Jkuhl shares her WOMEX 2026 experience - ‘I felt like I was destined to be there’

Singer and songwriter Janine ‘Jkuhl’ Coombs dreamt of being a performer at the World Music Expo – better known as WOMEX – and she had submitted applications before, but just didn’t get a favourable response. This year October, however, Coombs, the deputy director of Music Unites Jamaica Foundation, was selected as one of eight Caribbean women to attend the festival in Gran Canaria, Spain.

“I have been following WOMEX since before COVID and I applied to be a performer … but my dream came through in a different capacity … as an arts administrator,” Coombs shared, adding that she could not have been happier.

“I feel like I was destined to be here. It was a very insightful one week. This is a huge global market and we from the Caribbean need to represent. I learnt a lot and I shared a lot,” she added, explaining how the opportunity came about.

The Caribbean Development Bank, through its Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Fund and the SheTrades Caribbean Hub, put out a call for women in the music industry to apply for the Women in Music Market Access Programme. Forty-nine applications were received from across the Caribbean and 15 outstanding women-led music businesses were selected to participate in “a transformative initiative designed to strengthen international competitiveness and expand access to global music markets”.

The brief stated that the programme supports women entrepreneurs working across key areas of the music industry, including business management, publishing, songwriting, production, music technology, and creative entrepreneurship. Participants received specialised market readiness training and international business development support, culminating in engagement with WOMEX 2026, one of the world’s leading international music trade fairs in Gran Canaria, Spain, from October 21-25.

“The 15 of us did online workshop sessions that included market readiness and international business development activities and we learnt a lot … and then eight of us were chosen to attend WOMEX in person. Representatives came from Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago,” Coombs shared.

JAMAICAN REPRESENTATION

One of two representatives from Jamaica, Coombs eagerly packed her bags for a trip that took her two days to reach her destination, travelling from Kingston to Miami, then eight hours from Miami to Madrid in Spain, and then a third three-hour flight to Gran Canaria. It was during these hours that Coombs bonded with the other Jamaican representative, Apryl McIntosh-Smith, whose passing on the last day of the festival she is still coming to terms with.

“We discovered that we actually did the same music media course at Edna [Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts] and we had been in the same spaces at various times, but we never actually met until now. We found out how similar our perspectives were and our ambitions for the music industry … . It still doesn’t feel real. We finally get a chance to bond … and she’s gone again,” a dejected Coombs said.

Without going into details, she spoke of the incident.

“It happened the Saturday morning … people spoke with her up until about 9 a.m. and, because Apryl had not been feeling well, the directors decided to check on her when they didn’t see her. They were very attentive like that … checking on all who were feeling unwell. And that’s when they went to the hotel room and found her. They tried to handle it as professionally as possible … speaking with us from the Caribbean as a group in a room, and asked us not to say anything because Apryl’s family had to be notified,” Combs said.

She added, “Apryl was a wonderful person. We were in discussion about how Music Unites and JaRIA could partner together to put on music workshops for the creatives in the industry … and I know that she was networking with the other attendees in relation to her own business, Niche Entertainment. Condolences to her family,” Coombs said, her heaviness coming through the phone.

However, she made an effort to throw it off and speak about the positives of WOMEX, and expressed her gratitude to Fesco, JN Group and private donors for covering her other expenses. Coombs stressed the need for the Caribbean to continue to build a globally competitive creative sector, taking advantage of initiatives such as the Women in Music Market Access Programme which help ensure that talented women entrepreneurs are positioned to lead, innovate, and thrive on the international stage.

She spoke about the thrill of representing the Caribbean at one of the world’s leading international professional music marketplaces, enjoying the opportunities for international networking, knowledge exchange, partnerships, market access and increased visibility for Jamaican music and cultural initiatives.

“I felt … and still feel … like I am carrying the Caribbean with me. We don’t have much of that representation on global stages such as this. I really like this expo … I wasn’t expecting this level of coolness. In Jamaica … how do I say this? There is so much hypeness in Jamaica, people not wanting to share resources and information … but there, people were telling you about grants that they benefitted from and giving you all the information how to go about it. In this global sphere, people were willing to email you their entire contact list. Also, you got to see first-hand the difference between live music versus recorded music,” Coombs stated.

She explained that, at the expo, the promoters who are staging festivals across the globe come there to see who are the performers who will be able to entertain their audiences at a world-class, professional level.

“Performers get 15 minutes to captivate the audience, which includes festival organisers and booking agents and, if they are good, they are guaranteed shows for months,” she shared, adding that she now understands why she was never selected as a performer.

“It is an entire production,” Coombs said, still amazed at her findings. “You have to have your band, seek out a marketing team, and hand out fliers to agents and festival organisers to come and check you out ... submit videos of your live performances, and you have to find the funding to fly up you and your team to the expo. And that is expensive, but it is a good investment and there is values in it,” Coombs said.

She related the story of Calypso Rose, who is one of the huge successes of WOMEX, and noted that Jamaican singer Kabaka Pyramid received funding from The Culture Ministry to attend some years ago “and now he’s a Grammy Award winning artiste”.

She pointed out that, with recorded music, the movers and shakers, such as the Recording Academy which stages the Grammy Awards, are more concerned with numbers, how many units you sold, streaming figures, and how many followers you have on social media.

Coombs is energised, and not only is she looking forward to attending WOMEX next year in Tenerife, an idea has germinated.

“We need to have a Caribbean Music Expo,” she said. “It was discussed and Music Unites Foundation is ready to create partnerships across the islands that will make this a reality.”

yasmine.peru#gleanerjm.com