Aba A Luke

For 15 years, he'd been try­ing, forg­ing his way but find­ing it dif­fi­cult to break in­to so­ca. A na­tive of Sea Lots, he strug­gled for recog­ni­tion, first dab­bling in gospel then, fi­nal­ly, set­tling on so­ca. With his new track, Mi Nah Go Play, bub­bling sweet­ly on the air­waves, Swap­pi's smil­ing these days, anx­ious for what the fu­ture holds.

He's made his break­through in 2010 and he's adamant that from this year for­ward, noth­ing will stand in the way of his suc­cess. At 31, Swap­pi, now a res­i­dent of San­ta Cruz, says, "I in­tend to take full ad­van­tage of this sea­son's suc­cess." Adamant that he'll be no one hit won­der, Swap­pi, re­al name Mar­vin Davis, ex­plains that he al­so has a Daryl Brax­ton-pro­duced track on the Pala­jo rhythm, called, Body Shocks. "That track is do­ing well, along­side my ma­jor hit." In the past, be­fore so­ca be­came his claim to fame, Swap­pi says he had a gospel band. "The band was called Rev­e­la­tion and Umi Mar­cano was my drum­mer," the mem­o­ry bring­ing a smile to his face.

Swanky evo­lu­tion

"I'm in the process of shoot­ing a video for Mi Nah Go Play," he says, al­so mak­ing men­tion of the fact that he's booked for UWI Splash, Tem­per­a­ture 3 and per­for­mances at Zen and Eeen De Mas on Car­ni­val Wednes­day. He de­scribes his style as swap­pi–a word con­jured as an up­grade to Ben­jai's swanky. "Swap­pi­ness is my ter­mi­nol­o­gy for above sex­i­ness, the evo­lu­tion of swanky." On stage, Swap­pi says his per­for­mance in­cor­po­rates the 80's slide with James Brown-style funk. He knows he ap­peals eas­i­ly to the ma­ture de­mo­graph­ic but says that he has a lot of young fans, many of whom come from his birth­place, Sea Lots. "They say, 'Yeah Swap­pi, you make the com­mu­ni­ty look good and feel good,' and now, even the lit­tle chil­dren want to sing."

Sea Lots loves Swap­pi

His hu­mil­i­ty is re­fresh­ing and, with a clear and fo­cused in­tent to help those he can in the Sea Lots area, Swap­pi says he's de­ter­mined to suc­ceed. Ex­plain­ing that he's a mem­ber of the T&T De­fense Force mu­sic band, he as­sures that sup­port­ers can look out for a lot of great sur­pris­es on stage, in the days ahead.

On the is­sue of merg­ing cul­tures, Swap­pi ex­plains that he has a crossover style, and says in the years ahead, he will con­tin­ue to build on that style, im­ple­ment­ing oth­er in­ge­nious el­e­ments, to cre­ate sounds that peo­ple have nev­er heard. Swap­pi says he's been in­spired by lyri­cal so­ca artiste, Bun­ji Gar­lin. "I al­ways looked up to and ad­mired Bun­ji Gar­lin as a big broth­er." To the youths, he says, "When you're in line, you may not know how far or how soon, your bless­ing will come. "You just have to wait in line and your bless­ings will come." This sea­son, Swap­pi's bless­ings have sur­faced and with each gig booked, he thanks God and looks for­ward to greater days ahead.