Aba A Luke

Patrice Roberts is the boss, Farmer Nap­py, the vet­er­an, Zan, the cool op­er­a­tor and Umi Mar­cano is def­i­nite­ly the dancer-boy. The four­some are the HD Fam­i­ly–not HD mind you, as that ti­tle's re­served for Machel Mon­tano, the man who's ruled the so­ca game for more than ten years. Go­ing in­to 2010, Mon­tano has opt­ed to fo­cus on oth­er things, leav­ing his team to trav­el their own jour­ney, even amid whis­pers of doubt and un­cer­tain­ty. "This is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to show­case our tal­ent and we're tak­ing every minute of it," says Roberts. They're a close-knit bunch. At Xtat­ic Ltd in Port-of-Spain, they met with the Guardian and with ease, they com­plet­ed each oth­er's sen­tences, joked about shared mo­ments at pho­to shoots and re­hearsals and shed light on what they'll be do­ing in 2010. "This is not the first time Machel has left the band. In 2002, when he got the record­ing con­tract with De­li­cious Vinyl Records, he had to leave Xtat­ic, and at that time, it was a risk," says Farmer.

They don't see what many in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try have been chat­ter­ing about–the risk of the band los­ing its fol­low­ing be­cause Mon­tano won't be the head­line act for Car­ni­val next year. In fact, Patrice says she thinks it's a strat­e­gy. "You know Machel al­ways tries to re-in­vent him­self." The new boss, as the guys call her, ex­plains that Machel will be back and forth and he will be around, just not cen­tre-stage. They agree that this new out­fit will be a lit­tle dif­fer­ent for the peo­ple to ab­sorb, but they are con­fi­dent that they will serve their pur­pose well. Al­ready, 24-year-old, Patrice Roberts has hits for 2010 and on her heels are her co­horts, Umi, Zan and Farmer. Mar­cano's track, In Front Of Meh, has set a stan­dard go­ing in­to 2010 that many may find dif­fi­cult to out­do, while Farmer has a col­lab­o­ra­tive track with Ker­win DuBois that is set to come to the fore soon. The mem­bers of the HD Fam­i­ly know that Machel's pres­ence on any stage cre­ates a stir, so with that in mind, Patrice says, "we'll be re-in­vent­ing our­selves in­di­vid­u­al­ly, we'll be cre­at­ing great hits."

She says Zan will be chang­ing course a lit­tle, test­ing the wa­ters in the pow­er so­ca cat­e­go­ry, while Umi too, will be in­creas­ing his mo­men­tum. The band is not a so­ca band. "We all have in­di­vid­ual strengths. We've done tech­no and oth­er types of mu­sic. Our am­bi­tion as a band isn't to do so­ca on­ly," says Zan. Farmer Nap­py, the vet­er­an, has been in the lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try for many years. At the age of 13, he sang on­stage with David Rud­der and Char­lie's Roots and he has been along­side Machel from the days of Xtat­ic to now. His role in the band is that of guid­ing, as he notes: "peo­ple have been ask­ing how it is I am not the leader, since I have been with the band for so long. I just want to say, I am a team play­er and I recog­nise that Patrice has more hits than me, but it doesn't mean that she doesn't come to me to ask my opin­ion. At the end of the day, we are one fam­i­ly."

They say this move by Machel was pre­med­i­tat­ed. They say he'd spo­ken of it on many oc­ca­sions. Now, giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty, they are de­ter­mined to suc­ceed and, even with their leader in the back­seat of the bus, they guar­an­tee that their jour­ney in 2010 will be no less sen­sa­tion­al.