Inside Bouyon: How a Fusion of Local Folk Music & Digitized Instruments Gave Way to Dominica's Fast-Spreading Homegrown Genre

Yahoo

19 hours ago

Last summer — and, for what it's worth, this summer as well — Quan, Litleboy and Trilla G's 'Someone Else' was inescapable across the Windward Islands of the Caribbean. Whether you were feting pon di road, out with friends, or humming along to your daily playlist, the song's infectious bouyon drums echoed across the region. Bouyon, the fast-growing genre originating from the island of Dominica, is poised to follow the footsteps of reggae, dancehall, soca and konpa as the next Caribbean genre to garner global attention — yet another major moment for a region that's wining on the precipice of another crossover wave.
A mixture of traditional sounds and contemporary instrumentation and grooves, bouyon's origins reflect the generation-bridging essence of its composition. The term 'bouyon' roughly translates to 'soup,' and the pounding, syncopated percussion and high-octane tempos are normally paired with smooth crooners à la 'Someone Else,' or brash chant-adjacent delivery, perfect for a never-ending fete.
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Cornell Phillip, one of the founding members of the bouyon-pioneering WCK Band (Windward Caribbean Kulture), tells Billboard the genre was born out of a few musical families in the mid-late 1970s. His older brother, Daryl Phillip, was a cultural officer, and he had the opportunity to document the traditional rhythms and dances of Dominica. As he brought the bands to the family house to record them, another brother named Ashton was learning how to use his Synchronic Sound System, giving the boys access to speakers, a mixer and other production tools. Ashton also bought a keyboard for Cornell and a bass guitar for Keith, another Phillip brother, once he took note of their musical inclinations.
'Boys being boys, we started to play along with the traditional instruments [that the bands our brother was recording played],' he tells Billboard. 'The boumboum [a hollowed wooden bwa kan] became the bass guitar, the syak and tambal [which are percussive instruments] became the drum machine, and the accordion turned into the keyboard. We couldn't play our own thing, so we joined them in our own way.'
The brothers kept up their semi-digitized fusion of cadence-lypso and jing-ping (a kind of Dominican folk music), playing tea parties across the island. By the early-mid 1980s, 'hi-fis had taken over the music scene, and live bands weren't really playing in Dominica,' Phillip explains. 'My brother noticed that void, and we decided to take the other guys [friends from other musically inclined families] in to properly form a band together. That's how it all started.'
WCK Band formally debuted with 1988's One More Sway, but it was 1990's Culture Shock, which housed early bouyon hits like 'Dance Floor' and the title track, that proved its breakthrough moment. By 1993's Forever, the band had perfected its bouyon blueprint, using it to craft 'Conch Shell,' one of its biggest hits — perhaps only rivaled by 'Balance Batty,' a timeless smash from 1995's Tou Cho Tou Flam. The band built on its cross-regional success with tours visiting the United States, Canada, Europe and the Caribbean. The group even graced the iconic Apollo Theater during this time.
In the following years, bouyon continued its ascent across Dominica and the rest of the Windward Islands, especially Saint Lucia, evolving into subgenres like bouyon-soca and reketeng. Asa Bantan, one of the genre's current leaders and the voice behind hits like 'Wet Fete,' notes that alongside that development came the shift from bands to solo artists.
'If you was not in a band, you couldn't make it,' he says. 'You would have to join a band. But I was the first one [who] came out as a solo artist and took it to another level. [WCK's] 'Balance Batty' was probably the first bouyon crossover hit that reached other islands. Then, Triple K had one with 'Sousse.' [Around 2013], I performed 'Do Something Krazy' on the Ubersoca cruise [an annual seven-night soca festival at sea], and I was the only one there representing bouyon music at the time. When all those different artists heard my riddim, they recognized it was unique and different and wanted to hop on it.'
Once soca giants like Bunji Garlin, Fay-Ann Lyons, Problem Child, Mr. Killa, Voice and Machel Montano took note of bouyon, they incorporated the genre into their own releases, like the latter's 2019 Motto-produced 'Issa Vibe.' As soca and bouyon artists began their cultural and sonic exchange, a new class of 'nasty business' bouyon acts emerged, marked by their penchant for 'rawer lyrics,' says Bantan. These artists, like Mr. Ridge, Reo and Nice, employ the same 'rough and commanding,' tone that Bantan, who's been a recording artist for two decades, says is paramount for bouyon vocalists, but their lyricism leans closer to X-rated fare than the socially conscious songwriting of the genre's roots.
Today, bouyon is arguably the most popular style of music in Dominica, and its influence can be heard in several tracks from artists across the West Indies, especially during Carnival season. Bantan is probably the most popular stage performer in the genre, with his World Creole Music Festival entrances growing more elaborate each year. 'I've come in through the crowd on a horse as a king, one time I came out of a coffin, and another time I came in on a zip line over 15,000 people,' he reminisces. 'I've also come in an ambulance; I've come in a limousine as the president with bodyguards. Every year, I'm stepping it up another notch, and thousands of people look forward to what I'm going to do.'
This year also marked the very first time Dominica hosted a Bouyon Road March competition during Mas Domnik, its annual Carnival celebration. Campaigned for, in part, by Emile Depooter, who previously managed WCK Band and Triple K, the separate bouyon category reflects the genre's growing influence on Carnival season. With just over a third of the vote, 'Rags' — a collaborative track from Trilla G, Shelly and Skinny Fabulous that melodically nods to The Greatest Showman's 'Never Enough' — won the inaugural Bouyon Road March title. Impressively, Shelly, the lead singer of Signal Band, also placed second and third alongside his bandmates with 'Bye Bye Bye' and 'My Band,' respectively.
'We had a lot of criticism over the years that Carnival time is not for Signal Band,' Shelly reflects. 'The consensus was that Carnival is not for us, and we are for the festivals and concerts instead. We made a conscious decision to change that narrative, and we did. When they kept calling our names for the results, that's what we worked hard for.'
As bouyon continues its ascent and power players from other genres and islands turn their attention to Dominica, pioneers like Phillip welcome the outside investment, as long as true bouyon artists remain at the forefront.
'We as Dominicans have to be responsible because there is such a thing as fusion, but you have to be careful or you might lose the original form,' Phillip stresses. 'You can put a little R&B influence so that people in the States can relate, but we have to be careful to keep it organic and special to Dominica. We can't think so far outside the box that bouyon is eventually labeled as something else. Hopefully, one day soon our music will have its own classification. Music spreads love, so I want bouyon to go as far as it can — even Mars!'
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