Kali­fa Clyne

Dex­ter Stew­art is a man of the peo­ple, a "grounds man" he calls him­self. Dur­ing our in­ter­view, in the usu­al­ly qui­et lob­by at the T&T Guardian of­fices, there are many in­ter­rup­tions. Every pass­er-by has a com­ment, com­pli­ment or hand­shake for the singer.

Stew­art smiles and re­sponds with hu­mil­i­ty and kind words. He is not sur­prised by the at­ten­tion."It wasn't easy for me to be­come a so­ca artiste. Peo­ple say you have a good voice but you aren't mar­ketable; you're fat, they had a prob­lem with the skin colour," he says.It is the same dark brown skin colour that in­spired his moniker–Blaxx.

The 50-year-old artiste has been in the so­ca are­na for more than 20 years, hav­ing per­formed with a num­ber of bands, name­ly Suc­ces­sion Brass, Up­stream, At­lantik and Blue Ven­tures be­fore find­ing a place to call home with the Roy Cape All Stars."Kurt Allen ap­proached me and asked if I want­ed to join Roy Cape. I had al­ways want­ed to join Roy Cape."

Shak­ing his head, Blaxx says he wasn't fo­cused when he was younger. He says his suc­cess came with Roy Cape. For Blaxx, suc­cess does not equate to rich­es."I have nev­er been rich. I used to play mu­sic and bas­ket­ball in the same slip­pers. Now I am do­ing a lit­tle bet­ter."

He has no re­grets."I was thank­ful for be­ing poor. I wish pover­ty could mo­ti­vate peo­ple like it mo­ti­vat­ed me."I don't even have a car. I still walk Fred­er­ick, Char­lotte and Hen­ry Street to get a taxi."He says Roy Cape All Stars is the best band in the world and calls it the uni­ver­si­ty of so­ca mu­sic in Trinidad.

"They still keep me in check. Up to this day, those guys will be on my case. If I say some­thing out of place I would get a look and know to cool it down."Pa­pi Cape saw the po­ten­tial and in­vest­ed in me. The band has in­vest­ed in me and my goal is to give back as much as I can. They have in­vest­ed fi­nan­cial­ly and by talk­ing, guid­ing and teach­ing.

"It is sad that we have so many young artists out there with­out help. Cor­po­rate T&T usu­al­ly waits till you have blown up to of­fer a hand. Roy Cape All Stars has been my cor­po­rate spon­sor."The band is my pri­or­i­ty. If the band is get­ting five dol­lars for a job and I am of­fered $50,000 for a so­lo per­for­mance, my pri­or­i­ty is that five dol­lars."Blaxx, a Mor­vant res­i­dent, smiles as he re­calls grow­ing up in South Trinidad.

"I grew up in Pe­nal, Point Fortin and Siparia. I was a pub­lic ser­vant and a me­chan­ic. I could still fix a car but I saw no fu­ture in it. One day I en­tered the South vo­cal tal­ent com­pe­ti­tion. I placed high and I called my­self The Mighty Hot Choco­late."Mum wrote my first ca­lyp­so. She is a singer and my dad is a mu­si­cian. I was born with mu­sic," he smiles.

Al­though Stew­art grew up in south Trinidad, he loves his com­mu­ni­ty in Mor­vant."Mor­vant is home. Peo­ple will walk up to me and say 'Blaxx yuh bet­ter mash up de place' and I know if I don't do ex­act­ly that it is trou­ble.

"I have a con­nec­tion with the peo­ple. I love go­ing in to Mor­vant and see­ing small-goal foot­ball or bas­ket­ball go­ing on and just tak­ing off my jer­sey to show off my big bel­ly and join the game."

"I love sports and I love kids. I have five chil­dren and I want one more."Blaxx says his first big so­ca hit was his 2007 song Dut­ty. "That song was writ­ten by Na­dia Bat­son and pro­duced by Jue­lio–the same guy who pro­duced the Fu­ture Rid­dim with the song Leh Go. He al­so pro­duced Su­per Blue's song Fan­tas­tic Fri­day."

This year, Blaxx hopes he can win the Groovy So­ca monarch ti­tle with his in­fec­tious song Leh Go.The song was writ­ten by so­ca artiste Olatun­ji Year­wood and took four hours to record.Stew­art be­lieves this is the first year he feels com­plete­ly con­fi­dent that he can win. Leh Go has been ben­e­fit­ting from heavy ro­ta­tion on ra­dio sta­tions and it is al­so one of the songs that crowds re­spond to the most at so­ca fetes."I nev­er won So­ca Monarch and I want it. I want a ti­tle so it can be part of the lega­cy I leave for my chil­dren."

"So­ca Monarch isn't on­ly about win­ning. It of­fers so much more ad­van­tages. It is be­ing streamed live to com­put­ers around the world. I have got­ten calls from Hol­land and Bel­gium just from per­form­ing on So­ca Monarch night."That be­ing said, I love the com­pe­ti­tion," he said. "Be­ing com­pet­i­tive is nice. I love the adren­a­line and the vibes." He ex­plains that it was dif­fi­cult per­form­ing on So­ca Monarch night.

"Un­like oth­er artistes I don't have my own band. I work for a band so by the time I reach So­ca Monarch I would have al­ready done about three jobs.""Last year the band, un­der­stand­ing what So­ca Monarch means to me, put me up in a ho­tel and gave me the night off."Be­fore it was five hour en­er­gy (an en­er­gy sup­ple­ment) and I still used to be re­al­ly tired."

Blaxx said this af­fect­ed his per­for­mance on com­pe­ti­tion night, re­sult­ing in him not plac­ing high­er in pre­vi­ous years, de­spite the fact that he has had nu­mer­ous hits.He looks at me and says: "If I could be tired every day of the year thanks to so­ca mu­sic I would be grate­ful."You can keep up with Blaxx by fol­low­ing him on Twit­ter @ds­Blaxx or by vis­it­ing his Face­book page Dex­ter Blaxx Stew­art.

To vote for Blaxx in the Groovy So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, text BLAX to 4768.