Out Of The Caribbean: From Caribbean Music Traditions to All Points East

Caribbean culture is known for many, many things around the world, but its musical influence is undeniable.

What we don’t always think about is just how far that influence travels, and what can be born out of those Sundays as a child, eating dinner at Granny’s house and listening to old classics from across the region. Many artists with Caribbean heritage lean on that legacy when producing their sound and deciding what the world will see and hear from their talent.

All Points East is an increasingly popular annual London festival for indie and alternative music, featuring an impressive line-up of artists from across the world. André 3000, from multi-award-winning rap duo Outkast, memorably played an experimental ambient instrumental set at All Points East to an audience of fans who may have been expecting to hear some of his greatest hits.

Looking over the line-up for this year’s festival, it was great to see just how many of the artists have leaned on their Caribbean heritage and lifelong connections to Caribbean music, and how those influences have helped shape their success and overall musical journeys.

Their musical output may not always be what we traditionally expect to hear from artists with Caribbean heritage, but what binds them is the way they each credit that heritage with shaping who they are today, performing on stages across the world.

Daniel Caesar will be making his return to the UK, and he comes with a musical background many British Caribbean fans will relate to. He has Bajan heritage, while his father, Norwill Simmonds, was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica. A pastor and gospel singer, Simmonds released his first album while Caesar was still in high school.

Caesar’s fourth album, Son of Spergy, is named after his father, whose nickname is Spergy, and was largely recorded in Jamaica last year. It opens with the voice of Caesar’s aunt introducing him as “Spergy’s son”, a nod to his close knit family ties and a moving tribute to his father’s musical legacy. You can hear the gospel influence throughout much of Caesar’s music, and maybe even a little dub if you listen closely.

Rochelle Jordan’s music blends alternative R&B with House, Garage and Pop. Born in London to Jamaican parents, she moved with her family to Toronto when she was four but remained connected to UK music through her older brother. Growing up in a Caribbean household, music was a huge part of her life. Reggae and Dancehall were the genres of choice at home, while her father, a drummer, also played an important role in influencing her own journey into the music industry.

Sydney Loren Bennett, better known as Syd, also has a Jamaican musical legacy story. We were first introduced to her as part of Odd Future, then as a member of The Internet, before she embarked on her solo career.

Her father is Jamaican, while her uncle, Mikey Bennett, is an acclaimed Jamaican Reggae producer and songwriter who has played an important role in Dancehall music. Bennett co wrote Shabba Ranks’ classic hit Mr. Loverman and is behind the Grafton Studios compound in Kingston. Syd has spoken about visiting her uncle’s studio in Jamaica as a child and how the experience became a catalyst for her own music career. It later inspired her to build a home studio as a teenager, where some of Odd Future’s early music was recorded.

Nia Archives has been outspoken about acknowledging and honouring the Black origins of electronic and dance music, while advocating for greater representation and recognition of Black women producers within the scene. Part Jamaican, she credits the women in her family with giving her a musical education, particularly her grandmother, who was heavily connected to Jamaican sound system culture.

She even had a huge sound system in her front room, which provided the soundtrack to family parties where everything from Lovers Rock to Jungle could be heard.

If we look through the extensive and impressive list of artists performing at All Points East this year, we will undoubtedly find many more stories of Caribbean house parties, formative experiences that influenced music careers and musical family members who passed down their legacy. Jorja Smith’s Jamaican father was in an R&B band called 2nd Naicha in the 1980s, which was a revelation to me.

What we consider to be normal family gatherings, with music at the forefront and in the background of every event, can become an influence that lasts a lifetime and shows up in the careers of these artists. The record collections, the sound systems, the congregation, the band rehearsals, the sounds being shaped in the studio, all of these seemingly separate experiences have contributed to the sound of alternative music today, unbeknownst to many of us.

The range of genres here is wide because of the depth of the lesson. You don’t just inherit Reggae, Dancehall or Soca. What you inherit is the understanding that when music is generational, when it sits at the soul of the family, you can make anything.

All Points East runs 21–30 August 2026 at Victoria Park, London.