sibbles, Lillian Allen, Messenjah, Clifton Joseph and Sattalites to break through to larger audiences; the Juno Awards, Canada’s primary music award, introduced an award for Reggae Recording of the Year in 1985. Parachute Club percussionist Billy Bryans, whose interest in Caribbean music had been influential in the introduction of reggae and soca elements into the band’s sound, also went on to become Canada’s first prominent and influential promoter and producer of homegrown Caribbean and Latin American music, producing albums for and managing numerous artists and acting, according to Brazilian Canadian singer-songwriter Aline Morales, as “a bridge between world music and the Canadian music scene”.

1990s#

Noted developments in Caribbean music in the 1990s included Jane Bunnett’s early explorations of Afro-Cuban jazz, Snow’s worldwide 1993 hit single “Informer”, the incorporation of reggae and dub influences by blues-rock band Big Sugar, the reggae rock band Raggadeath, and the 1998 hit single “Who Let the Dogs Out?”, written by Trinidadian-Canadian musician Anslem Douglas.

2000s#

Stations like Flow FM, CHIN-FM, G98.7 and, until 2011, CKLN-FM, located in Toronto, Ontario have served to bind the Caribbean music industry with their regularly rotated scheduling for soca and calypso music. The Canadian Urban Music Awards have also begun to award various award titles in the soca and reggae genres. In 2007, Anslem Douglas who originally wrote the song “Who Let the Dogs Out?”, re-entered the Caribbean music scene after a four-year hiatus. Douglas recorded several of his 2007 Carnival songs from Canada. Noted artists in the genre to emerge in this era included South Rakkas Crew and Kobo Town, both of whom have had albums nominated for the Polaris Music Prize, Carl Henry who released songs in both English and French, and Alex Cuba, a Cuban-born guitarist who has had success both as a solo artist and as a collaborator with pop singer Nelly Furtado. Singer-songwriter Danny Michel also received critical and commercial acclaim for his 2012 album Black Birds Are Dancing Over Me, recorded in Belize with a group of musicians credited as the Garifuna Collective.