Caribbean Beach Fest 2012 at Jones Beach: Julianspromos Highlights
On July 8, 2012, Julianspromos documented the first annual Caribbean Beach Fest at Jones Beach in Long Island, New York, an ambitious Caribbean concert built around Machel Montano and the HD Family.
Presented by Foreign Bass Entertainment at the then-named Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, the event was themed “Machel On d’ Beach,” or M.O.B., and brought Soca, Reggae and Dancehall onto one of New York’s most recognizable outdoor concert stages.
The surviving Julianspromos footage captures Machel Montano, Young Devyn, Kerwin Du Bois, Cham and more, preserving performances and moments from a concert that brought a large Caribbean lineup together during the summer of 2012.
The First Caribbean Beach Fest
Caribbean Beach Fest debuted on Sunday, July 8, 2012 with a concept designed specifically around Caribbean music at Jones Beach.
Rather than using a traditional Caribbean club, mas camp or community venue, organizers brought the event into Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, the major outdoor amphitheater located inside Jones Beach State Park in Wantagh.
The inaugural festival was promoted under the theme Machel On d’ Beach, placing Machel Montano at the center of a wider Caribbean concert experience.
Promotional material at the time billed the show as the first Caribbean concert of its kind at Jones Beach, giving the event additional significance within New York’s Caribbean entertainment history.
Machel On d’ Beach
Machel Montano entered Caribbean Beach Fest following one of the most dominant Trinidad and Tobago Carnival seasons of his career.
Only months earlier, Machel had completed a remarkable 2012 sweep by winning the Groovy Soca Monarch title with “Mr Fete,” the Power Soca Monarch title with “Pump Yuh Flag,” and the Road March title with “Pump Yuh Flag.”
Caribbean Beach Fest promotional material highlighted him as the reigning winner of all three major Soca honors.
The concert also arrived during another major career milestone: Machel was celebrating 30 years in music in 2012.
That made M.O.B. more than another stop on his summer touring schedule. It placed one of his strongest contemporary Carnival seasons alongside a celebration of the career he had built since beginning as a child performer.
Machel Montano and Young Devyn
One of the surviving Julianspromos videos brings together highlights featuring Machel Montano and Young Devyn.
Machel represented the established international Soca superstar at the center of the event, while Devyn represented an entirely different generation of Caribbean talent.
Young Devyn, then still a child performer, had already developed a relationship with Julianspromos. A year earlier, she had been the subject of Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson’s first-ever Julianspromos artist interview.
Her appearance at Caribbean Beach Fest in 2012 shows how quickly her young Soca career was developing.
Only a year after that early interview, she was appearing on a major Jones Beach lineup alongside some of the biggest artists in Caribbean music.
Kerwin Du Bois at Caribbean Beach Fest
Kerwin Du Bois was another major Soca artist captured by Julianspromos at M.O.B.
The original footage preserves his performance at Jones Beach during a period when his profile within Soca was continuing to rise internationally.
By 2012, Kerwin had already built a reputation as both an artist and songwriter, with songs such as “Bacchanalist” and “Runaway” helping establish him as one of the distinctive voices in Groovy Soca.
His appearance alongside Machel and members of the HD Family placed him within a concert heavily shaped by the music that had moved through Trinidad and Tobago Carnival earlier that year.
The Jones Beach footage captures Kerwin before the next major phase of his career, which would eventually include his own International Groovy Soca Monarch victory.
Cham Brings Dancehall to Jones Beach
Caribbean Beach Fest was not exclusively a Soca event.
Jamaican artist Cham, also widely known as Baby Cham, brought Dancehall into the festival lineup.
The original Julianspromos footage preserves highlights from his appearance at Jones Beach.
Cham had already built an international career through songs including “Ghetto Story,” “Vitamin S” and “Babylon Bwoy,” establishing himself as one of the Jamaican artists capable of connecting Dancehall audiences inside and outside the Caribbean.
His inclusion helped broaden the musical identity of M.O.B.
Rather than presenting a Trinidad-only Soca concert, Caribbean Beach Fest brought together music from Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica within the same outdoor New York festival.
The HD Family at Jones Beach
Machel’s appearance also brought members of the HD Family into Caribbean Beach Fest.
The advertised lineup included Patrice Roberts and Farmer Nappy, two artists whose careers were closely connected with Machel’s live productions during this period.
Patrice had already spent years appearing alongside Machel while developing her own Soca catalogue, while Farmer Nappy represented an even longer musical connection extending back through the Xtatik years.
Their presence reinforced the Machel On d’ Beach concept as something larger than a single headlining performance.
It was a wider presentation of the artists and music surrounding the HD era.
Soca Meets Reggae and Dancehall
The full advertised lineup extended well beyond Machel, Kerwin and Cham.
Jamaican artist I-Octane was also part of the festival, bringing a Reggae and Dancehall voice that complemented Cham’s appearance.
Additional performers announced for the inaugural event included Phoenix, Young Devyn, Walker Hornung, the Ahtik Studio Family, Captain Jason Benn and Jamsey P.
That mix gave the festival a deliberately broad Caribbean identity.
Established stars appeared alongside emerging performers, while Soca shared the stage with Reggae and Dancehall.
More Julianspromos Coverage From M.O.B.
Multiple surviving Julianspromos videos help reconstruct the atmosphere surrounding the inaugural Caribbean Beach Fest.
Rather than preserving only one edited recap, the footage captures different performers and moments from throughout the event.
[Insert highlight video here]
Together, those videos provide a fuller visual record of a Caribbean festival that might otherwise survive primarily through promotional flyers, event listings and memories from the people who attended.
Caribbean Music at Jones Beach
Jones Beach was an unusual but significant setting for the event.
The outdoor amphitheater had long hosted major touring acts from mainstream American and international music, making the decision to stage a Caribbean festival there particularly notable.
Caribbean Beach Fest placed Soca, Reggae and Dancehall within the same concert environment used by major Pop, Rock and Hip-Hop tours.
For Caribbean audiences throughout New York and the wider Northeast, it created an opportunity to see a lineup normally associated with Carnival, Caribbean festivals and diaspora events presented on one of Long Island’s major concert stages.
A Summer Following an Historic Carnival
The timing also mattered.
Caribbean Beach Fest arrived less than five months after Trinidad and Tobago Carnival 2012.
Songs that had dominated fetes, competitions and the road in Trinidad were still moving through international Caribbean markets as artists traveled throughout North America for the summer.
Machel’s “Mr Fete” and “Pump Yuh Flag,” Kerwin Du Bois’ growing catalogue, and music from the HD Family were part of that continuing Carnival cycle.
New York audiences could experience those artists without waiting for Labor Day Carnival weekend in Brooklyn.
Trinidad and Tobago at 50
The event also took place during a landmark year for Trinidad and Tobago.
In 2012, the country celebrated 50 years of independence, adding another layer to a year in which Trinidad and Tobago music and culture were being celebrated throughout the international diaspora.
Machel and many of the Soca performers appearing at Caribbean Beach Fest represented the contemporary side of that culture.
Their presence on a major New York stage demonstrated how far Soca had traveled from its Trinidad and Tobago roots while remaining closely connected to Carnival.
Julianspromos Preserves the Event
By July 2012, Julianspromos had moved considerably beyond its earliest experiments with artist interviews.
The previous year had seen Young Devyn become the subject of the first Julianspromos interview, followed by the first on-location media event at Six Flags.
By the time Caribbean Beach Fest arrived, Julianspromos was continuing to build a growing collection of original interviews, performances and event highlights throughout the New York Caribbean entertainment circuit.
Jones Beach became another piece of that expansion.
The surviving videos preserve not simply individual performances, but another stage in Julianspromos’ development into a multimedia archive of Caribbean entertainment.
Four Videos, One Festival
Placed together, the surviving footage tells a stronger story than any individual clip could tell alone.
Machel Montano and Young Devyn represent two dramatically different generations of Caribbean performers.
Kerwin Du Bois captures the evolving Soca landscape of the period.
Cham adds the Dancehall side of the festival.
Additional footage further preserves the atmosphere surrounding the event itself.
Together, the collection documents the inaugural Caribbean Beach Fest as a meeting point between artists, genres and generations.
From the Julianspromos Archives
Caribbean Beach Fest 2012 at Jones Beach: Julianspromos Highlights brings surviving original footage from the inaugural Machel On d’ Beach concert together into one historical feature.
Held at Nikon at Jones Beach Theater on July 8, 2012, the event placed Machel Montano and the HD Family alongside Kerwin Du Bois, Cham, I-Octane, Young Devyn and other Caribbean performers on a major Long Island concert stage.
The footage captures Machel during the year of his historic Trinidad Carnival triple crown and 30th anniversary in music, while simultaneously preserving rising artists and established Caribbean performers sharing the same stage.
More than a decade later, the videos provide a visual record of an ambitious moment when Caribbean music took over Jones Beach and Julianspromos was there to document it.
