Kes Transforms Jazz at Lincoln Center Into a Trinidadian Soca Fete

In 2025, Machel Montano helped kick off a whirlwind year for Caribbean music and culture with NPR Tiny Desk’s first-ever soca set; Thursday night (Jan. 8), Kes may have just done the same for 2026 with a dazzling, edifying headlining performance at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Unity Jazz Festival. 

Joined by the complete Kes the Band lineup, alongside select musicians from the house orchestra and acclaimed jazz trumpeter (and fellow Trinbagonian) Etienne Charles, Kes delivered a lively, infectious set that smartly used the rhythms of swing jazz to bring soca to the iconic New York City performance venue. Keeping the lighting and staging clean and simple, Thursday night was all about the music. 

Beginning with “Hello,” the band’s signature hit, Kes commanded the stage with grace and poise — and his waistline eventually lost its battle against the buttoned-up setting as quickly as it began. As attendees filed into the Frederick P. Rose Hall, a plethora of Caribbean flags (Grenada and Trinidad & Tobago chief among them) started emerging from handbags and pockets, leaving one guaranteed outcome: this night would inevitably turn into a fete. And that it did. Sure, they may have been some initial tension between the somewhat dissonant social contracts of American jazz shows and soca’s Carnival-ready energy, but Caribbean people can make anywhere feel like home.

Midway through the show, Kes directed the audience to get out of their seats and let the soca guide them as he barreled through hits like “Cocoa Tea” (with a brief interpolation of “No Sweetness”), “Tack Back,” “Jolene,” and “Savannah Grass.” 2024’s Man With No Door delivered the night’s strongest deep cut moment, with “Yes Please” offering up a soca slow jam that allowed Kes to flaunt his smooth, robust vocals. Never one to neglect a piece of his musical identity, Kes also carved out some time to honor dancehall, crooning blink-and-you’ll-miss-it interpolations of classics like Shaggy’s “Boombastic” and Chaka Demus & Pliers’ “Murder She Wrote.” Charles briefly stole the spotlight during an impressive rendition of 2020’s “Magic,” during which he (via trumpet) and Kes (via scatting) executed a near-flawless call-and-response moment, effortlessly demonstrating how Black music motifs reverberate across the diaspora.

For all of the jamming and vibing, Kes also ensured his audience left Jazz at Lincoln Center with a little more knowledge about soca’s history and evolution. Right after opening with “Hello,” Kes proudly repped his home island and paid tribute to Ras Shorty I, the soca originator who fashioned the genre out of a blend of calypso, West African beats and Indian rhythms. But the most interesting bit of history came when Kes introduced a rendition of his December single, the Tano-assisted “Rum & Coca-Cola.” Many American listeners will recognize “Rum & Coca-Cola” as a 1945 Andrews Sisters pop smash, as Kes noted, but the song was originally a soca track composed by Lionel Belasco, with lyrics by the legendary calypsonian Lord Invader. Kes even dedicated the band’s contemporary version of the song to Lord Invader before setting the theater ablaze once more. 

Kes’ Unity Jazz Festival headlining set was an excellent way to begin the year – but it does arrive amid a particularly precarious moment for many Caribbean people, specifically those who live in the diasporic hub of New York City. Not only are Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti still rebuilding post-Hurricane Melissa, but Trinidad also sits less than ten miles away from the northeastern coast of Venezuela, where the U.S. launched military strikes to capture and depose President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Moreover, tens of thousands of people are anxiously awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision regarding birthright citizenship this year. 

For the 75 minutes Kes rocked Jazz at Lincoln Center, those anxieties and concerns dissipated into the ether — as the inviting, and ultimately irresistible, notes of swing jazz and soca coated the room with optimism, joy and a grounded appreciation for the one life we each have to live.