Kes the Band to headline Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Unity Jazz Festival

Kes the Band, the soca group from Trinidad and Tobago led by Kees Dieffenthaller (who goes by Kes), will headline Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Unity Jazz Festival in Manhattan this week, performing on Thursday and Friday. The band is known for blending soca with R&B, EDM, dancehall, Afrobeat and jazz; Kes said in a recent video interview that fans "want us to push the envelope a bit." The group began as a showcase for Kes, his brothers and a friend and has toured in support of its 2024 album "Man With No Door." The article traces soca’s origins to Ras Shorty I in the mid-1970s, noting his 1974 song "Endless Vibrations" helped bring the style beyond Trinidad.

Kes described his own path—his breakout 2011 song "Wotless," the 2018 hit "Hello," and other work that mixes Carnival exuberance with personal loss. He said many of his hits came from hard moments, and that after his sister Danielle Dieffenthaller died in November at 60 of renal failure he paid tribute with a cover of Donny Hathaway’s "A Song for You." Kes will appear at Jazz at Lincoln Center with jazz trumpeter Etienne Charles, who invited him to perform there in 2009; this is Kes’s first full concert at the venue.

Key Topics

Culture, Unity Jazz Festival, Lincoln Center, Etienne Charles, Soca