Joy Lapps and Larnell Lewis bring The Caribbean Christmas Mixtape Vol. 1 back to Lula Lounge on Thursday, December 17, 2026. The Dundas West night has become a Toronto Caribbean Christmas tradition, where steelpan and drums carry holiday standards through reggae, calypso and soca rhythms.
The concert follows the couple’s 2024 album of the same name, a record that treats the Christmas songbook the way a Toronto Caribbean household treats the season itself: familiar melodies, island rhythms, and a room full of people who grew up between both. For iimiTV’s new Caribbean Music desk, this is the right place to start, a major night on Toronto soil, built by two of this city’s own.
Caribbean Christmas Mixtape Toronto: Date, Tickets And Times
The details, as listed by the venue’s ticketing page: the show runs Thursday, December 17, 2026 at Lula Lounge, 1585 Dundas Street West in Toronto. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. for dinner and drinks, and the concert begins at 8:00 p.m. Early bird tickets are $30 while quantities last, and general admission is $40, with HST and Eventbrite fees additional. Tickets are general admission and do not guarantee seating, and dinner reservations, which do secure a seat, are available through lula.ca/reservations.
Lula Lounge is the right room for this. The Dundas West venue has been Toronto’s home for live Latin and Caribbean music for two decades, a dinner-and-dancing room where a steelpan headline set fits the furniture. A December date there puts the Caribbean Christmas Mixtape in front of the audience it was made for: Caribbean Torontonians marking the season, and everyone else in this city who has learned that Christmas sounds better with a rhythm section.
A Holiday Record Built In Toronto
The Caribbean Christmas Mixtape Vol. 1 arrived in full on November 15, 2024, preceded by the first single “Soca Sleigh Ride” on November 1, 2024. It is Joy Lapps’s sixth release and Larnell Lewis’s fourth release as leaders, and the pair describe it on his official site as an alternate soundtrack to the holiday season, informed by their lived experience as first-generation Afro-Caribbean Canadians. The arrangements run from jazz-infused soca, zouk, reggae and ska to quiet lullabies, reworking classics including “Soca Sleigh Ride” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.”
“This isn’t just a concert, it’s a vibrant celebration of music, heritage, and holiday joy.”
That is how the event listing frames the night, and it names the real draw. The album was raised in metro Toronto, among the extended Caribbean families both musicians grew up in, and the songs carry that upbringing in every arrangement. Joy’s father worked as a popular party DJ and filled the house with zouk, soca and calypso long before she took up the steelpan, and the mixtape plays like a family record collection rebuilt by two bandleaders at the top of their craft.
Two Musicians, Deep Caribbean Roots
Joy Lapps is an award-winning instrumentalist of Antiguan and Barbudan descent who treats the steelpan as a tool for engagement, anchoring her artistry in a community-centred musical tradition. Her playing has carried her to festival stages across Canada and the United States, and her work consistently amplifies women’s contributions to the steelband movement. Larnell Lewis, her husband, is a Toronto-based drummer of St. Kitts heritage, an educator, and a member of the Grammy Award-winning band Snarky Puppy, with a command of jazz, soul, R&B, gospel and Caribbean genres that few drummers anywhere match. He also teaches at Humber College, which makes this a hometown show in every sense.
Together they lead a band drawn from Toronto’s finest musicians, which is the other half of the story. A night like this is a showcase for the depth of Caribbean musicianship in this city, players who move between jazz rooms, gospel churches, soca fetes and studio sessions all year, and who get one December night to put the whole tradition on one stage.
Why This Night Lands In December
Toronto’s Caribbean calendar runs loudest in summer, when the Toronto Caribbean Carnival takes over the lakeshore. December is its quieter counterpart, when the diaspora gathers indoors, around food, family and music that sounds like home. A Caribbean Christmas concert is not a novelty booking in that culture. It is how the season is actually celebrated, and the mixtape’s return to Lula, billed by the listing as “a beautiful evolving holiday tradition,” shows it becoming an annual fixture.
Joy Lapps and Larnell Lewis play Lula Lounge on Thursday, December 17, 2026, with doors at 7:00 p.m. and the concert at 8:00 p.m. Early bird tickets are $30 while they last, general admission is $40, and the room fills for this one. It opens iimiTV’s Caribbean Music coverage the way the desk intends to run: Toronto first, diaspora always, and the music treated as the headline it is.
