From music pioneer to developer
AN unassuming man with a bright smile, which displayed both shyness and confidence. He sank in his chair and declared, “I don’t like being interviewed, I prefer to work in the background.”
“I’m Joseph Lincoln, but more popular known as Junior Lincoln,” he introduced himself at the start of the interview, saying he’s sitting in as the chairman and CEO of Can-Cara Development Limited.
“Can-Cara started in about 2000. We started as a development company which does large developments. Our first project as a new company was Whitewater Meadows, which was [to develop] 764 houses off Old Harbour Road [in St Catherine],” he explained. “Then about four years after, we entered the water and sewerage business.”
But getting into this business was not easy for Lincoln who admitted, he had no experience in development before entering the field. That lack of experience was a hindrance in convincing financial entities to back Can-Cara’s first project.
Lincoln — an ancient with a sharp wit — giving his age as “80 years old”, but with plans for the next 50 years, spent most of his life in the music industry, and in the last two decades, added developer to his repertoire.
“It’s very strange,” he continued. “One of the challenges I had at the time, is that my background for years is in the entertainment business. I was in England where I pioneered the music, reggae music. I had the biggest record company in England,” he said with a smile that brightened his face as he added, “I’m usually on that side,” pointing to where this reporter sat, indicating that he is usually the one asking the questions, rather than answering them during his time promoting Jamaican music across the world.
Lincoln, one of the early pioneers of Jamaican popular music and a native of Trench Town — the small southern St Andrew community credited with the development of reggae music — is still involved, though his focus these days is trained on development.
Currently in the music industry, Lincoln, who is the chairman of the Dennis Brown Trust, produces the annual Dennis Brown Tribute Concert in downtown, Kingston. He is also a founding member of Jamaica Reggae Industry Association (JaRIA), an entity dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Jamaican popular music and the welfare of those in the country’s entertainment industry.
“I took Sunsplash to England and Europe. I was a director of Sunsplash,” he continued in reflection on his past. Lincoln said these days, he’s into reggae music for its continued development as one who was around the giants including the biggest of them all, Bob Marley.
“I took Marley off stage already,” said Lincoln who pointed out that when he is promoting music, he transforms into a no-nonsense individual.
“I was in the business from I was 13 years old, so now I feel like a mother with the responsibility to nurture the music having grown up with many of the people who are now legends. When I went to England at 17 years old, I was already keeping some of the biggest dances in Jamaica with Coxsone sound system,” he said in reference to Sir Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, a record producer who was influential in the development of ska and reggae in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond. Lincoln said Coxsone, as Dodd was affectionately called, “was a very good friend”.
Lincoln said many people were surprise when he packed his bags and headed for England in 1959 because he was doing reasonably well for himself. They were also surprised when he returned to Jamaica decades later, because he was operating a successful music business in London.
But Lincoln said when he returned to the island in 1989, he was driven by a desire to take a break from it all. He returned and decided to spend a year touring Jamaica, “to get to know the place because as a Kingston boy, I didn’t know much of Jamaica.”
During those travels across the island, he said he began to realise that residential developments lacked adequate green spaces and were not people-friendly. Years later, he decided that he would do something about that in his own way. In 1999, Can-Cara was registered and started operations a year later at a time when Lincoln was at an age at which most people were preparing for retirement. For him, however, retirement was not an option.
“I’ve been working from I was 13 years old. I can’t stop now. I have the kind of mind which has to be stimulated. All now, I am planning things for the next 50 years,” he said.
But why move from music to development?
“Purpose,” he said. “My life is about purpose. I don’t choose anything for me.”
For a man who spent his entire life in entertainment, the lessons learnt from that business were to be applied to a venture in which he was ‘wet behind the ears’.
“The entertainment business taught me everything about business. There is no industry as creative as the entertainment business when it comes to marketing. There is no industry that keeps you on your toes when it comes to contracts, like the entertainment business.”
He said to make the push into development, he approached retired Cabinet secretary Dr Carlton Davis and the late former Government minister OD Ramtallie.
“For some reason, when I went to them with a vision of transforming affordable housing and how people should live, I told them, I didn’t want to build houses, I want to build communities with green areas.”
He said at the time, that concept was not as widespread as it is now, “and I would like to think that Can-Cara has a lot to do with that change.”
“If you go to Whitewater Meadows even now, you would see the amount of green areas that we allocated. There was even a park down there with water features which at the time of selling it, we marketed it as the ‘English-style park’, because it had a gazebo and nice beautiful football field and a green area where people could relax and children could study.”
“But it was difficult to get the financing for project. Lincoln said banks told him, ‘Junior, you a music man. How you going to build 764 houses?’. But he was undaunted and understanding of their concerns, “because [transiting from music to development] was not the norm”.
“I had to partner with a company called Magil. They were contractors in development and it was easier for them as foreigners to get the financing, and they used my collateral as security for the loan, but I couldn’t use the same collateral for the loan because I didn’t have the track record, and I accepted that. I didn’t go into a corner and cry. I understand the game from my experience in the music business that these things happen. All I had to do was find a way, and that was to partner with Magil for the first phase,” he outlined.
That development cost close to $1 billion. Magil built the first few houses and then Can-Cara completed the community. Since then, he has built a few more and is now constructing over 100 units for civil servants in Montego Bay, St James.
But he wouldn’t stop at just housing construction. The need to have sewerage and water to multiple developments taking place in the early 2000s, was to spawn another business venture for Lincoln.
“In 2003 or 2004, when I went out to Whitewater Meadows on Old Harbour Road, I was looking on the land which used to grow sugar cane. It was mostly clay, so it wasn’t producing efficiently. I said then, this will automatically become housing land because it couldn’t produce in the quantities that we would like. We as developers, myself and others, we were building houses in Spanish Town and Portmore, but we all had one problem — sewerage and water.”
The National Water Commission (NWC), the State-owned agency charged with developing water resources and managing sewerage, could not afford to install new infrastructure at the time. Lincoln recalled that developers, the NWC and Government officials concerned about the lack of adequate sewerage systems in and around Spanish Town and Portmore, both in St Catherine, met to discuss the matter.
“The developers were asking how were they to develop houses if they can’t get water and sewerage. I then opened my mouth and said, ‘suppose a private company wanted to do this, would that be OK’, and everybody around the table looked at each other and all the developers said they had no problem with that because they wanted to develop houses.”
Lincoln said he was told that if he could produce a concept and design for a water and sewerage facility in four months, the Government would consider it. He did it in three months. The World Bank at the time he said was gung-ho about such a project and that made it easier for him to secure funding for that project at the start, than it was for him to get financing for his first housing development.
There are now two sewerage plants — one in St Catherine and one in St James — with nine communities attached to them.
“When you see our sewage plant, you think its a golf course, that’s how beautiful it is.”
But he said that beauty hid the fact that the company was losing money in the early days. Funds that were earmarked for developing other communities were diverted to keep the sewerage operations running. In the process, other developments were shelved. Lands which were bought to facilitate the construction of new communities were also sold and the monies pumped into the water and sewerage business. But things are now improving and expected to continue improving with Can-Cara signing a deal to provide sewerage and water facilities for the Greater Bernard Lodge Development and in areas of central St Catherine.
He said the company is being reorganised at the moment and teased, “We have an announcement to make, but I won’t make it now.”
What he said is certain is that he intends to take Can-Cara to the next stage of its development.
“Can-Cara is not a Jamaican company, it’s a Jamaican-based company. The music business has taught me this. Going around with the music and pioneering it from the 60s, I realised what it meant for millions of people. It has created a brand for us, but we in business in Jamaica have never taken advantage of this.”
“I don’t know if it is because we don’t believe in the music. But as one who had pioneered the music, going around the world, I realised that the rest of the world would prefer to deal with Jamaica because of the brands, reggae and Jamaica. And because of those brands, we have an advantage around the world where we took the music, if we were to enter those countries with any other businesses whether spice or music, whatever.
“So my vision for Can-Cara is to establish it globally. We are recognised by the World Bank. We want to have this company, doing the same thing that we are doing in Jamaica, in the Caribbean and Latin America and most of all, the continent of Africa, sooner than you think. We plan to take this company to being an international company. We are only in Jamaica now, but we want to take the company all over the world,” he concluded.