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Sweet Ticky: the smooth voice behind the Ticky of TK International

Published October 20, 2026

Sweet Ticky is the name of a bouyon singer from Dominica, and this profile opens with an honest note, because that note is part of the record. In every published source this research was able to open, the only documented Ticky in bouyon is Lennan “Ticky” Matthew, one of the three frontline vocalists of TK International, the band from Laudat that its own website presents as a brotherhood of nine musicians. No opened source publishes a solo discography under the full name Sweet Ticky, so this profile invents none. What it tells instead is fully checkable: the story of the smooth voice in the most durable vocal trio in Dominican bouyon, across twenty five years of band history, albums, Road March titles and a central place in the modern history of the genre.

Who Sweet Ticky is: one name, one singer, one honest note

The name Sweet Ticky travels in bouyon artist lists, but the public archive knows one Ticky, and only one: Lennan Matthew, singer with TK International. The band official website and specialist press such as Soca News present him in the same form, Ticky, in brackets after his full name, alongside David “Sonic Tazzy” George and Wayne “Mr Benji N'O” Benjamin. This profile follows that documented singer, under the full name he is searched by, and states clearly where the documentation stops.

That care takes nothing away from the man. In the TK International vocal trio, each voice has a role that the band own site describes itself: Benji raspy chants, Tazzy high pitched falsettos, and Lennan smooth vocals. Smoothness is therefore, in the band own published words, the signature of Ticky. A singer the public calls Sweet, whose band describes his voice as smooth: the bridge between the searched name and the documented singer rests at least on that vocal signature, even if no source publishes the full Sweet Ticky form.

The rest of the portrait is that of a band singer, and it should be said as a positive fact. Bouyon was born as a band music, from WCK to the carnival formations, and TK International is the most constant heir of that form: a band founded by three friends from Laudat, grown to nine musicians, with over nine albums, hundreds of songs and thousands of hours of performances around the world, according to its official site. Ticky is not a voice laid over that journey, he is one of its three faces from the start.

This profile therefore follows the method of this whole site: published facts first, limits next, never the reverse. When a record is a TK International record, it is presented as one. When a claim belongs to the band, it is not dressed up as a solo feat. The reader knows on every line what belongs to Ticky the singer, and what belongs to the collective machine that carries his voice.

TK International: the Laudat band that carries his voice

TK International, also called the Triple Kay Band or Triple Kay International, comes from Laudat, a community in the interior of Dominica. The band was founded by three friends and named after them, then grew to nine committed members. Soca News, in its portrait of the band published in May 2022, keeps the same geography: a band originating from Laudat, home to nine artists, with nine albums, hundreds of songs and thousands of hours of worldwide performances to its credit. For a singer, belonging to such a structure changes everything: the voice of Ticky is heard inside a full band format, keyboards, guitar, drums and a rotating vocal section.

The line up published by the official site gives the scale of that machine. Up front: the three vocalists, David “Sonic Tazzy” George, Wayne “Mr Benji N'O” Benjamin and Lennan “Ticky” Matthew, described as the face of the band. Behind them: Kendel “Killa” Laurent on lead keys and production, Jeoffrey “JJ Yout” Joseph on back keys and back vocals, Jason “Froggy” Joseph on drums, Ordel “Zoubs” Hamilton on guitars, Daniel “Brush Head” Phillip on bass and James “J-West” Rodney as road manager. The same site states that Kendel produces all of the band music and Jeoffrey writes much of the lyrics: the frontline voices, Ticky included, therefore work on in house productions and lyrics, stable for years.

The band published repertoire spans cadence-lypso, Haitian compas, zouk and bouyon. That breadth is not a detail: it explains the longevity. A band that can play the cadence of the elders, the compas of Creole fetes and the fast bouyon of the young crowd can hold any stage in the Caribbean, from Roseau carnival to diaspora festivals. The smooth voice of Ticky is one of the tools of that versatility: it carries the sung, melodic passages where Benji chants carry the attack.

The band debuted at the World Creole Music Festival and Creole in the Park in 2002, and its site states that it has never missed a WCMF performance from 2005, and has played all but one staging of Creole in the Park. A festival review published in 2025 still shows it on the Friday stage of the WCMF, with the same three vocalists, and bills it as The People's Band. Twenty three years after the debut, the frontline trio has not changed: for a bouyon singer, that is a kind of title in itself.

The bouyon turn: from cadence to sewo, album by album

The published discography of TK International reads in two movements, and the voice of Ticky crosses both. First movement: the Creole influenced beginnings. The debut album, “Big Ting”, came out in 2000, with songs such as “Big Ting” and “L'amour”, marked by Dominican cadence-lypso, Haitian compas and the zouk of the neighbouring French islands. The follow up album, “Fanatik”, in 2003, still carried that Creole influence on songs like “Fanatik” and “Crevice”. The official site notes that the arrival of Benji, who produced and sang lead on the single “Log On”, already signalled the coming change of style.

Second movement: the turn. In 2004 Benji returned as a guest act and produced the title track of the album “Sewo”. By 2005 he was a full member, and the band repertoire turned to bouyon, the fast paced, upbeat sound popular among the younger crowd, for which Benji was known. The official site tells the rest in one sentence: David and Lennan soon followed, establishing themselves as a dominant bouyon vocal performing trio. That is the moment Ticky becomes, with his two partners, one of the reference voices of modern bouyon, in the precise sense in which our bouyon soca page and our history of bouyon tell the story of the generation that took over from the founding bands.

The albums of that bouyon period follow one another: “All Out” in 2006, “Pressure” in 2007, “Colours” in 2008, “Allo” in 2009, “Hush Your Mouth” in 2011 and “Bubblin” in 2012, the band last full length album according to its site. Soca News keeps the same list, with the same dates. After 2012 the band moved to the singles regime, several each year, which matches the format of the whole current bouyon scene: one record for carnival, one for the fete season, one for the road.

In that discography, no solo album by Ticky appears, and this profile repeats it plainly: the documented career of this singer is a band career. That is also what makes it readable. Where so many bouyon singers leave scattered traces, Ticky leaves a continuous, dated discography, album by album, because it is the discography of a band that published everything under one name for twenty five years.

The records that made the road: Road March titles, anthems and resilience

A bouyon band is measured at carnival, and that is where the published honours of TK International become precise. The official site holds four Road March titles: a first with “Please” in 2008, a second People's Road March title with “Lock De Gate” in 2015, another with “Roll dat Boom Boom” in 2017, and, in 2019, the first ever Peoples Bouyon Road March title in history, won with the party song “Heat”. Between those landmarks, “Nous Konnet Vive”, released in 2014 with a remix featuring Nayee, Rah and Asa Bantan, was selected as the official theme song of Dominica carnival celebrations. The voice of Ticky is part of the sound of every one of those records, inside the frontline trio.

Other records tell the band beyond the contest. “Still Standing”, in 2018, produced after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, became, according to the official site, an anthem of resilience for the country and for all nations experiencing adverse circumstances. “Jose”, in 2017, became within a month the band second most popular YouTube upload, behind 2007 “Soos”. “Toufe” is presented as the most loved song of the early 2020s, and the single “Whistle”, described by the site as the latest, topped several regional charts, including in Antigua. Those are the records the track list under this profile keeps for the voice of Ticky with his band.

The recent sequence confirms the machine is still running. Soca News noted in 2022 three records chained in the same year: “Riddim In Your Blood” (Bam Bam), featuring Little Boy, “One Call Away” and “One Melody”. A band of more than twenty years that still releases three singles in one year, while holding the WCMF stage, is not a catalogue band: it is a working band, and its trio of singers, Ticky included, remains its first line.

This honours list also needs its place in the history this site documents. According to the signed testimony of Sean “Smokiller” Francis, a Dominican-born producer and a participant in that era, bouyon soca was started by Dada in Dominica in 2003, then became popular when Triple Kay and other bands adopted it in their own version of bouyon. The band of Ticky therefore stands, in that signed account, at the exact point where a studio style becomes a crowd sound. Few bouyon singers can tie their name to a moment that precise in the history of the genre.

The stage, the awards and the country: what the band gives back

The international stage record of TK International is published with the same care as its discography. The band played the Antilliaanse Feesten festival in Hoogstraten, Belgium, in 2006, and returned in 2010, and the Terre de Blues Festival in Marie Galante in 2012. It is a staple at carnivals and Caribbean festivals around the globe: Houston Carifest, Toronto Caribana, Notting Hill Carnival in the United Kingdom, Miami Carnival, New York West Indian Day celebrations, and carnivals in Antigua, St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. Martin. At home, its signature carnival event, Mega Monday, won Best Carnival Monday Band with its Visions 20/20 presentation. For Ticky, that means a voice trained on the biggest stages of the Creole circuit, not only on the stages of Roseau.

Official recognition arrived in 2022, and it was double: the band received the Commonwealth of Dominica Meritorious Service Award and the Golden Drum Award, for its contribution to culture and the promotion of the country worldwide. The same year, Soca News presented it on its way to the I Love Sewo Jam, proof that sewo, the fete style that names one of the band albums, remains its living trademark. The official site adds the side that artist portraits almost always forget: giving back. The band states it has donated over $30,000 to the Education Trust Fund, $12,000 to the Dominica Council on Ageing, paid for the refurbishment of a youth centre in the Kalinago Territory, sponsored over twenty school students, and given free concerts and fundraisers, including after Hurricane Ivan in Grenada and Tropical Storm Erika in Dominica. Soca News published slightly lower amounts in 2022, which simply matches donations continued between the two dates.

That side matters for understanding the place of Ticky. A frontline singer in a band anchored this way is not only a performer: in the eyes of his public, he is a representative of Laudat and of Dominica. That is the meaning of the nickname the 2025 WCMF review gives the band, The People's Band. The voices that carry that status are the ones the public recognises in the street, at carnival and on the buses where, the official site says with pride, recordings of the band live performances play as if they were albums in themselves.

What this profile knows, and what it does not know yet

Let us sum up the record, without inflating it. Verified fact: there is a bouyon singer named Ticky, whose published full name is Lennan Matthew, the smooth voice of the TK International frontline trio, a band from Laudat founded by three friends, active since its WCMF debut in 2002, with over nine albums and four Road March titles. Verified fact as well: the band was honoured by its country in 2022 and keeps releasing and performing, as its presence at the 2025 WCMF shows. Those facts come from the band official website, the specialist press and a festival review, all opened for this profile.

Not verified, and therefore not claimed here: the full form of the name, Sweet Ticky, appears in none of the opened sources, and no solo discography, no personal official account and no date of birth could be confirmed for this singer. If the name Sweet Ticky does designate the Ticky of TK International under a public name of affection, this profile already covers him in the essentials. If it designates another, more recent singer with no archive, then his record remains to be written, and this site will complete it as soon as a checkable source appears. In both cases, the rule stays the same: no fact without a source.

To hear the smooth voice of Ticky in its context, start with the band records listed under this profile, from “Big Ting” to “Whistle”, then our bouyon playlist, which mixes band classics with new Dominican releases. Our artists of Dominica page places TK International among the formations that made the sound of the island, from WCK to the current generation.

Sweet Ticky will therefore remain, in this record, a double bottomed name: the name the public searches for, and the documented singer who stands behind the only Ticky in bouyon. Between the two, this profile chose to invent nothing. That is a limit, and it is also a promise: the day a source publishes the full portrait of this singer, this page will be the first to tell it in full.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Sweet Ticky?

Sweet Ticky is the name this bouyon singer is searched under. In the published sources opened for this profile, the only documented Ticky in bouyon is Lennan “Ticky” Matthew, one of the three frontline vocalists of TK International, the band from Laudat, Dominica. No solo discography under the full name Sweet Ticky could be verified, so this profile covers the documented singer, and states that limit openly.

What is the real name of Ticky, the TK International singer?

The published sources, the band official website as well as Soca News, give Lennan Matthew, with Ticky as his stage nickname. His two frontline partners are David “Sonic Tazzy” George and Wayne “Mr Benji N'O” Benjamin.

What is the vocal signature of Ticky in the trio?

The TK International official site describes the three voices this way: Benji raspy chants, Tazzy high pitched falsettos and Lennan smooth vocals. Smoothness is therefore the published signature of Ticky, the voice that carries the sung, melodic passages of the band.

Which TK International records won Road March titles?

According to the band official site: “Please” in 2008, “Lock De Gate” in 2015, the band second People's Road March title, “Roll dat Boom Boom” in 2017, and “Heat” in 2019, which won the first ever Peoples Bouyon Road March title in history. “Nous Konnet Vive” was also the official theme song of Dominica carnival celebrations in 2014.

Where does TK International come from, and when did the band start?

The band comes from Laudat, Dominica, where it was founded by three friends. It debuted at the World Creole Music Festival and Creole in the Park in 2002, released its debut album “Big Ting” in 2000 according to its official site, and has not missed a WCMF performance since 2005.

Where can I hear Ticky and TK International?

Start with the band records kept under this profile, from “Big Ting” to “Still Standing” and “Whistle”, then hear our bouyon playlist and read our Dominica carnival page, the stage where the band Road March titles were won.

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