When the industry flies to your island, every booker and label person you would otherwise chase is within walking distance for a few days.
A major festival imports world-class talent superbly, contributes millions to the local economy, fills every hotel room, and gives local artists a public platform.
What it does not do yet is give a local artist a structured way to meet a buyer. No delegate market, no trade floor, no B2B programme, and no showcase that international programmers attend in order to book from. The industry arrives, spends four days here, and leaves.
Artists get on those stages through the people already on them, not through the booking email address. That is the whole mechanism and it is not a secret.
Cabo Verde already did it. Atlantic Music Expo runs showcases, a conference, workshops, one-to-one meetings and an evening street market, deliberately scheduled just before their Kriol Jazz Festival so delegates stay for both. Comparable population, creole-language repertoire, small domestic market, an island — and government-initiated by the culture ministry.
This island has the harder half already: an internationally credible festival that people fly to. Cabo Verde had to build the market first. Two days of professional programme before the festival is the cheapest possible addition.
And a delegation is not a flight subsidy. It is the export office travelling with the artists, making the introductions, holding the meetings, and coming back with a contact list that belongs to the island. Go once and you meet four people; go three years running and you are a scene that programmers plan around.
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This is a plain-language map of how the systems work, so you know which questions to ask and which clauses to look at. It is not legal advice about your contract. Once there is real money or a real signature involved, that is a lawyer's job — and it is cheaper than the mistake.