Malis­sa Lara

A sooth­ing voice, filled with sul­try un­der­tones, cap­ti­vates its lis­ten­ing au­di­ence. The voice be­longs to 16-year-old Me­da El­lis, who has just record­ed and re­leased Tie Your Rib­bons, orig­i­nal­ly sung by Mar­i­lyn Williams. El­lis' ver­sion of Tie Your Rib­bons is so well ren­dered that it in­stant­ly re­lax­es its lis­ten­er. The song was not a dif­fi­cult task for El­lis. "The melody of the song was sim­i­lar to what I was ac­cus­tomed to," she said.

One thing was cer­tain through­out her in­ter­view with Sun­day Vibe: El­lis is a hum­ble teen who puts her ed­u­ca­tion first.

El­lis, though plac­ing sec­ond in the T&T Dig­i­cel Ris­ing Stars com­pe­ti­tion this year, has re­ceived enough at­ten­tion to be asked to per­form at nu­mer­ous events. She has been bal­anc­ing her school work, per­for­mances and singing with the parang group Los Ni­nos del Este, which placed sec­ond at both the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Parang Fes­ti­val and a Lopinot parang com­pe­ti­tion this month.

"Af­ter Ris­ing Stars, peo­ple no­ticed me more, but I try to per­form at func­tions on­ly on the week­end to fo­cus on my school work dur­ing the week." For the young singer, work­ing in stu­dio with pro­duc­er Richard Ahong and man­ag­er Gabriel Daniel has been ex­cit­ing. She plans to be­gin work on a CD next year. "We're just wait­ing on writ­ers and then I can choose which songs are suit­able for me," she said. She al­so has tried her hand at writ­ing her own songs.