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Words by Jesse Serwer—
The biggest news in soca this month is the return of Superblue —father of Fay-Ann Lyons and Terri Lyons, and the originator of the jump and wave craze—to Trinidad’s Soca Monarch competition. The winner of eight Carnival Road March titles and a record five Soca Monarch titles will make his first entry into the competition in over a decade next month, going head-to-head against his own daughters and son-in-law, Bunji Garlin.
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Words by Mikelah Rose, Photos by Harol Baez
Created by Kristy Collado, who hails from the Dominican Republic, Chéjo Jewelry (pronounced cheh-ho) produces unique unisex accessories that are reminiscent of tribal warrior pieces. Chéjo’s handmade pieces are edgy enough for the ladies and masculine enough for the guys. I discovered Chéjo Jewelry through the JAMPACT Charity fashion show. The line’s earthy tones and heavy details in the extravagant pieces looked unique yet seemed wearable. Chéjo utilizes an intriguing compliment of mixed metals and up-cycled leather materials, and its unique geometric shapes echo through each piece, creating a visual statement of extreme individuality and style. Collado took her career in jewelry making from designing pieces for friends to designing a detailed piece for Faye Ann Lyons for Trinidad Carnival 2011. We caught up with the talented young designer for a Q&A about her line and her future plans.
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Words by Jesse Serwer
When you think of kids carrying on their father’s musical legacy, the Marley family is, rightfully, probably the first to come to mind. And if you’re talking about current reggae/dancehall music, you have to acknowledge the McGregor clan, with siblings Stephen, Chino and Shema all carrying on the Big Ship banner begun by their still-active father, Freddie McGregor. With Father’s Day coming up this Sunday, it got us wondering: who are some of the other current Caribbean artists and producers with influential musical fathers behind them? As many “mama” tunes as there are in reggae, dancehall and other genres, tributes to fathers are rare. Here’s 10 names we’re guessing you may know, and 10 reasons why you should also know their fathers–if you’re not up on the connections already.
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Words by Jesse Serwer
Sundays in the Serwer household rarely start before 1 PM. It’s immaterial whether Saturday night involved late-night partying or re-runs on the couch: This is when I catch up on all the sleep I didn’t get during the work-week, often with public radio playing unobtrusively in the background (Late-night BBC news broadcasts are a great alternative to counting sheep). Around 9:30 a.m. yesterday morning, however, I was startled from my standard Sunday morning stupor by the manic sounds of Machel Montano’s “Advantage,” followed by what my half-alert brain registered as a Trini accent. Turned out that soca, Trinidad carnival and Machel himself were the subjects of a segment on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition. You can listen to the piece, which contains interviews with Montano, Fay-Ann Lyons, Bunji Garlin and Kes the Band’s Kees Dieffenthaller and was produced by Caribbean music critic Baz Dreisinger, below, or read the transcript over at NPR’s website. Also on their site is a companion piece running down the hottest tracks of this Carnival season. Of course, we already hipped you to most of these in our own Carnival 2011 preview, two weeks ago, though.
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Words by Rishi Bonneville and Eddie STATS Houghton
Carnival time again! As multitudes of ex-pat Trinis and foreign calypso, pan and soca lovers board flights for Port of Spain, the fetes and song competitions are in full swing. The famed parades of masqueraders will be held this year on March 7-8, when the Road March champion will be crowned. However, since 1993, on the Friday before the full costumed bacchanalia, soca fans gather at the Queen’s Oval Park cricket stadium to watch an onstage competition in which the singers of a faster soca tune and a slower soca are selected as the Power and Groovy soca winners respectively. (Note: The Chutney Soca Monarch competition, which occurred on Saturday, March 19th was won by Rikki Jai for “White Oak & Water.” A disgruntled Ravi B, who came second, urged fans to “pelt something” and hundreds of bottles fell upon the stage.) As the excitement builds, LargeUp reached to top soca selectors and soundsystems from Trinidad, NY, Miami, Montreal, Germany and Japan to take the international temperature and get their favorites for road march, power and groovy soca monarch. This is actually a Top 10 (roughly) but since many of our soca pundits had comments and overlapping picks we have dispensed with the usual countdown format and broken it down by selector. To the road!
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Compiled by Rishi Bonneville, DJ Gravy, Jillionaire and Eddie STATS Houghton
It is the end of year that ends in ’10, so you can forgive us if we go Toppa Top 10 mad and just post Top 10s from now til 2011. In that spirit, we have wukked up a list of the biggest, baddest, maddest, massest, muddiest soca jams of 2010…and in the Carnival spirit of too much is better, we let it run to 11!
