Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Stand­ing at five feet six inch­es, at first glance she ap­pears as a strik­ing, beau­ti­ful, tall di­va, al­most like a con­tes­tant in Tyra Bank's Amer­i­ca's Next Top Mod­el. But when she touched my bulging tum­my and with sin­cer­i­ty in her voice com­pli­ment­ed me on how cute I looked, while not too long af­ter, of­fer­ing her as­sis­tance to the tea la­dy who was wheel­ing out a ta­ble filled with chi­na ware, I was like "damn, this is a nice girl." Nev­er mind her no­tice­ably hot pair of red stilet­tos or her amaz­ing raunchy rock 'n' roll, I-just-smoked-a-cig­ar type voice. I just want­ed to get to know the girl be­hind the bud­ding artiste, An­nya Li.

With that cu­rios­i­ty in mind and no shame to ask my ques­tion, I blunt­ly asked the beau­ty if she was usu­al­ly al­ways this hum­ble and nice. This is what Miss Li had to say: "I think say­ing I'm hum­ble does not re­al­ly help–but I grew up with my mom con­stant­ly in­still­ing in me–cour­tesy and ser­vice comes first. Be­sides that, I re­al­ly don't see the need to be mean to peo­ple," she said, shrug­ging her shoul­ders. This 26-year-old Mar­aval girl, who launched her al­bum at the Zen night club on Keate Street, mid-De­cem­ber, could pos­si­bly be­come the first fe­male voice to put Trinidad on the world map mu­si­cal­ly, sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Dis­cov­er­ing her love

Start­ing out her singing ca­reer at the ten­der age of five, Li said it was then she re­alised that for the rest of her life singing would be her thing. "Go­ing through the grow­ing pains of my child­hood, es­pe­cial­ly when my par­ents got a di­vorce, I re­alised my love for singing was the one thing in my life that re­mained con­stant. "When I found no one could un­der­stand me I would write what I felt and so I felt if I sang my songs maybe I could help some­one who might have been go­ing through or gone through sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences," she re­lat­ed.

With an al­bum cov­er that looks quite in­ter­na­tion­al and tracks that cel­e­brates a genre-bend­ing sound, you can sat­is­fy your taste for "good mu­sic." Ac­cord­ing to Li, she didn't want to make an al­bum bear­ing a "one-type tune" and want­ed to unite di­verse cul­tures through her mu­sic. "I have al­ways said that there are so many things di­vid­ing us as a peo­ple and I thought mu­sic shouldn't be one of them. I have heard peo­ple re­fer to R&B as black mu­sic and con­tem­po­rary mu­sic as white mu­sic, so I pur­pose­ly use dif­fer­ent gen­res in my mu­sic to blur the lines be­tween that di­vide. "I want my mu­sic to bring peo­ple to­geth­er from dif­fer­ent na­tions, back­grounds, skin colours, etc."

The 'pay­ola' scheme

By now we all should know and un­der­stand the pol­i­tics of mu­sic and it is no se­cret that right here in Trinidad we have heard artistes on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions lament about the whole "pay­ola" scheme (pay­ing to play your mu­sic on ra­dio) in or­der to ac­tu­al­ly get their songs played. How­ev­er, Li said she was not the least both­ered about that since she de­scribes her man­age­ment and pro­duc­tion team as dy­nam­ic and hard­work­ing.

What more for An­nya?

With an op­ti­mistic out­look on life, Li said she would like to con­tin­ue tour­ing and to take her mu­sic around the world. She al­so wants to per­fect her live craft so that peo­ple could re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate her singing. She hopes to ex­pand on her writ­ing skills and says she wel­comes the idea of peo­ple want­i­ng to write for her in the fu­ture.

Words of ad­vice

"Please en­cour­age our youth to dream big and to put in the hard work that goes with it–and it's okay to have an un­con­ven­tion­al ca­reer–not every­one can be a lawyer," she said with a chuck­le.

To get more in­for­ma­tion on Li's al­bum, vis­it www.an­nyali.com or vis­it her artist pro­file at www.my­space.com/an­nyali, and al­so the An­nya Li Fan Page on Face­book.