News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Sept. 26, 2025: It’s New Music Friday, which means it’s time to refresh your playlist with some of the hottest new releases from the Caribbean. This week brings reggae royalty, dancehall icons, soca legends, and rising stars – all serving vibes for the weekend.

Beres Hammond – It’s a Part of Life

The legendary Beres Hammond is back with It’s a Part of Life, produced by Shane Brown for Jukeboxx Productions and released via VPAL Music on September 19. The reflective track explores life’s struggles while offering a message of perseverance.

Hammond’s release follows his August duet Love Story with Tanya Stephens — their first-ever collaboration — and comes fresh off his Forever Giving Thanks Tour. Fans can also look forward to seeing Beres on the 2026 Love and Harmony Cruise alongside Tanya Stephens, Maxi Priest, and Marion Hall.

Listen: Click here

Sean Paul – Temperature (Henry Fong & Proppa Remix)

Sean Paul has dropped a new remix of an old classic.

Sean Paul’s 2005 global hit Temperature just got a club-ready refresh. EDM producers Henry Fong and Proppa reimagined the track with a bass-house twist, dropping digitally today, September 26th.

The remix arrives as The Trinity celebrates its 20th anniversary, and as Temperature passes the billion-stream milestone on Spotify — proof that Sean Paul’s heat still blazes worldwide.

“This new remix gives the track a whole new life for the clubs and the next generation of fans,” Sean Paul said. Listen HERE

CHILLBILL x Skinny Fabulous x Kevin Lyttle x IzyBeats – DahLayne

What began as a viral DIY tribute to Kevin Lyttle’s Turn Me On by rising Vincy artist CHILLBILL has turned into a full-on powerhouse collab. Skinny Fabulous and Kevin Lyttle jumped on board, while Grammy-winning producer IzyBeats elevated the production. The result: DahLayne, a late-summer soca banger perfect for Vincy Independence celebrations.

Stream: Click here

Hezron – Holding On

Jamaican crooner Hezron delivers a moving anthem of hope with Holding On, produced alongside Tad Dawkins Jr. The song’s soulful guitar, deep basslines, and uplifting message remind listeners to stay resilient in tough times.

Stream: Click here

Ras Teo – Deh Pon Dem

Roots reggae fans are in for a treat with Ras Teo’s new album Deh Pon Dem, blending classic roots stylings with modern production by Ashanti Selah of Zion I Kings. The eight-track set stays true to the tradition of conscious reggae and is available now for free download, with a dub version dropping next month. Listen HERE

Meleku – For the Thrill of It

Dancehall’s next-gen star Meleku (son of reggae icon Sizzla) just dropped his 7-track project For the Thrill of It. The EP includes standout singles like Balance (a dancehall-afrobeats fusion) and No Hesitation — Sizzla’s personal favorite. The release positions Meleku as one to watch in 2025.

Stream: Click here

More New Caribbean Drops This Week

Lyrikal x MadLypso – Same Time – Produced by Johann Seaton

DJ Tygga Ty – Field Trip Riddim – Featuring Voicemail, Delly Ranx, Booba Starr & more

Valiant x CJTheChemist – Bare Minimum – Released via Chemist Records/DubShot Records

Bulby York’s fifth album 5 is out today, featuring Beres Hammond, Toots Hibbert, D’Yani and more!

Bottom Line

From timeless reggae to futuristic dancehall, this week’s Caribbean New Music Friday proves that the region’s sound continues to innovate and inspire. Add these tracks to your playlist and take the Caribbean with you into the weekend.

By Giselle Hudson

News Americas, PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad, Tues. Sept. 23, 2025: Some lives unfold like a quiet melody. Trinidad and Tobago-born, UK-based composer and guitarist Dominique Le Gendre’s life is an entire score – motifs layered and revisited, rhythms from Port of Spain to Paris to London, harmonies that refuse to resolve because the conversation is never over.

“Music has been mapping a very, very clear route through life and how to express being alive. The music is the heart, the blood, the oxygen.”

A Childhood Scored in Song

Dominique Le-Gendre (Jimmy Irwin image)

Dominique’s earliest classrooms were living rooms alive with music. Saturdays often meant sitting under Auntie Olive Walke’s piano as La Petite Musicale – the beloved choir Olive founded – rehearsed folk and sacred songs from across the Caribbean. Those rehearsals spilled beyond notes and lyrics; they taught children like Dominique that music could be worship and storytelling, culture and connective tissue. Olive even slipped Dominique and her sister into La Petite’s Christmas shows at Queen’s Hall, giving them an early taste of stagecraft and the quiet discipline behind beauty.

Family gatherings were their own concerts. Uncle John Henderson, armed with his beloved cuatro, filled the air with parang and old-time calypso. Her parents’ love of classical records added a European counterpoint, while two older brothers opened doors to the wider world—Jimi Hendrix, Mongo Santamaria, Miles Davis – stacked on the family turntable. Evenings in Port of Spain carried the soundscape further: distant drums and late-night steelpan rehearsals drifting through the neighborhood air, an atmosphere that seeped naturally into her musical imagination.

By nine, Dominique had a guitar in her hands. By ten she was the youngest member of the Assumption Church folk choir, stepping in with just three chords and a brave heart. Within weeks she was accompanying hymns with ease; before long, she and her sister were playing weddings, funerals and christenings all over the city.

“It was like living in a pan yard. Everyone belonged, everyone had something to contribute. That philosophy of the pan yard—collective creation, shared ownership – has never left me,” reminisces Dominique.

The pan yard – where music is learned by ear, where arrangements live in memory and every player can switch parts – became the blueprint for her life. It is still the metaphor she returns to: music as community, collaboration as artistry.

Becoming – And Always Belonging

That Trinidadian foundation carried her outward. Dominique trained as a classical guitarist in Paris with Ramón de Herrera, studied harmony with Yvonne Desportes and music analysis with Christian Accaoui. In London she built a career composing for theatre, dance, film and radio drama; she wrote music for all thirty-eight of Shakespeare’s plays and became an Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House.

Yet, the heart of her practice never shifted. The work that nourished her most echoed the collaborative spirit of her Caribbean beginnings: theatre ensembles and radio studios where writers, actors and composers built something together in real time.

“When I’m fully invested in a project, that’s home. The place doesn’t matter as much as the work and the people,” she noted.

Portraits for Guitar — A Homecoming and a Question

After decades of creating for others, Dominique has returned to the instrument that started it all. “In over fifty-six years of being with the guitar, this is the first time I’m sitting to write pieces just for the guitar,” she disclosed.

Her new album, Portraits for Guitar, is both statement and question. It asks, ‘What does Caribbean classical music sound like? Does this touch you? Is this part of you?’

The project gathers six original sketches for solo guitar and two suites of her own alongside music by Cuban composers Flores Chaviano and Walfrido Domínguez and British composer Stephen Goss. Performed with virtuoso Ahmed Dickinson, the works form what Dominique calls “a conversation of guitars”—Caribbean, Latin and European voices meeting on the same page.

Here her philosophy meets a wider conversation. In a recent essay for The Atlantic, composer Matthew Aucoin argued that classical music isn’t defined by a European sound or era at all but by writing – the act of putting music on paper so it can live again in each new performance. For Aucoin, notation is the connective tissue across centuries, the way ideas travel beyond the composer’s lifetime.

Dominique embodies that idea. For her, a score is another kind of pan yard: a living archive where knowledge is shared and reshaped. When she writes these guitar portraits, she isn’t just recording an album; she’s creating a written conversation that future guitarists can inhabit and transform.

“When I’m composing I can feel an urge to rush ahead—to reach the ending,” she says. “But with this music I have to let each section unfold in its own time. Getting to the end isn’t the goal; the discovery inside the process is.”

The process is as deliberate as the music. Recording will take place over four days in a resonant church outside London, followed by editing, mastering and the subtle sound-sculpting of a classical producer. The label will handle licensing, design, distribution, reviews and radio submissions. The release is planned for September 2026, allowing the music to breathe and find its listeners.

In this light, Portraits for Guitar becomes more than a beautiful album. It is Dominique’s way of expanding what classical music can mean – a Caribbean imagination inscribed in notation, ready for anyone, anywhere, to discover and play forward.

SongMaps Rye – Art as Quiet Climate Action

While the guitar draws Dominique inward, SongMaps Rye sends her outward. This multi-year project unfolds in a small English coastal town already on the front line of rising seas. Working with scientists, poets, circus artists and residents, she and her team use music, poetry and environmental science to help people see, feel and act.

“Councils have decided which towns will be sacrificed, but they haven’t told the people. We’re not making activists – we’re giving people the information, tools and creativity to ask the questions that need to be asked and to make demands,” she said.

Workshops are free by design. Young people write and podcast about their world. Families learn gardening and stilt-walking. Local experts lead river walks and bird-identification sessions. The goal is empowerment and resilience.

“Otherwise, it remains an elite activity. These activities are too important. It’s about making the future possible for people for whom hope is disappearing,” Dominique noted.

Here the pan yard philosophy finds new life: collective creativity as resilience, a community orchestra of scientists, elders and children writing their own survival score.

Hope as an Unfinished Sound

When I ask what hope sounds like, Dominique pauses, then smiles. “My compositions sound as if they’re never finished. The end is always hanging in the air. That is what hope is – his conversation isn’t over.” For her, openness is legacy: creating opportunities for others, fostering a spirit of collaboration and listening that outlives any single piece of music.

Be Part of the Music

Dominique’s Portraits for Guitar campaign is live now. Your contribution directly supports the recording – studio time, mastering, producer, guest artists, and the quiet, painstaking work that turns new music into a lasting document.

Supporters can choose from beautifully crafted perks: early digital access, signed CDs and scores, private lessons, even Executive Producer credits and intimate house concerts. More than a CD, your gift helps safeguard a living Caribbean classical tradition and ensures that Dominique’s lifelong map of music continues to chart new territory.

Click HERE to join the journey and make a gift today

Dominique Le Gendre: child of La Petite Musicale and Auntie Olive’s living-room rehearsals, niece of Uncle John and his parang cuatro, composer of unfinished endings, keeper of memory, builder of resilience. Her music reminds us that hope is a melody still unfolding – one we can all help play.

News Americas, NASSAU, Bahamas, Wed. Sept. 17, 2025: The Bahamas is about to become the Caribbean’s culinary and cultural capital this October as The Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival returns for five days of food, art, music — and one unforgettable headline performance by US-born, Bahamaian roots star, Lenny Kravitz.

US singer-songwriter Lenny Kravitz, seen here speaks on stage during the MTV Video Music Awards at UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, on September 7, 2025. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

From October 22–26, 2025, the iconic Baha Mar resort will transform into a playground for food lovers, art collectors, and music enthusiasts with world-class events designed to celebrate Bahamian and Caribbean creativity.

The festival kicks off Wednesday night with celebrity chef Daniel Boulud’s annual Truffle Dinner at Café Boulud, followed by the highly anticipated opening of FUZE Art Fair. FUZE will showcase more than 70 artists and 40 galleries from 14 countries, offering everything from contemporary paintings to immersive installations. Guests can take part in hands-on workshops such as straw craft, acrylic pouring, and more, making the art experience truly interactive.

The weekend’s crown jewel arrives on Friday night when Grammy-winning rocker Lenny Kravitz headlines the “Taste of Baha Mar” Welcome Party. Known for his deep Bahamian roots and home base on Eleuthera, Kravitz says performing in The Bahamas is always special.

“The Bahamas has always been my home, as well as heartfelt inspiration for my music,” Kravitz shared in a statement. “I’m humbled to join fellow Caribbean artists, creatives, and innovators for The Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival, and I look forward to sharing this experience with a community that means so much to me.”

The festival’s culinary programming will feature tastings and pop-ups from internationally renowned chefs, mixologists, and sommeliers, while the art fair will continue to celebrate Bahamian heritage with panel discussions, live demonstrations, and collector meet-ups.

With a perfect mix of high-end cuisine, culture, and entertainment, the Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival has quickly become a marquee event on the Caribbean’s cultural calendar, drawing visitors from across the globe.

Tickets and weekend passes are available now, with limited capacity for the Lenny Kravitz performance. Learn more at festival.bahamar.com.