The performing artivist arrives for Emancipation Watch Night and begins a new musical journey into the sounds of Carnival.
International performing artivist Kim Poole is bringing her distinctive Soul-Fusion sound to Antigua and Barbuda during the nation’s 192nd Emancipation celebrations, arriving at a moment when history, reparations and the vibrant energy of Carnival meet.
Poole will perform at the Emancipation Watch Night service alongside Sir Hilary Beckles, Chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission and one of the world’s leading reparations scholars and elders. On Friday 31st July from 8pm at the Botanical Gardens, the gathering will unite music, cultural memory, historical reflection and the continuing call for justice across the Caribbean and the wider African world.
For Poole, the invitation is both a performance opportunity and the beginning of a new musical exploration. Her music has always reflected the journey she is living. As that journey now turns toward the Caribbean, she is ready to listen for the rhythms, voices and creative energy that make Antigua and Barbuda distinctive.
“My future music will reflect my current journey, and now it is time to include the Carnival vibes. I’m looking for the sounds of the islands, and Antigua is a great place to start.” — Kim Poole
Her musical style, which she calls Soul-Fusion, moves freely across soul, African diasporic rhythms, spiritual expression, spoken word, jazz, movement and cultural storytelling. Rather than treating musical traditions as fixed categories, Poole allows the places, people and experiences she encounters to shape the next chapter of her sound.
Antigua and Barbuda offers a rich environment for that evolution. The island’s musical landscape carries the pulse of calypso, soca, steelpan, drumming, Carnival procession, sacred gathering and African-Caribbean memory. Poole arrives not only to share her own music, but also to listen—to local musicians, cultural bearers, storytellers and the rhythms moving through the island during Carnival season.
That spirit of exchange is central to her work as an artivist. Her performances connect music to questions of identity, freedom, cultural inheritance and collective possibility. She approaches the stage as a place where audiences can experience joy while also confronting the histories that continue to shape African-descended communities.
Her Emancipation Watch Night appearance carries particular significance. Sir Hilary Beckles will offer the historical and intellectual grounding of the reparations movement, while Poole’s performance will engage its emotional, spiritual and creative dimensions. Together, their presence reflects the many languages through which reparations must be understood: policy, history, scholarship, memory, music and lived cultural experience.
Poole’s arrival just in time for Carnival also places her within one of the Caribbean’s most powerful traditions of cultural survival. Carnival is celebration, but it is also testimony. Its music, masquerade, movement and public gathering carry the histories of people who transformed restriction into expression and ancestral memory into new forms of freedom.
For Poole, these are not simply sounds to borrow. They are living cultural languages to encounter with respect, curiosity and collaboration. Her time in Antigua and Barbuda may become part of future compositions as she continues developing music shaped by her travels throughout Global Africa.
As Antigua and Barbuda commemorates 192 years of Emancipation, Kim Poole arrives ready to contribute her voice—and to discover what the island may add to her own. The result may be more than a single performance. It may be the beginning of a new sound: Soul-Fusion meeting the spirit of Antigua, the movement of Carnival and the continuing music of freedom.
This article was originally published by Antigua News Room. Read the original article here: Kim Poole Brings Soul-Fusion to Antigua.