1:59

Drink rum and fold, or party.

2:02

I think Soka is a really beautiful story about

2:04

Trinidad and Tobago. This

2:08

year, Soka music turns 50 years

2:11

old. It's a genre of music that was born

2:14

in Trinidad and Tobago, and today it

2:16

can be heard all over the world.

2:18

I'm a citizen of TNT. My father

2:21

is from there. And I grew up listening

2:23

to Soka basically all the time, at family

2:25

gatherings, in the car with my dad, and

2:28

every holiday.

2:30

To me, it's the music of celebration.

2:32

Since the early

2:34

70s, Soka has reinvented itself,

2:37

decade after decade, from the way artists

2:39

put out their music to how fans want

2:42

the genre to grow. Soka

2:44

is now more than just party music. It's

2:46

a soundtrack of Trinidad and Tobago. I

2:49

think it's important to just make

2:51

sure that as we promote the music, we

2:53

also promote the history and the heritage.

2:55

On today's episode, we celebrate 50 years

2:58

of Soka, and look ahead to what's next.

3:06

I'm Arielle Timross. This

3:08

is Vice News Reports.

3:17

My name is Trent. Online, I'm known as

3:20

Trini Trent. I talk about gender,

3:22

sexual orientation, sexual identity, culture,

3:25

I'm also a very big fan of Soka music.

3:28

Trent, the producer that I'm working with on

3:30

this episode, told me that

3:32

you have very strong feelings about

3:35

one particular Soka hit, Turn

3:37

Me On by Kevin Little. Can you tell me

3:39

how you feel about that song?

3:41

I don't think that's a good thing for me to

3:43

comment on on my crap.

3:49

It's not straight up Soka. What makes it

3:51

Soka is a melody. But a lot of the

3:54

beats that... That's

3:57

dancehall. So, it's also

3:59

called dancehall.

4:00

It's not my favorite record in the world, but

4:03

I do appreciate it for what he

4:05

was able to achieve. And

4:07

of course, seeing the Trinadian flags and seeing

4:09

the West Indian flags in that video, it

4:11

meant something.

4:13

What are your earliest memories of listening to soca

4:15

music? My mother came of age during the era

4:17

of disco and funk and R&B and, you

4:20

know, American pop. She definitely introduced

4:23

me to listening to Dinah Ross

4:25

and listening to Michael Jackson and Donna

4:27

Summer.

4:28

But at the same time, the real

4:30

foundation was Calypso and soca. You know,

4:32

I came on a house where I was hearing Lord

4:34

Kitchener, Mighty Sparrow, Shadow,

4:37

David Rodda. First soca song

4:39

that I ever knew was French

4:41

Man by Taxi.

4:43

I always remember the chorus.

4:46

It was, soci, soci,

4:48

soci, wee, wee. I can't really

4:50

say that well, but I would get

4:52

my life to that song because when I was

4:54

little, I used to dance it out of my diapers right

4:57

in front of TV. And my grandmother used to be clapping

4:59

for me, dancing, dancing. And that

5:01

was the first soca song that I remember.

5:04

That's beautiful. Listen, I'm

5:06

Trinadian. My dad is from there, but

5:09

I didn't grow up there. I grew up in Canada. So,

5:11

you know, I have a

5:13

fairly good understanding of how important

5:15

this music is to Trinidad. But

5:18

for somebody who maybe isn't as familiar, from

5:21

your perspective, what role does soca

5:23

music occupy in Trinidadian culture?

5:26

Soca is really the fuel of

5:29

Trinidadian culture and Trinidadian music

5:31

at this point. When you hear soca music, you

5:33

feel like you need to dance. When you hear soca music,

5:35

you feel like you need to let go. And

5:37

that's all part of the carnivore spirit. You know,

5:39

there's a song that came out this year for 2023

5:42

carnivore by an artist named Ula Tunji. He

5:45

had a song called Injin

5:46

Room.

5:52

The structure of the music is around the rhythm section.

5:55

You know, the bottle and the spoon and you know, the

5:57

percussion. This music that's all coming

5:59

together. is so like when you hear it, you

6:01

have to move your body. That's the engine room.

6:04

And that song is a cross-generational

6:06

hit. When I say that, I mean that older

6:08

people love it, younger people love it. It plays

6:11

in parties regardless of how old or how young

6:13

the people are.

6:14

And in the remix of that song is by

6:16

Rimbungshan. He actually gets the

6:19

legendary David Rutter to come

6:21

on the track with him. Legendary icon. This

6:23

is a person who is known across

6:26

the diaspora.

6:26

And in the- Trinity

6:29

the Bone, as far as diaspora. His

6:31

famous hits. If you think about the

6:33

diaspora and you think about what an anthem

6:36

that represents us in the diaspora, Trinity the Bone

6:38

is definitely

6:38

one of those songs.

6:44

It fulfills different roles because it's not

6:46

just party music. It's not just fun. It's

6:49

not just something you listen to to exercise,

6:51

but it can also be self-aware. It could also

6:53

be music that tells a story of

6:56

a generation. It speaks to generations

6:58

because it's no longer just one generation.

7:01

It now speaks to multiple generations that

7:03

are coming along.

7:04

Soaker has so many things. I often

7:06

say that Soaker is basically becoming

7:09

the pop

7:09

genre of the Caribbean.

7:13

Soaker music opens the space for synthetic

7:15

influences to come in where you can hear electronically

7:18

programmed elements. You have pads and you

7:20

hear different things that were programmed into a keyboard.

7:23

You hear electric guitars. You're gonna hear

7:25

a lot of horns, a lot of brass,

7:28

brass sections, trumpets and horns. The

7:31

drum, the percussion,

7:31

the movement, the rhythm, it

7:34

ties everything together.

7:39

I mean, I have a hard time imagining

7:41

myself listening to it and staying

7:43

in my seat, right? But we're talking about 50 years

7:46

of Soaker.

7:47

It came out of something.

7:49

Tell me the origins of this

7:50

genre. Tell me how we got here. Well,

7:53

this is an interesting story.

7:56

Buckle of children. This is fun. Happening

7:59

right now. Back before the 1970s, from

8:02

the 1960s at the turn of that decade into

8:04

the 70s, we had the start of the Black Power movement.

8:07

Now I want to talk to Black people

8:09

across this country. Number

8:12

one, we have to start being ashamed

8:14

of being Black. We've

8:17

got

8:17

to start being ashamed of being

8:19

Black. Number two, we have to move

8:22

into a position where we can

8:24

define terms. You know, Trinidad

8:26

and Tobago, at this point we had achieved

8:28

independent status. We were moving toward

8:30

becoming a Republic state where we had our

8:32

own head of state by And

8:35

in that pocket of that 14 year

8:38

period, we had so many things happening. But

8:40

one of the things that had the biggest impact on who we

8:42

were as a people was Black Power. People

8:46

started to ask questions

8:47

about who they were. Who am I? What's

8:49

my voice? With that also, with that

8:52

coming in of ideas was our coming in of foreign

8:54

tastes because people started to really listen

8:56

to music outside of a Trinidad and Tobago

8:58

context. You had people listening to funk

9:00

and disco and R&B and

9:03

soul. Rock and roll had evolved into

9:05

funk and into R&B and the

9:07

early stages of hip hop. You had all

9:09

of these different things happening and young

9:12

people started to wear dashikis and afros

9:14

and bell-bottom jeans. They

9:16

started to really shape the status quo. And

9:19

in that time, you

9:22

had to tune your lens at Calypso

9:24

Music. Because when you looked at

9:26

Calypso, Calypso was considered to be

9:28

the music of your parents' generation, of the older

9:30

generation, as I said. So young people

9:33

started

9:33

to, and this is the story as it's been told, lose

9:36

favor for Calypso Music.

9:39

Not completely, but you started to see people say, Calypso,

9:41

there, that's old people music and I listened

9:43

to that. We're not, oh God, man, did he say

9:45

in Calypso over and over? So people

9:48

started to veer away from it.

9:50

So at this point, we had Lord Shorty.

9:53

Lord Shorty was observing

9:55

what was going on and he had a conversation with a

9:57

certain producer who told him, listen,

9:59

you know,

9:59

because he was working on some new music and the producer said,

10:02

why are you making this Calypso thing a dead?

10:03

Nobody interested in that. It's dying.

10:06

It's gone. It's no longer the hot

10:08

stuff. Shorty didn't like that. What

10:11

Shorty did is that he sat back and

10:13

he decided to reinvent Calypso

10:16

music. He decided to reinvigorate the

10:18

genre. To do that, he decided

10:20

instead of looking outward, Shorty

10:22

decided, I'm going to look inward within

10:25

a Trinidad and Tobago context, pulling

10:28

from the rhythms, pulling from the instrumentation

10:30

within Trinidad and Tobago to create

10:32

something fresh.

10:33

He paid attention to the African rhythms.

10:36

He paid attention to that melody, that vibrancy,

10:38

especially in the horns, in the brass section. Then

10:41

he combined it with East Indian rhythms.

10:44

All of these things are considered to be black art

10:46

forms and black cultural expressions. East

10:48

Indian people were not necessarily represented

10:51

in this.

10:51

That mattered in that moment because

10:54

Trinidad had and still has

10:56

a really large population of people who

10:58

are of Indian descent.

10:59

Yes. What Rosh Shorty did,

11:02

well, Lord Shorty at the time, he combined

11:04

the two different styles together. In 1971 is

11:07

when he started his experiment, when he started to really

11:09

work on what would become the first so-called

11:12

song, which was Indrani.

11:19

It got mixed reviews, so he

11:21

continued to work on it. He continued

11:23

to refine it. By the time we got to songs

11:25

like Om Shanti Om,

11:31

we got Enness Vibrations, one

11:33

of my favorite songs.

11:40

By the time we got to that point in the mid

11:42

to late 1970s, he had perfected

11:45

what would be the soca sound that would

11:47

define the next decade of soca

11:50

music in Trinidad. It caught on like wildfire.

11:53

The old feeling, who needs

11:55

danger?

11:57

And he just continued to grow and blossom.

12:00

And to the point now that you can find Soka

12:02

in almost every Caribbean, West Indian territory.

12:05

One of the things that my dad

12:07

says often about Soka

12:09

versus Calypso is that Calypso

12:11

is sort of this storytelling,

12:14

news spreading type music,

12:17

right? While he loves Soka, I think sometimes

12:19

he sort of misses that aspect in

12:21

the music. He finds it to be, you

12:23

know, much less storytelling, a little

12:26

bit more like party music. That's something

12:28

that he feels is a critique of the music. Is

12:31

any of that accurate?

12:33

There is some truth in it. Calypso

12:35

music was a disruption of colonial spaces.

12:38

Calypso music gave a voice.

12:40

It became a medium through which many people

12:42

in this country were able to voice their

12:45

issues. But if we move forward

12:48

to Soka music, if we look

12:50

at Soka music, there are moments of self-awareness

12:53

in the music in itself. And

12:56

it's not just about wine and jam, party,

12:58

lift your hand up, wave your flag, run

13:00

from left to right. Yeah, jump and wave.

13:03

It's not just that. Yeah, jump and wave, palance. It's

13:05

not just that because there

13:07

are moments in Soka music where we are

13:09

talking about real issues. Freetown

13:12

Collective this year, they have a record called

13:14

Mighty People. And it starts off with

13:16

a quote by Marcus Garvey.

13:18

You do not know what we are thinking.

13:21

Because my work has only jumped because. And

13:23

throughout the record, he's saying, up you mighty people,

13:25

up you mighty people, that's the hook. Because he's

13:28

saying, you know, get up and move. You

13:30

can achieve anything if you push yourself.

13:32

That in itself is awareness. It

13:35

sounds like a fun song. Yeah, I want to exercise and

13:37

do some jumping jacks, dude. But when you

13:39

listen to the music, it's encouraging, it's

13:41

uplifting, and it's motivating.

13:49

And from what I understand, Soka started to

13:51

spread outside of the Caribbean to places like

13:54

Brooklyn and New York City. How did the

13:56

genre change as it traveled?

13:59

It's interesting.

13:59

because Soaker in itself, just like Calypso,

14:02

it has always expanded.

14:03

What happened at one point

14:06

in the action in 1990s, when I think about Soaker,

14:08

I think about Wet Marshall Montano and the ecstatic

14:10

band. His band is ecstatic.

14:13

What they did at that point in time was when he

14:15

was working on, I think the name of the album was

14:17

Heavy Duty. That's the album that had Big Drop.

14:20

Clear the way, clear

14:23

the way.

14:23

It's very bass forward. It's big,

14:26

it's booming, it's brash, it's in your face.

14:29

And that in itself shows your generational

14:31

shift because he himself was coming of age. So

14:34

when you think about it is that artists who

14:36

go abroad, what happens is they get exposed

14:39

to different things. And then when they come back within

14:41

a Trinitarian context, they bring the new

14:43

learnings and they apply to the space. They

14:45

learn things about the business. It has helped the

14:48

industry in itself to evolve.

14:50

Right, and like we said at the top of the episode, one of the

14:52

big things about Soaker is that it's

14:55

evolving all of the time. And

14:57

I think that one of the really important

15:00

bits of that evolution is the central

15:02

role that it's taken in Carnival.

15:04

And Carnival is this massive celebration that

15:07

lasts for months and culminates in this one

15:09

really big week, but I've never

15:11

been to Carnival. So Trent, can you describe

15:13

it for people who've never

15:14

experienced it? Carnival

15:17

is a space in which we get to

15:19

express ourselves in our true

15:21

zones. Where we as one

15:23

people existing in one place, it's

15:26

like the air's electric.

15:26

It's like this excitement,

15:29

this raw energy. You

15:32

know, you're hearing

15:32

the music playing. People are out in the

15:35

streets if they're playing jouveille, whether

15:37

you're covered in oil or clay or

15:39

mud or chocolate syrup

15:41

or paint or soap. And

15:44

then you come across to Carnival Tuesday that

15:46

is pretty mass. That's when you put on the expensive costume

15:48

that you just had to spend almost more than half your

15:50

pay check

15:51

on, and you put on your costume,

15:53

and you come out and you parade. Early

15:55

in the morning from the time the sun is up until in

15:58

the night, half past eight, nine o'clock. and

16:00

then you wrap it up and you come back home and

16:03

you mourn. Exhausted. Yeah,

16:07

but you're still on a high with your mourning because there's

16:09

no carnival done. The last time I played, I actually

16:11

cried at the end of carnival because I couldn't believe it

16:13

was over. And you get, it's an

16:15

emotional experience, but you know

16:18

that if you truly had a great carnival season,

16:21

not just the parade, not just the week of,

16:23

but if you had a proper season, those months

16:25

of activity,

16:27

you get to let everything out.

16:30

And you feel like you've let all of this

16:32

weight off of your system and now you're free

16:34

to flow through the rest of the year.

16:36

So Trent, with carnival being so important

16:39

to soca artists, how has the pandemic

16:41

affected that dynamic? You know, there was

16:43

no carnival in 2021 and then

16:46

in 2022 carnival was this weird hybrid,

16:48

some of it was online. So how

16:51

did that impact the music and the artists? Artists

16:53

had, now they had to find different ways to

16:55

perform. Because I remember before you

16:58

could perform at five, six, seven, eight, nine,

17:00

ten parties in a week. You could

17:02

make a lot of money. No, none of those parties

17:04

exist. You had to figure out how am

17:06

I going to

17:06

reach an audience? That's

17:10

after the break.

17:26

And so can you. Your CSL Plasma

17:28

donation can help create 24 critical

17:31

life-saving medicines that can give grandpa

17:33

the chance for his heart to swell when he meets

17:35

his new grandson or give a bride the

17:37

chance for her heart to skip a beat on her

17:39

wedding day. Every Plasma donation

17:42

helps more than you know. Do the

17:44

amazing. Help save lives. Donate

17:46

today at your local CSL Plasma

17:48

Center and be rewarded for your generosity.

17:54

Hey, I'm Jason Kebler.

17:56

I'm the Editor-in-Chief of Motherboard over at

17:58

Vice where we cover tech. So

18:01

that's things like cyber security, hacking,

18:03

labor, artificial intelligence,

18:06

the gig economy. But it's

18:08

also porn, urban planning, public transit,

18:11

housing. And over the last few

18:13

years, we noticed that all these things we cover

18:15

have a really important

18:16

economic angle. Like,

18:18

how do gig workers make ends meet?

18:21

More than 100 Amazon workers

18:23

walking out at the company's largest air

18:25

freight facility on the West Coast.

18:27

Why would oil prices suddenly go

18:29

below zero? And what the hell happened

18:31

with GameStop Stop? GameStop's wild

18:33

ride on Wall Street took a few more sharp turns

18:35

today. We needed a place to explain these

18:38

dynamics, which are changing all the time.

18:41

From Vice News, this is Motherboard

18:43

Money. Think of it as your guide

18:45

to surviving late capitalism. Listen

18:48

and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

19:02

So Trent, you were telling us about

19:04

how important Carnival is for

19:06

soca artists and Trinidadians generally,

19:09

and how when Carnival was canceled at

19:11

the onset of the pandemic, a lot of soca artists

19:13

had to adapt really quickly.

19:16

How did they do that?

19:17

A lot of artists, they had to really discover

19:20

who they were in a digital space. You

19:23

know, we had artists adapting to social media

19:25

like never before. Like Drew and Elas,

19:28

if you want to say from 2021, 2022, you can see the rise

19:30

of artists on

19:33

TikTok. We can see the rise of artists

19:36

on social media like Twitter and Instagram

19:38

and Facebook connecting with their fans

19:40

like they've never had to before, performing on

19:43

live streams. But then of course you had

19:45

people who managed to, through the digital

19:47

space, explode.

19:48

Patrice Roberts, she was already very famous

19:51

here in Trinidad and throughout the diaspora, very successful.

19:54

And when you think of Mind My Business, best soca

19:56

song of the year, when you think of the way

19:58

that she has its speed.

19:59

loaded on TikTok.

20:01

I go drink water, I mind my business.

20:04

I mind my business. Drink water, I mind my business.

20:07

Yeah, boom, boom, boom, ba-da, mam-boo. Mambo.

20:11

When you hear her voice, I always say she has a vintage

20:13

Trinidad voice. Her voice is calypso.

20:16

She has a tone. When you hear her, she sounds

20:18

like the countryside. She sounds

20:20

like Toko. She sounds like the North

20:23

Coast. She sounds like this nostalgia

20:26

in her throat, just the tone of her voice.

20:28

Where we have

20:29

Americans, celebrities, celebrities out

20:31

of the UK, people who have

20:34

never heard Toko in their life are

20:36

singing drink water, I mind my business. We

20:38

also saw a lot of artists put their music on streaming

20:40

for the first time, or at least expand their catalogs

20:43

on streaming. There was a point in time

20:45

when artists, you could not find a lot of their music

20:47

online. It's still a challenge. But

20:49

you have people who are now putting

20:52

their music bit by bit by bit because they are

20:54

finally understanding the importance

20:56

of the online community, the resistance that

20:59

they had before.

20:59

They're not realizing this. And if I'm not relevant

21:02

in a digital space,

21:04

then where am I going to be? Where's

21:06

my career going?

21:07

Totally. A lot of these artists had to invest in

21:10

their digital presence. But I'm

21:12

wondering, how did that impact fans?

21:14

How did they experience that change?

21:16

What's going on is that at

21:18

the start of this year,

21:20

I, like many other people, I tweeted

21:22

on Twitter. I said, I don't understand what's going

21:24

on. I want to support Soka, but I just feel

21:26

like there's nothing to enjoy. I

21:28

didn't like anything I was hearing. Nothing. But

21:31

then I sat back and I said, you know what? I

21:33

have to do the work.

21:34

Maybe I've just gotten so accustomed

21:37

to how things were before the pandemic, where

21:39

I would discover new Soka by turning on the radio.

21:42

I have to go on streaming now and look for it. So the

21:44

way the artists released their music has changed.

21:46

And now the way I consume music also

21:48

has to adapt. And I

21:50

started to listen to the music. Some artists

21:53

have really, from a musical

21:55

perspective, you can tell that they've grown.

21:57

A good example of that, to me, is the song

21:59

that-

21:59

really provides the capstone for

22:02

the 50th anniversary of Soka, which is voice,

22:05

long-lived Soka. I remembered

22:07

seeing to myself,

22:08

this is probably going to be the biggest song

22:10

for Carnival. Of course, there are songs like In

22:12

Jin Room by Ula Tunji, and there

22:15

are all these other records that I felt just captured.

22:18

It just really captured the

22:21

energy and the essence of Soka music.

22:23

I hesitate to say this because

22:26

a lot of people listen to Soka all around the

22:28

world, and also at the same

22:30

time, despite having had

22:32

major worldwide breakthrough hits,

22:35

I get a sense that there are a lot of people who maybe

22:38

know some of these songs, but don't know that

22:40

it's Soka, right? I'm wondering,

22:43

what is it going to take for people to recognize these songs

22:45

as Soka?

22:47

Right now, there's this idea and this

22:50

movement, it has been going on for a while

22:52

to make Soka global, make

22:54

it go international. As you

22:57

correctly said, it already is international.

22:59

I mean, the Caribbean has different countries. That

23:01

means we're international, and

23:03

it's in Germany, it's in Japan,

23:06

it's in the UK, it's in

23:08

parts of America, it's in Latin America,

23:10

it's in Central America, it's in China,

23:13

Soka is everywhere. West Africa,

23:15

when you look at what's going on right now with Afrobeats,

23:17

there are Afrobeats artists who have mixed in Soka

23:19

to their

23:20

sound. So

23:22

I think it's important

23:23

to just make sure that as we promote

23:26

the music, we also promote the history

23:28

and the heritage. For those

23:30

individuals who are involved, producers,

23:33

DJs, artists, arrangers, writers,

23:35

who are involved in the creation

23:37

and promotion of the music.

23:40

Getting a message out there, I also think

23:42

they have to just be very aware of the responsibility

23:45

that they have to the genre itself and

23:47

think beyond. The artists

23:49

who are performing the Soka, are getting the opportunity

23:51

to perform at dance festivals, like Coachella,

23:54

etc. They get any opportunity to reach in places,

23:57

and they're learning new things that they can then bring

23:59

back to Trinidad. or bring back to their home country,

24:01

be it Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, whatever,

24:04

and help

24:04

enrich the environment that they're in.

24:07

That's fantastic. But at the same

24:09

time, we have to be sure, one,

24:11

what we're promoting is actually Soka. Because

24:13

if it is that the song is 99% reggaeton

24:16

and 1% Soka, is it really Soka that

24:18

you're promoting? And then we also

24:21

have to be very mindful of, okay,

24:23

yes, we're giving Soka a space, but what are

24:25

we giving up? Because everything comes

24:28

at a cost. So if it is that you're trying

24:30

to make the music go global, my question is, what

24:32

is the definition of global? Because for

24:34

many people, when they say global, they already mean, how do

24:36

we get only

24:37

Billboard charts in America? That's what they're

24:39

really looking

24:40

at. They also actually, I think I would argue,

24:42

go even further. What I think they mean is,

24:45

how do we get white people to recognize this music

24:48

and listen to it?

24:49

That is definitely what a

24:51

lot of people want. Because when you see

24:53

people say, we want a Soka category at the Grammys.

24:56

We want Bissant to go number one on the Billboard charts.

24:59

So what you're telling me is, oh, okay,

25:01

what you want is a space in

25:03

a white-dominated space. Because

25:06

you're not saying you want a Soka category at the

25:08

BET Awards or the NAACP Awards,

25:10

or the Sotrena Awards, but we've won awards there. Bonch

25:13

Garland has been nominated, Marshall has won. That's

25:16

not what you want. You want a space at the Grammys,

25:18

because that is considered not just the highest level

25:20

in music excellence in America. It's

25:23

also the place where you tend to see white domination.

25:26

You want a space there. That

25:28

takes levels

25:29

of work, interpersonal

25:31

work, community level work, national level work,

25:33

regional level work to unpack what's going on

25:35

there. Because that's all part of our postcolonial experience.

25:38

And also, you're opening the door

25:41

for other people to enter that space.

25:43

But they're not coming in to make music alongside

25:45

you. They're coming in now, oh, this is

25:47

something that I too can buy and sell in a capitalist

25:50

environment. So I'm going to come in. I'm

25:52

going to take it. I'm going to repackage

25:54

it. I'm going to sell it. I'm going to make money

25:57

from it. Another dime of that money is going

25:59

back to your country.

25:59

country. So for lack of a

26:02

better term, they colonize the music. And when

26:04

they do that,

26:05

what does that sound like? Do

26:08

I want this genre to be something that expands

26:10

to reach a global stage beyond the stage

26:13

it has already achieved? Of course. I want

26:15

it to be fantastic. I want

26:18

it to reach far. But I do want it

26:20

to also be something that we

26:22

can all acknowledge. It represents

26:24

West Indian people. It has its roots in Trinidad

26:26

and Tobago, and it's something that we can all enjoy

26:28

together without

26:30

losing the magic that is

26:32

so called.

26:50

This

26:57

story was produced by Audra Natapia and

27:24

edited

27:27

by Adisa Egan and Stephanie Karauki. Vice

27:30

News reports is produced by Sam Egan, Sophie Kaseus,

27:33

Adriana Rodriguez,

27:34

and Audra Natapia. Our senior producers

27:36

are Jesse Alejandro Cottrell, Janice Yomoka,

27:39

and Julia Nutter. Our supervising producer

27:41

is Ashley Kleeck. Our associate producer

27:43

is Steph Brown. Sound design and

27:45

music composition by Steve Bone, Fran

27:47

Bandy,

27:48

and Kyle Murdoch. Our executive producers

27:50

are Adisa Egan and Stephanie Karauki.

27:53

For Vice Audio, Annie Aviles

27:55

is our executive editor, and Janet Lee is

27:57

our senior production manager. Fact checking

27:59

by Sophie Hurwitz. Our theme music

28:02

is by Steve Bone. Our VP of audio

28:04

is Charles Rogio. I'm Arielle Zimros.

28:07

If you enjoyed this episode, please take the time

28:09

to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts.

28:11

Let us know what you think. It really helps other

28:13

people decide to press that play button

28:16

when they do find us. Vice News reports

28:18

drops every Thursday, so be sure to check

28:20

back in next week.