MaNicolas Branker is best known for popularizing soca outside of its birthplace of Trinidad and Tobago, but more than that, he is a shining example of how Caribbean musicians can succeed both at home and abroad and hold their own against the giants of the global music industry.
With his incredible body of work and numerous accolades, his journey provides a roadmap for future Caribbean musicians hoping to have a successful music career in the Caribbean (and beyond), yet Blanker’s name is often not mentioned when talking about Caribbean musicians who have excelled in the arts.
Blanker was born in England in August 1965 to a Bajan (Barbadian) father and a Trinidadian mother, and returned “home” as a child, first to Trinidad and then to Barbados in 1970 when his family moved there permanently.
He was a prodigy: He was playing melodies on a toy piano from the age of 3 and began formal piano lessons at age 7. “I can’t remember when my interest in music first started,” he said. “It’s just always been there.” Caribbean Beat.
Despite his initial resistance, he acknowledges that he needed formal training. His family was also an integral part of his musical beginnings: “I was very lucky that both my parents were musical,” he says.
His mother came from a family of church musicians and had a strong musical background, but his father came from a Bahamian family that was “not very open to the artistic side of things,” so he was self-taught.
For Blanker, his first music lessons, from his father, were perhaps his most important, leaving a lasting impact that continues to influence every aspect of his work. “I can make whatever I’m doing my own, even if it’s something that’s already been created,” he explains. “Every performance is, in a way, immersed in the artistic interpretation of something.”
Branker’s father’s love of the blues led him to think about the global influence of black music and the responsibility to “remember what music has always meant to our species. Music is not just a source of entertainment, it’s a spiritual source, a cultural source, an identity that we use to navigate through history.”
As a result, Blanker developed a wide musical understanding through years of dedicated listening to a wide range of popular recorded music from the Caribbean and the United States, and he also made the switch from keyboardist to bassist during high school. “From the first time I saw someone playing bass, I thought, ‘I have to do that.’ I’ve never taught myself. I just picked up the instrument and started playing,” he recalls.
Still a teenager, Blanker had already gained fame through numerous gigs and performances, including an appearance at the Battleground Calypso Tent in Barbados in 1984. There he met legendary British-Guyanese musician Eddie Grant, who was impressed enough to ask Blanker (then a university student) to accompany him on his next world tour (1985-86) – the opportunity of a lifetime.
“My only problem was how to tell my parents,” Branker recalled. “My thinking was, I can always go back to college, [but] “I don’t know if I can take that injection again.” His father in particular was “anxious,” but the family released him. And so, coming full circle, the University of the West Indies awarded Blanker an honorary doctorate in 2021.
TAmong Blanker’s extensive and diverse catalogue, his first record production credit was on an album by Bahamian calypsonian Adoniya in 1984. His most recent work is an EP with trumpeter and singer Kweku Jelani in 2023. He has also released two albums as a leader. With contempt (1996) and Touching Base (2017). And over the course of more than four decades, he has written, recorded and produced a staggering number of songs, estimated at more than 3,000.
“I make music because I have no other choice,” he explains. “In my heart, I’m fighting to get it out, not for the accolades.”
Nevertheless, he received accolades, including two Grammy nominations in 1992 for Best Contemporary Jazz Song and Best Contemporary Jazz Performance (for flautist Shelley Winston’s “Love Is”), the Barbados Service Star from the Barbados government (1995), and 18 Sunshine Awards between 1994 and 2002.
Soca stars Red Plastic Bag eschewed Trinidadian producers for Blanker on his 1993 hit “Raga Raga,” sparking an influx of talent from Trinidad to Barbados.
When soca star Red Plastic Bag eschewed Trinidadian producers for Blanker on his 1993 hit “Raga Raga,” talent flowed from Trinidad to Barbados in search of similar productions, and the Bahamian calypso and soca industries blossomed.
While spending a few months in Jamaica in 1994 working with Mikey Bennett (of Telephone Love (1988) and Mr. Lover Man (1992) fame), Blanker had never heard the frenetic tempos of T&T soca. Studying the evolving science of acoustics and sound engineering, he learned not to disrupt the clarity of the soundscape with competing frequencies, to keep instruments to a minimum and let the bass resonate. This became the template for his new soca.
This resulted in the mid-to-late 1990s, a period billed by T&T promoters as the infamous “Bajan Invasion”, when the “groovy” tempo “raga soca” music of Bajan bands krosfyah, Square One and Coalishun dominated the radio airwaves and T&T carnivals with hits such as “Pump Me Up” (1994), “Turn it Around” (1997) and “Ice Cream” (1996), with Branker involved in all of the productions as musician, arranger and producer.
After an initial burst of euphoria, the reaction was almost xenophobic. Branker was described as “the general of the Bahamas invasion.” This unsettled him, especially since he was half Trinidadian. “I never imagined the Caribbean worked like this,” he recalled.
Branker has a broader view of Caribbean and global popular music: “I understand the idea that the grass is greener on the other side, and sometimes when you’re not in that space, something can seem more appealing than it actually is… [familiar things] As a matter of course.
“But in terms of the artistic contributions that Caribbean people have made to the world, I can’t think of anyone else who has contributed more per capita to music on the planet than we have. It’s unfortunate that we still tend to see ourselves as inferior,” he stresses.
That’s not to discount Blanker’s 12 years in Roberta Flack’s live touring band (2005-2017), the last three as associate musical director, or his tenure with Eddie Grant, who Blanker says was “unabashedly Caribbean, but essentially African,” which profoundly influenced his view of the world and his evolution as an artist.
BRanker is now focused on live performance, aiming to establish “a more year-round and artistically sustainable form of expression” with his new Nicholas Branker Band. Uplift: Caribbean Fusion Concert A performance last March was the most recent example, and they are exploring collaborations with smaller European orchestras with the goal of touring in the future.
He is also committed to nurturing the younger generation, helping them gain a deeper knowledge of themselves, history, their craft, their instrument and their situation in the world.
“I can’t think of any other group of people on earth who have done more for music than we have. [Caribbean people] They still tend to see themselves as inferior.”
“I take my musical talent very seriously, and as I get older it becomes more important to me to see the strength and confidence and awareness of my position in young musicians,” he says. “They can’t stand up straight in an international environment. They don’t respect themselves in that sense because they feel there are others who are better than them… but the difference is only in taste, not the standard of playing.”
Naturally, it’s important to Branker that young artists understand that what Caribbean musicians bring to the table is unique. For Branker, that means authenticity, a belief reinforced by a lifetime of international experience and a Caribbean sensibility.
“You can only have artistic impact if you’re authentic. I don’t give a positive rating to people who copy things. The more diverse your experiences are, the more you can bring to what you’re doing,” says Branker. “The other thing is that we need more voices in music creation in the English-speaking Caribbean. We limit ourselves. I want to believe that my voice is valuable and can expand the scope of expression.”
This is not arrogance, but confidence. With an award-winning and commercially significant body of work, Nicholas Blacker is still composing and performing new music, and nurturing and mentoring a new cohort of young musicians. He is a legacy maker of his time. Soca music is now Caribbean music, and we have Blacker to thank for that.
