The STAR Businessweek - The Security Risks of CIP

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CRIME AND CITIZENSHIP:

THE SECURITY RISKS OF CIPS Citizenship by Investment Programmes (CIPs) are a hot political topic in the Caribbean and around the world. The schemes set up by numerous regional governments offer a speedy pathway to citizenship to high net worth individuals (HNWIs) who commit to making a substantial investment in a nation and, in return, receive a passport.

Nicolás Maduro will not reverse Venezuela’s economic collapse When presenting his economic stabilisation plan on August 17, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro proudly argued that no

BY ED KENNEDY, STAR BUSINESSWEEK CORRESPONDENT Continued on page 4

Not far from the US, a desperate leader is steering a once-prosperous democracy toward dictatorship

government has ever done it this way. He should have wondered why.

Venezuela is undergoing an economic collapse without precedent outside of war or the fall of the Soviet Union.

Page 3

These are the brutal emergency measures it would take to pull Venezuela back from total collapse right now

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THE BUSINESS OF BEATS

The Caribbean music industry has come to the fore in recent years as the region’s leaders focus on economic diversification

BY CATHERINE MORRIS, STAR BUSINESSWEEK CORRESPONDENT

stakeholders would assist. We have a few musicians who do this but they are in the minority.”

MARKET TRENDS

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BY CHRISTIAN WAYNE – EDITOR AT LARGE

Is it just me or does it feel like the water is coming to a boil? As we’ve written in our past two issues of The STAR Businessweek, this month Saint Lucia’s financial institutions and authorities will be required to make their first of many CRS-compliant filings as part of a series of international financial reporting obligations that our country, along with other Caribbean nations, reticently committed to as part of a global push to combat global tax dodgers, money laundering and a slew of legal (yet cheeky) tax minimization strategies employed by global corporations and high net worth individuals, and their armies of savvy tax lawyers. That, at least, is the official justification for the expensive and especially onerous cost of compliance. The more cynical among us may say we’re just trying to keep off the EU’s blacklist of tax havens. Whichever justification suits your view of global taxation, CRS filings are but one of several business practices our semi-rebellious nation is going to have to defend against international regulators and our foreign-aid benefactors—and in case you didn’t know, they’re one and the same. The European Union’s patience is starting to run thin on countries that insist on trading their respective passports (and easy access to the Schengen Zone) for cash—excuse me, I mean ‘donations’. For now, the EU’s crosshairs are aimed at member-culprits like Malta which, in just few years, has become the leading outpost for passports-for-cash transactions and, in the EU’s words, ‘conduits for money laundering’.

Like the CRS deadline, it’s only a matter of time until the EU looks to countries like Saint Lucia which, much like Malta, couple their preferential Schengen Zone arrangements and banking secrecy laws to aid and abet Russians, Iranians, Saudis and Chinese nationals in their transnational shenanigans.

Ladies and gentlemen, this ain’t your grandparents’ Citizenship by Investment Programme. To learn more about this ticking time bomb, begin with our cover story “Crime and Citizenship: The Security Risks of CIPs” It’s Nothing Personal. It’s Business.

Stay connected with us at: Web: www.stluciastar.com Social: www.facebook.com/stluciastar Email: starbusinessweek@stluciastar.com

Caribbean musicians may be finding creative new ways to develop their own sound but it takes more than talent and inspiration to become successful

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here’s another element to the Caribbean’s time-honoured tourism formula of sun, sand and sea — sound. Whether it’s carnival cowbells, raucous Soca or the Saint Luciaborn beats of the Dennery Segment, the region’s music, like its history, is a unique blend of indigenous, European and African influences.

It’s also a valuable commodity at a time when island economies are diversifying into cultural industries and recognising the importance of developing homegrown talent.

There are no major record labels in the Caribbean but the islands are full of small producers nuturing local artists. Given that 40% of global music sales come from independent record companies, local record companies may have more power in the market than they realise. However, if they are to reach customers and turn the vibrant sounds of the Caribbean into a thriving export, musicians must overcome a wealth of technical and financial obstacles.

GOING MAINSTREAM

Traditionally Jamaica has led the charge when it comes to promoting and exporting Caribbean music.

The feel-good vibe of reggae stuck a chord all over the world, fuelled

by the rise of legendary artists such as Bob Marley and the modern-day performers Buju Banton, Beenie Man and others who led the genre’s evolution into dancehall.

But there’s more to the islands than reggae. Soca stars have been gaining audiences since the 1990s as carnival celebrations spread beyond the region. Heavy hitters such as Machel Montano, Patrice Roberts and Bunji Garlin helped put Trinidad and Tobago on the map but the sound soon spread and now soca singers are breaking through in Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Saint Lucia where a popular subgroup, the Dennery Segment, has been carving out a niche.

Caribbean musicians may be finding creative new ways to develop their own sound but it takes more than talent and inspiration to become successful. Vanesta Mortley, Operations Manager at the Eastern Caribbean Collective Organization for Music Rights (ECCO) says musicians need to be more businessminded if they are to conquer their industry. “”Most of the musicians do not treat this as a business and do not apprise themselves with information that would help them better manage their business,” she says. “Treating their music as a business, updating themselves on trends of their market and networking with different

According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Global Music report, worldwide music sales grew for the third consecutive year in 2017, hitting US$17.3bn. More than half of that came from digital revenue with streaming audiences surging to 272 million users.

Streaming is now the leading source of income for record companies, generating over 33% of all music sales.

That’s a huge potential market for Caribbean artists — accessible simply through an internet connection. “Only a few of our musicians utilise the digital streaming channels effectively. It would seem that the majority have not seen the value of online marketing and distribution,” says Mortley who wants to see more technical workshops to help musicians get to grips with how technology can enhance their brand. “Stakeholders can have more educational initiatives, possibly some curriculum for persons interested in the business of music, not just focusing on performance but a holistic approach to include management, intellectual property rights, marketing.”

Social media is also an important tool for artists. With the potential to dramatically increase their audience both at home and abroad, the most successful performers are those who are most engaged across a variety of platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine and Youtube.

Unlimited access to a vast market has its downsides however. While customers are listening, it’s also hard to break through the noise and drown out the competition.

Self-promotion is an expensive, timeconsuming and resource-heavy business.

According to the IFPI, it can cost artists from US$500,000 to US$2m to break into the mainstream. “There are financial challenges,” says Mortley. “Producing music is costly and musicians are not always able to get a substantial return on their investment.”

Continued on page 5

VENEZUELA

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NICOLÁS MADURO WILL NOT REVERSE VENEZUELA’S ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

The president’s latest measures do nothing to address the main causes of the crisis

BY RICARDO HAUSMAN, FT CORRESPONDENT

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hen presenting his economic stabilisation plan on August 17, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro proudly argued that no government has ever done it this way. He should have wondered why.

Venezuela is undergoing an economic collapse without precedent outside of war or the fall of the Soviet Union.

This is accompanied by hyperinflation. Annual inflation is running at over 80,000 per cent and the IMF has predicted it will hit 1m per cent this year. The price of the dollar has added three zeroes in 15 months.

The reason for this collapse is twofold. On the one hand, the Chavista revolution — through expropriations, foreign exchange, price, labour and profit controls — destroyed the market mechanism, whereby the needs of some become the livelihood of others.

As a consequence, rampant shortages and disinvestment ensued.

The second reason is an extreme dollar shortage caused by the collapse in oil production and prices and by over-borrowing during the boom years: at over 600 per cent, Venezuela has the largest foreign public debt to export ratio in the world. When the oil price collapsed in 2014, the government refused to restructure the debt and opted instead to cut private sector imports, leading to a collapse in output due to shortages of raw materials and spare parts.

As a result of the government’s measures, people will have more money in their pockets but there will not be more goods to purchase © Reuters

To make matters worse, oil production, hampered by mismanagement, overtaxation, expropriations and a ridiculous exchange rate, went into a tailspin. It stands now at barely over a third of where it was when Hugo Chávez took power in 1999 and 30 per cent below a year ago.

With collapsing output and imports, both oil and non-oil tax revenues collapsed.

Twelve-month rolling non-oil tax revenues, measured at the parallel exchange rate, went from $8.6bn in January 2014 to just $1.1bn

by March of this year. To limit the ensuing fiscal deficit, the government opted to delay wage adjustments. The minimum wage went from $280 per month in 2012 to about $1 before Mr Maduro’s speech.

This decision translated into a draconian cut in real public sector wages and pensions.

But this proved insufficient to stem the deficit, forcing the government to use the money printing press.

In the midst of this havoc, Mr Maduro finally decided to present something that has a family resemblance with an adjustment programme. He announced a still unclear exchange rate regime that implies the official price of the dollar will go up by a factor of about 30. He also announced an increase in the value added tax from 12 per cent to 16 per cent, the introduction of a financial transactions tax between 0 and 2 per cent, and an increase in petrol prices to “international levels”, with subsidised fuel for households. All this sounds fairly conventional.

But Mr Maduro accompanied these decisions with a one-year tax holiday on the corporate income of the oil industry and an increase, of more than 3,000 per cent, in the minimum wage starting on September 1, with the government paying for the increase in private sector wages for 90 days. Price controls are to be beefed

up to prevent the private sector from raising them and people are encouraged to denounce violations to the price police.

What will happen? Notice that the two causes of the crisis — the destruction of the market mechanism and extreme dollar shortage — have not been dealt with. So it is hard to see how output and imports would rise. People will have more money in their pockets, but there will not be more goods to purchase, with obvious consequences.

Public spending is to go up dramatically as the government takes responsibility for the nation’s wage bill.

But the revenue measures are postponed to at least the fourth quarter, meaning that the printing press will have to go immediately into overdrive.

By the end of September, the exchange rate will have depreciated so massively that the government is likely to balk at setting petrol prices at international levels and may abandon other aspects of the programme.

Price controls, if effective, will force companies to sell below replacement cost, de facto expropriating their working capital. Businesses are threatened with expropriation if they shut down or violate price controls — not exactly the kind of measure likely to ignite a sudden burst of investor enthusiasm.

The bottom line is that there is no road to recovery without the freedoms that underpin the market mechanism and without international financial assistance to kick-start imports and output. That will only happen after Mr Maduro leaves and this regime ends.

The writer is a professor of economic development at the Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University

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CRIME AND CITIZENSHIP: THE SECURITY RISKS OF CIPS Continued from page 1

We’ve detailed before at The STAR Businessweek the potential benefits of CIPs, and that there are indeed shades of grey in the process, for better or worse. A CIP’s capacity to offer safe harbour to global citizens fleeing persecution elsewhere is surely a good thing; the risk of a CIP’s abuse for those with criminal intent is not.

So what are the key risks of CIPs as a criminal tool? And what can Caribbean nations do to minimise these risks?

CIPS ARE GLOBAL

Within our region CIPs have been subject to fierce debate. Optimistics point to the appeal of luring HNWIs to nations among the region, with the hope the initial investment their make via a CIP will be followed by further investment down the line.

Critics point out the existence of CIPs alongside offshore banking — especially when linked to the revelations of the Paradise and Panama papers — combine to make a deeply unsettling combination to so many everyday citizens of the region.

There is also the risk that a Caribbean nation with a comparatively small population and economy could find that a new HWNI citizen may seek to play havoc with local business and government, all in the name of undermining and destabilising a nation, especially if their clear-cut investment via a CIP is accompanied by money laundered and passed along under the table.

Such a risk may seem unlikely to occur or succeed but events in Europe show the deep anxiety around CIPs generally, and the risks that are shared globally.

MALTA AND THE EU

Recent times have seen Malta seek to navigate the quicksand that’s arisen following the EU’s criticism of the nation’s CIP. First launched in 2014, the programme was intended to be capped at 1,800 applicants, before the government announced plans to expand it.

Millions have been earned via the programme but there is the risk of sheer numbers in terms of passports. For a nation of just 430,000, the addition of 1,800 new HWNIs as passport holders comes with the potential of a new and saturated security risk.

Members of the European Parliament have criticised the Maltese government’s administration of the programme stating it undermines the concept that citizenship must be earned, and that, in turn, Malta’s conduct puts at risk the security of the Schengen area (free movement of Europeans in Europe) that Europeans enjoy.

Even if another EU state is prudent about who it issues passports to, the efforts could ultimately be in vain if another nation is issuing passports too readily without due discretion.

At the same time this has been occuring, Malta has been making inroads to become a leading cryptocurrency capital in Europe.

Though the Caribbean may not hold the same formal structure as the EU, the Maltese experience shows that the close ties held by nations in the Caribbean mean that a bad CIP is not only a national risk, but a regional one

CIPS AND CRYPTOS

For critics anxious about the potential security risks that comes with CIPs and cryptocurrency, a nation taking a liberal approach to the first, and intending to do so for the second, raises real anxiety. For its part, Valletta has ruled out making a direct link between the two, indicating that cryptos will not be accepted as payment in the CIP. It’s also unapologetic in its declarations that cryptocurrency is ultimately “the future” of money, and time may well prove it right. Yet the government has also had a number of high profile financial scandals in recent times, leading to concern that what it says on paper won’t always be implemented in practice. If a real gap here did grow, so too could greater security risks.

At its core, every government around the world has to deal with issues of crime like theft and forgery. But the nexus between the easy acquisition of citizenship and easy flow of cryptocurrency laws leaves many unsettled. Even keen cryptocurrency enthusiasts and advocates have looked on

Members of the European Parliament have criticised the Maltese government’s administration of the programme stating it undermines the concept of citizenship

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national risk, but a regional one.

Even if many Caribbean nations have taken a dim view of some of the EU’s attitudes towards the region — notably putting numerous Caribbean nations on a tax haven blacklist in December last year but failing to include the UK on it — the shared experience here surely has currency.

CIPs may be relatively new but the proximity and historical links that many nations have with one another is old, allowing for the easy movement of people and business between states.

Unless these ties were subject to revision each time a new CIP is created, it’s not possible for one nation to create a CIP and declare it strictly a matter of national concern, not when there are friendly travel and trade agreements with other nations around it.

A CITIZEN’S RIGHTS

with worry, concerned that any future upheaval in Malta surrounding its crypto policy could make it harder to achieve fair and common sense regulation for cryptos in other nations.

OLD BORDERS, NEW PROGRAMMES

The Maltese experience illustrates the hurdles for CIP nations near and far: that there’s a growing tension between the ability of a country to have a CIP and a free market financial system.

In many respects this tension has always existed — despite already being a global media tycoon in the 1980s, Australianborn Rupert Murdoch famously could not buy a US TV station until he became an American citizen — so critics cannot fairly suggest all issues with national citizenship in a world of global finance are new.

But though the Caribbean may not hold the same formal structure as the EU, the Maltese experience shows that the close ties held by nations in the Caribbean family mean that a bad CIP is not only a

Achieving a regional consensus, much less a global one, on CIPs is not going to happen anytime soon. Neither a new level of restrictions upon the norms of citizenship seen around the world which commonly provide that once someone becomes a citizen, they are wholly one, irrespective of whether they were born in the nation, or to parents from the nation (and notwithstanding certain exceptions surrounding renouncement and dual citizenship).

But it is clear that as our world becomes more economically borderless, the free flow of money and citizenship would not be a risk to one nation, but a risk to all nations. In the absence of finding concensus on CIP regulation, strong inroads being made against money laundering and other global financial crime could find common ground. It may not abate the concerns that critics of CIPs have, but a greater crackdown on money laundering crime in the Caribbean would serve as a warning to would-be criminals that the region’s CIPs are not worth the price of entry.

It’s true that anyone with designs on a CIP for criminal intent would obviously not support such a crackdown; but every good citizen would, however they came to hold that title.

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THE BUSINESS OF BEATS Continued from page 2

Trinidadian soca artist Machel Montano has created global awareness for the inherently Caribbean genre . . . but will more artists be able to follow his act?

FINANCIAL AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT

In February, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) held a two-day workshop in Barbados to examine ways of expanding and developing the regional music industry. Regional and international consultants weighed in, pinpointing issues such as the gender gap in the sector — female artists aren’t as well represented as their male counterparts, and they tend to have lower earning opportunities.

The workshop is the latest effort from the CDB to reach out to musicians, following technical training in Barbados and Jamaica in 2016 and 2017.

Mortley welcomes this kind of support, which wasn’t always so readily available, saying: “Music falls directly into the [remit of our] cultural industry as most aspects of our culture involve

music. In the past, there has not been a focus on the music industry but in recent times there have been efforts aimed at improving the product in the various countries, especially in the technical aspect of the industry, in the form of workshops and seminars.”

Traditional industries such as financial services are in decline in the Caribbean and while tourism remains a stable source of income, it is vulnerable to natural disasters and heavily dependent on the global economy. Investing in the cultural arts can help the region build a diversified, stable and reliable economy.

Recognising this, development groups are now coming together to offer musicians and other artists more routes to funding and support. The CDB is set to launch its US$2.6m Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Fund (CIIF) later this

year and Caribbean Export is currently developing its own support network, managed by the upcoming Caribbean Creative Industries Management Unit (CCIM). At its launch, Gayle Gollop, Caribbean Export’s Special Advisor in Trade and Legal Affairs said: “We still face the challenge of the lack of strategic and focused management in the development of the region’s creative and cultural industries. This lack of a co-ordinated regional approach has hindered the sector’s ability to contribute to sustainable development in the region. The biggest gap has been the absence of structure that addresses the monetization of the creative industries in the region.”

According to the IFPI Global Music report, worldwide music sales grew for the third consecutive year in 2017, hitting US$17.3bn.

More than half of that came from digital revenue with streaming audiences surging to 272 million users

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BUILDING A TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM FOR THE CARIBBEAN – TECH BEACH RETREAT RETURNS!

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ech Beach Retreat will return to Montego Bay, Jamaica, Nov 29-Dec 1, 2018. The 2017 staging of the event was considered a massive success on a global scale with speakers including Jack Dorsey, Founder and CEO of Twitter and Square as well as Lloyd Carney, Former CEO of Brocade, which was sold for US$6 billion 1 week before the conference.

With just two stagings, Tech Beach has emerged as the dominant force driving conversations on technology and innovation in the region and the world, with many in Silicon Valley, associating tech in the Caribbean with Tech Beach Retreat.

Dorsey, visiting Jamaica for the first time, shared the story of Twitter’s growth from a simple idea shared by friends into a massive global enterprise which has driven numerous global shifts and played a huge role in discourse on matters of significant consequence. He also revisited the evolution of Square which was designed to empower people around the world to be more enterprising through the easier acceptance of payments anywhere in the world.

He expressed future interest in the Caribbean.

Mr. Dorsey also did not shy away from

controversial topics, as many had expected.

He was especially passionate about blockchain technology and bitcoin as the tool millennials will use to change the world. He also touched on the matter of politics, defending Twitter’s unbiased stance and the refusal to silence any single political voice.

The global community will convene at the luxurious Iberostar Grand Rosehall Resort at the event aimed at connecting wealth and resources with ideas and opportunity. In 2017, Tech Beach gathered 250 tech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators from around the world. Over 60% of the participants were international and over 60% reported doing business with another Tech Beach participant within six months of the event.

Tech Beach has yielded significant collaboration amongst participants resulting in partnerships, investment and new enterprise reaching as far as Dubai, easily dismissing the typical talk-shop reputation held by many conferences around the world. Participants represent companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Linkedin and Paypal.

“We are working to spark an entrepreneurship and innovation revolution in the Caribbean. Our goal is to connect the best in the Caribbean with

Tech Beach Co-Founder and Director Kirk-Anthony Hamilton (right) joins Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on stage during Tech Beach 2017

the best in the world, driving a paradigm shift in the economic outlook of the Caribbean.

Our summits are designed to serve as catalysts for big ideas and innovation, positioning organisations with the right resources to make their visions happen,” said Kirk-Anthony Hamilton, Co-Founder and Curator of Tech Beach Retreat.

Since inception, the event has evolved into an innovative platform, connecting people, ideas and opportunities, with the ultimate goal: to unlock the full economic potential of the Caribbean region through entrepreneurship and engagement. The hope is to inspire a culture that embraces innovative new ideas, spurring disruptive start-ups into large enterprise.

The 2018 theme is Disruptive Innovation – Exploring the Technological Transformation of Industries. Focus areas continue to include fin tech, health tech and consumer tech, with special attention being paid to emerging technologies including digital payments, artificial intelligence, robotics and automation, cyber security, big data and blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.

Co-Founder Kyle Maloney shared,“These are some of the areas which we believe are ripe for adaption in our market and they present the opportunity for the Caribbean to ride waves of new innovation. It’s very difficult for us to jump on the bandwagon of far advanced technologies, but these emerging areas have massive wealth creation potential for the region.”

Tech Beach Retreat offers an interactive masterclass like no other, offering participants an all-inclusive non-hierarchical experience. The organisers have created an experience specifically targeted for the global community of entrepreneurs, investors and influencers to engage and build relationships with the local and regional captains of industry and the most promising start-ups.

The forum is designed for relationship building, communication and organic business development. It is a catalyst for change, which exposes business leaders to the challenges and opportunities presented in our increasingly complex technology-

driven, multi-dimensional, global, economic environment. Tech Beach’s positive results are based on its core framework: Innovate, Connect, Transform: Innovate – The successful businesses of tomorrow will look nothing like today.

The Caribbean needs to create the enabling environment for its citizens, especially the youth and start-ups, to innovate and catch up with the rest of the tech-developed world. Tech Beach is an early stage reflection of the environment necessary.

Connect - Connect for synergy and to consolidate! The second area of focus is to emphasize on the synergy required between the various stakeholders in the innovation chain of the tech ecosystem, i.e. start-ups, mentors, investors, etc, for any meaningful impact of innovations to be felt in the society. We connect the best in the region with the best in the world.

Tech thrives on frequent idea exchange and collaboration. A more global ecosystem will foster new ideas and greater access to resources and markets.

Transform - It is one thing to innovate, and yet another to utilize the innovations to transform the lives of the Caribbean people for the better. This is why Tech Beach 2018 will also focus on how to transform innovations to positive life-changing effects on the Caribbean population. We are empowering the next generation to positively shift the region’s economic outlook through entrepreneurship, innovation and technology.

Tech Beach Retreat is a fast emerging and widely celebrated global community of tech entrepreneurs, investors, influencers, enthusiasts and innovators meeting under the idyllic backdrop of the Caribbean sun, sand and sea. The platform offers a deal maker’s paradise where the best in the world come together.

Tech Beach Retreat is presented in partnership with the Iberostar Resort, Jampro, Lucid Works and the Development Bank of Jamaica.

Visit www.techbeach.net for more information.

Sponsorship opportunities are available.

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MAKING

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INSIDE SAINT LUCIA’S MUSIC INDUSTRY: AN INTERVIEW WITH BIGSEA

BY KERYN NELSON, STAR BUSINESSWEEK CORRESPONDENT

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fter his 2017 hit, Any size, Casim James, overseer of the ‘Twaka Family’, or as most would call him, ‘Big Sea’, now proudly wears his mantle as a Dennery Segment soca artist. With an interest in music dating as far back as his days as a boy at the Castries Comprehensive Secondary School, the now 32-year-old musician and entrepreneur has achieved major success largely due to his marketing-savvy approach to his craft. In the midst of his hectic schedule, preparing for a governmentorganised six-week tour in the United States, Big Sea accepted The STAR Businessweek’s request for an hour of his time to discuss his involvement in Saint Lucia’s music industry.

MOVES

We’re not promoting violence, we’re not promoting rape or stealing; we’re promoting men and women having fun.

SBW: SO WITH THE UPCOMING TOUR ORGANISED BY THE GOVERNMENT, NO-ONE WAS MADE TO CENSOR THEIR LYRICS? BIG SEA: I won’t say they can get us to change our lyrics. Like I said, it’s art and as artists we’re entitled to express ourselves. However, if we want to be on an international platform we will definitely have to submit radio-friendly or censored music.

SBW: HOW DOES IT FEEL TO GET SUPPORT FROM THE GOVERNMENT? BIG SEA: It feels very good. It reminds me of when I would play basketball for Saint Lucia. You feel like you’re on team Saint Lucia going out there. Everyone knows because it’s on the news. You feel like a pioneer, like an ambassador. It feels good to get the opportunity. I always like to say, ‘People don’t owe us anyting,’ so when someone decides to put something on the table for you, then you have to be appreciative.

SBW: WHEN DID YOU JOIN THE DENNERY SEGMENT MOVEMENT? BIG SEA: I would say it happened in late 2016, early 2017. Before that I focused more on hip hop and rap but one of my friends suggested I go into soca. People who know me knew I was someone who would always incorporate very local language and culture in my art so, when I decided to go into soca, I wanted to go into the most cultured part of it. Plus I already knew a lot of the Dennery Segment artists before they had their hits so they were more than happy to have me.

it separately. I treat Twaka Family more like a business and incorporate more brand awareness. We have a clothing line and I try to push that, especially since the word ‘twaka’ is very fitting for soca. In the future I want to go into multimedia management and to help artists get their music published.

putting music online is through Tunecore, and things like that, where they would tag the song, and when you put it on Youtube you’d start generating cents every time somebody views or clicks on it. Some sites would also allow you to put it on iTunes, Spotify, etc, where people can buy it.

SBW: WAS THIS WHEN YOUR BRAND, THE TWAKA FAMILY, CAME TO FRUITION? BIG SEA: Well, yes. Twaka Family is a new brand but before that there was SAM. Although it is not an official label, SAM operates like a brotherhood. It is named after one of my childhood friends who passed away. What we do is we prep artists and get them ready to maximize success in the industry. I show them what I know about social media marketing and branding.

Since I moved into soca, I wanted to brand

SBW: DO THE DENNERY SEGMENT ARTISTS IN YOUR CIRCLE MAKE GOOD USE OF ONLINE MUSIC STREAMING PLATFORMS? BIG SEA: In terms of having music online, that’s [something] the artists themselves would have to follow through with. Most artists in Saint Lucia just put their music directly onto Youtube. When you post it directly onto Youtube, like that, there is really no way to generate any revenue unless you monetize the Youtube account.

The other way artists can make money by

SBW: WHAT IS YOUR RESPONSE TO CLAIMS THAT THE LYRICS OF SOME DENNERY SEGMENT SONGS ARE TOO DIRTY? BIG SEA: Well, if you ask me, I think we are artists. You’re creating art and art is subjective.The Dennery Segment music definitely streamed from solo and folk music that we inherited from our forefathers who use to do djouk fouyé and all these type of dances that were very provocative. It just promotes having fun; it’s all about dancing, moving your waist and feeling the vibe.

When he is not busy being ‘big bro’ to younger Saint Lucian talent, Bigsea can be found paving his way to international acclaim.

Big Sea, along with ten other local Dennery Segment artists, left Saint Lucia on August 30 to tour in cities across the United States.

Performances have been scheduled in: New York, Texas, Conneticut, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston and Miami.

People who know me knew I was someone who would always incorporate very local language and culture in my art so, when I decided to go into soca, I wanted to go into the most cultured part of it

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