What does Barbados sound like today?

You might hear it before you can name it.

A turn of phrase. The unmistakable Bajan cadence. A familiar piece of slang. Sometimes, it is simply the way a story is told.

But try to define the Bajan sound by genre and things get complicated.

Over six decades, Barbados has given the world the pioneering spouge of Jackie Opel, the infectious soca of Krosfyah, the pop-rock of Cover Drive and the global catalogue of Rihanna. Today’s generation is moving just as freely between soca, dancehall, R&B, Afrobeats, hip-hop and sounds that do not yet fit neatly into any one category.

So if the rhythm keeps changing, what makes the music distinctly Bajan?

It is a question Barbados TODAY posed to artistes across generations as part of BIM@60, and despite the breadth of their music, their answers kept returning to something far more difficult to manufacture than a beat: the way Bajans sound, speak and tell their own stories.

BIM@60 is a national initiative of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society, in partnership with the National Cultural Foundation, marking Barbados’ 60th anniversary of Independence through music. At its heart is a public effort to select 60 songs that have helped tell the story of Barbados from a curated list of more than 300.

But BIM@60 is not intended to be simply another greatest-songs countdown. It considers music part of the record of who we are, capturing our experiences, celebrations, struggles and creativity, as well as the ways Barbados and its sound have changed over time.

“You cannot mistake a Bajan accent,” said Dr Alison Hinds.

The “Queen of Soca”, whose career began at 17 with Square One, has spent decades watching the island’s music evolve. She sees nothing alarming about younger producers, writers and artistes absorbing influences from elsewhere.

“Music has to evolve. It has to change. Otherwise it just kind of remains stagnant,” she said.

What changes, Hinds believes, is how loudly the Barbadian identity announces itself.

There are “different levels” of the accent, she explained. Bashment soca can be “full-on” or “unapologetically Bajan”, while the same identity may surface more subtly in pop or R&B.

Her own catalogue offers both musical and cultural examples. Hinds pointed to Rough Winer with Lil Rick and Low Town, featuring Lil Rick and Peter Ram, with the latter incorporating tuk and references to Landship.

And she rejects the idea that borrowing from genres born elsewhere somehow makes the finished product less Barbadian.

“As long as it’s created by Bajans, it’s Bajan music,” she said.

Faith Callender has watched those musical boundaries become less defined.

When she entered the music industry in 2014, Callender remembers the distinctions between genres being much clearer. Today, she said, young artistes are listening to everything from soca and bashment to Afrobeats, dancehall, hip-hop, R&B and alternative music, allowing those influences to blend naturally.

“Today, the music is much more fluid,” she said.

That does not mean the Bajan sound is disappearing. Callender believes its definition is simply getting wider.

“I don’t think [Bajan sound] is defined by one rhythm or genre anymore. Sometimes it is in the accent, the phrasing, the humour or the way we tell a story.

“Bajans have a particular cadence and a way of saying things that you cannot easily imitate. A song feels recognisably Barbadian when it sounds like it came from our lived experience.”

Her 2025 release Bajan Code leaned deliberately into that familiarity, using local language and expressions — a choice that also attracted criticism.

“Bajan Code is probably the clearest example because it celebrates the language, expressions and cultural understanding we share as Bajans. It recognises those little things that may seem ordinary to us but are immediately familiar to someone from Barbados,” she said.

But preserving a national sound, Callender believes, cannot mean freezing it in time.

She points to spouge as a distinctly Barbadian form that has not benefited from the sustained investment, documentation and reinvention afforded to some newer sounds. It should be preserved and taught, she argued, while younger musicians are given room to reinterpret it.

That freedom may be particularly important because the next distinctly Barbadian sound might not arrive with an easily recognisable genre name at all.

“The next movement may not have one easily defined tempo or name,” Callender said.

The beginnings of that movement may already be audible.

At 26, singer-songwriter Lagoon Wavey, born Gabriel St. Auburn Sobers, works predominantly in R&B and soul and has increasingly brought Afrobeats and dancehall influences into his music. He points to young acts including Doejay, Cappa and Mastaa T as evidence of a changing local sound.

Yet ask him what makes any of it Bajan and, like Hinds and Callender, he comes back to the voice.

“The most Bajan part of Bajan music is the way that you sound when you’re singing,” he said, noting what he sees as a shift away from artistes “trying to sound Jamaican”.

“If I play a steel pan in Barbados and I play a steel pan in Japan, it’s going to sound the same. But the voice behind it is what makes it, what gives it its character.”

There is also, he believes, a growing appetite among younger artistes to push beyond familiar formulas.

“Younger artistes, such as myself, are just tired of the typical four bar loops that we’ve grown accustomed to playing. Safe can only take us so far; individuality and creativity is valued more these days,” he said.

At 23, Jonathan Doejay Seale is part of the generation doing that experimenting.

Known for songs including Bartender and Good Better Best, he does not readily put a genre label on his own music.

“I don’t think it really has a title as yet. Good music is good music and shouldn’t have to fall under a specific genre,” he said. “The Bajan style of dancehall has many influences but it still holds its originality.”

His creative process is rooted less in trying to produce a particular “Bajan” genre than in his own experiences.

“My process is more like therapy. Just making music based on my current situations or past experiences,” he said.

And perhaps that brings the question back to where it started.

If Bajan music can be soca, R&B, pop, dancehall or something without a name yet, its identity may not lie in finding one rhythm that belongs exclusively to Barbados.

It may be in the voice carrying it.

The accent. The phrasing. The humour. The stories. The experiences behind them.

Or, as Doejay puts it: “Barbados’ sound today is authentically us. From dialect to subject matter.”

That connection between music, identity and the changing sound of Barbados is at the heart of BIM@60. As the country reflects on its journey since Independence, the public has until October 15 to help select the 60 songs that best tell the nation’s story.

To take part, visit the Barbados Museum & Historical Society website and click “Learn more” on the landing page. Log in using your Facebook, Google or LinkedIn account to explore the curated list and vote. You may select up to 10 songs across the categories and revise your choices before voting closes.

Join the conversation, share your musical memories and encourage family and friends, at home and across the diaspora, to help shape Barbados’ soundtrack.

BIM@60: 60 Years. 60 Songs. One Nation’s Soundtrack.