Gillian Cal­iste

So­ca icons Bun­ji Gar­lin (Ian Al­varez) and Fay-Ann Lyons-Al­varez have al­ways done things in their tim­ing and in their own way. Bun­ji had to fight for his brand of so­ca to be ac­cept­ed in main par­ty cir­cuits and by many of the old­er gen­er­a­tions, and to some ex­tent, the strug­gle even con­tin­ues to­day. And he and Lyons-Al­varez op­posed the odds when many said that two such dy­nam­ic en­er­gies were bound to fail as a cou­ple in the so­ca are­na.

Nev­er con­form­ing to trends in mu­sic, or so­ci­etal pres­sure, seiz­ing the Road March ti­tle, called the Vis­it Trinidad 2023 Road March this year, with their mega-hit “Hard Fete” was no dif­fer­ent. The two did so with a par­ty song that did not nec­es­sar­i­ly fit the Road March mould.

The win marks the sec­ond Road March ti­tle for Bun­ji who cap­tured the ac­co­lade in 2019 along­side Machel Mon­tano and Skin­ny Fab­u­lous (Gamal Doyle). He shares the ti­tle with his wife, Lyons-Al­varez, whose name was al­so reg­is­tered on the Road March en­try form and who is cred­it­ed as co-writer and a co-ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er of the song.

Fay-Ann Lyons-Alvarez

A four-time In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch cham­pi­on, Bun­ji told Sun­day Guardian from over­seas via What­sApp call that win­ning the Road March felt a bit odd since Road March has nev­er been his area of fo­cus and that he was still pro­cess­ing every­thing.

“It feels good but slight­ly strange be­cause Road March is not re­al­ly my scene. The whole ap­proach is dif­fer­ent. So­ca Monarch is more my thing,” he said, re­mind­ing of the time he sang that he would nev­er win a Road March in his 2004 com­po­si­tion “War­rior Cry”.

He said when he penned “Hard Fete”, aid­ed by Lyons-Al­varez, he nev­er set out to write a song for the ti­tle of the tune played most of­ten at the judg­ing points along the Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day pa­rade route. Pro­duced by Gre­go­ry "DJ Avalanche" Hodge, Bun­ji and Lyons-Al­varez, the rous­ing “Hard Fete” was a pow­er so­ca “from the peo­ple for the peo­ple.” It was meant to rekin­dle the old vibes and en­er­gy that ruled the fetes in an era be­fore so­cial me­dia and cell phones be­came dis­trac­tions while peo­ple par­tied, Bun­ji said, point­ing to Thurs­day and Fri­day throw­backs he and his wife would post reg­u­lar­ly on their re­spec­tive so­cial me­dia ac­counts of the fren­zied vibes in the crowd when they won var­i­ous ti­tles over the years.

He said he was in­spired by the com­ments of some from younger gen­er­a­tions who would ex­press amaze­ment at the eu­phor­ic at­mos­phere at such events and wish that they could ex­pe­ri­ence the feel­ing.

“And then every now and again you would see com­ments in the pan­dem­ic that peo­ple couldn't wait to get back out there, and Fay al­ways used to say: Ian you need to put the in­jec­tion back in the ground. Her whole fo­cus was get­ting back in­to that ground mode be­cause the en­er­gy comes from the ground.

“The fo­cus for us, too, was to be truth­ful to the art form it­self, to the mu­sic it­self, and not to any par­tic­u­lar area or cer­tain events be­cause what you find hap­pen­ing a lot is that peo­ple are mak­ing mu­sic to fit in­to a space in or­der not to be left out. Our thing was: Aye, this mu­sic is big­ger than all of us, big­ger than all events, pro­mot­ers etc. Let's do it the way it's sup­posed to be done and the re­ward would be in and of it­self,” he said.

In the first re­al re­turn to Car­ni­val this year in the af­ter­math of a pun­ish­ing pan­dem­ic, the song took on a life of its own wher­ev­er it was played.

“So when it start­ed go­ing down this road [be­com­ing a run­away hit], we just poured the en­er­gy be­hind it,” Bun­ji re­called.

They had even reg­is­tered the so­ca hit a bit lat­er than most of the oth­er con­tenders. It would even­tu­al­ly be de­clared as hav­ing been heard 135 times at judg­ing points on the road by TU­CO.

He said what al­so made the ex­pe­ri­ence a lit­tle strange, as well, was that while he and Lyons-Al­varez had tak­en a short lime near a big truck on the out­skirts of the Sa­van­nah and had walked across the grass on Car­ni­val Mon­day evening, they re­al­ly had not got­ten a chance to ap­pre­ci­ate the full vibe on the ground as in pre­vi­ous years since they had been prepar­ing to fly to New York to re­ceive Young Gift­ed and Black ICON awards on Ash Wednes­day night.

At the Black tie event pre­sent­ed dur­ing Black His­to­ry Month which recog­nis­es African-Amer­i­can and Caribbean in­di­vid­u­als who are am­bas­sadors of en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it and who con­tin­ue to pur­sue suc­cess, Bun­ji and Lyons-Alavarez both were award­ed in the field of Caribbean Mu­sic; and Bun­ji was in­duct­ed in­to their Hall of Fame. The awards came with procla­ma­tions from the US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Cer­tifi­cates of Recog­ni­tion by the city of New York.

De­spite be­ing un­able to ful­ly soak up the en­er­gy dur­ing the two days that de­ter­mine the peo­ple's road song for the sea­son, he said he was ap­pre­cia­tive of the sup­port of his wife, his team, and his nu­mer­ous fans who had con­tributed to “Hard Fete's” Road March suc­cess.

One la­dy's com­ment on Twit­ter some weeks ago had re­al­ly stuck with him, he said. “She said: Sir, we are go­ing to get you over that fin­ish line. That text stuck with me. It was like the peo­ple pick you up and go with you.”

Emerg­ing over the years as the First Cou­ple of So­ca, the pow­er duo share the spot­light com­ple­ment­ing and en­hanc­ing each oth­er on and off the stage. Each is seen al­low­ing the oth­er to do his or her thing and com­mend­ing each oth­er dur­ing their ex­plo­sive per­for­mances and they build on each oth­er's strengths while bal­anc­ing out each oth­er's weak­ness­es.

The two have de­vel­oped a fierce fan base which they con­tin­ue to cul­ti­vate on so­cial me­dia. There, they con­sis­tent­ly up­lift each oth­er, with Lyons-Al­varez los­ing no time in en­cour­ag­ing her hus­band on so­cial me­dia re­cent­ly in the lead-up to the Road March. Bun­ji en­joyed a piv­otal mo­ment in his ca­reer in 2013 with the in­ter­na­tion­al break­through of his hit “Dif­fer­en­tol­ogy” for which he re­ceived the Soul Train Award for Best In­ter­na­tion­al Per­for­mance. The pow­er­house pair al­so bal­ance hec­tic trav­el­ling sched­ules with the man­age­ment of their Viking Band and oth­er busi­ness­es, and nur­tur­ing their 13-year-old daugh­ter, Syri.

Bunji Garlin

The road to suc­cess has had its bumps, how­ev­er. Bun­ji faced heavy crit­i­cism for many years for chang­ing the course of so­ca, in­fus­ing it with reg­gae, dance­hall, rap and hip-hop fea­tures af­ter the styles of ear­ly rag­ga so­ca pro­po­nents Gen­er­al Grant and KMC (Ken Mar­lon Charles). In­flu­enced by such styles which he grew up hear­ing, and spit­ting from age 16 in the school­yard of his al­ma mater Ari­ma Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive, Bun­ji sharp­ened his chant­i­ng and freestyling chops against his peers be­fore small crowds of main­ly youths on the streets of Ari­ma.

Erupt­ing on­to the so­ca scene in 1999, he lit up the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch stage with flu­o­res­cent green hair, out­fit and shoes, pelt­ing out his first hit “Send Dem Rid­dim Crazy” on a rhythm by then-dance­hall and hip-hop pro­duc­er Dar­ryl Brax­ton. Over the years, Gar­lin put his stamp on a new brand of so­ca, evolv­ing from De Girls Dem Dar­lin', dread­locked and deep-voiced in­to the Fire­man blaz­ing the place with siz­zling, tongue-twist­ing lyrics to the Black Spaniard and then to the cur­rent Viking of So­ca, con­tin­u­ing to ex­per­i­ment with lash­ing lyrics and in­no­v­a­tive melodies.

In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch his fa­mous bat­tle­ground, along his pro­fes­sion­al jour­ney, his first win came as a tie with Iw­er George in 2002 when he sang “We From De Ghet­to”. He would run away with the ti­tle back-to-back in 2004 and 2005 with “War­rior Cry” and “Blaze De Fire” re­spec­tive­ly, and leave the com­peti­tors to stum­ble in his flames again in 2008 with a re-make of Mae­stro's “Fiery”.

By then, the lyri­cal king of so­ca and Lyons-Al­varez had emerged as a cou­ple in the in­dus­try, hav­ing ap­peared on stage to­geth­er and hav­ing tied the knot in 2006. In 2009, Bun­ji held the oth­er con­tenders at bay, tak­ing sec­ond place with “Clear De Road” while clear­ing the way for his wife to seize the ti­tle with a scin­til­lat­ing per­for­mance of “Meet Su­per Blue” while heav­i­ly preg­nant. Her com­pelling voice and skil­ful com­mand of au­di­ences al­so helped bring Lyons-Al­varez the Groovy So­ca Monarch ti­tle that night with “Heavy T Bumpa”, prov­ing her met­tle to her de­trac­tors who said she could not com­pete while ex­pect­ing a ba­by.

A Road March win­ner in 2003, 2008 and 2009, Lyons-Al­varez had her be­gin­nings in school per­for­mances and made her de­but in so­ca at the age of 21. With her fa­ther so­ca leg­end Su­perblue (Austin Lyons), the ViQueen is a dy­namo on and off the stage.

Apart from her ex­cep­tion­al en­ter­tain­ment ca­reer and bring­ing leg­endary mo­ments to In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch like Bun­ji, the so­ca su­per­star con­tin­ues to hold down moth­er­hood, ne­go­ti­at­ing with record la­bels and oth­er gi­ants in the in­dus­try, be­ing a wife, lead­ing her ven­ture, the Car­ni­val pump up to the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Hill, and even or­gan­ised and pro­duced an In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch show in 2019 to re­sound­ing re­views.

The proud moth­er shared that their daugh­ter, who was de­liv­ered while her moth­er was still at the height of her So­ca Monarch tri­umph, was a hap­py teen, in­ter­est­ed in art, an­i­ma­tion, mu­si­cals, and had a unique un­der­stand­ing of voice-overs and voice-act­ing. Lyons-Al­varez said though her daugh­ter does her back-and-forth lyri­cal bouts with her fa­ther, she was like “an old soul” when it comes to mu­sic, with a pas­sion for lis­ten­ing to oldies from such greats as Ca­lyp­so Rose and '80s dance mu­sic. Syri sang with her moth­er at her St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain Car­ni­val jump-up re­cent­ly.

Al­so in the tal­ent­ed fam­i­ly are Lyons-Al­varez's sis­ter, 2020 Ca­lyp­so Monarch and so­ca en­ter­tain­er Ter­ri Lyons and so­ca star Patrice Roberts who is Bun­ji's sec­ond cousin.

Bun­ji told Sun­day Guardian that ma­tu­ri­ty and ac­tu­al­ly lik­ing each oth­er con­tributed to their con­tin­ued pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al part­ner­ship. Lyons-Al­varez said that es­pe­cial­ly be­ing a woman and hav­ing to emerge from the shad­ows of her fa­ther's fame was dif­fi­cult but find­ing a hap­py union with her life and busi­ness part­ner Bun­ji and be­ing able to leave a strong cul­tur­al lega­cy for her daugh­ter had been re­ward­ing.

Bunji Garlin and his wife Faye-Ann Lyons perform during the BSquare concert series at Woodford Square, Port-of-Spain earlier this month.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Q&A with Bun­ji and Fay-Ann

Back in the day and for a long time you had to fight for your mu­sic to be ac­cept­ed in main­stream fetes etc, would you con­sid­er win­ning with “Hard Fete” a sort of vin­di­ca­tion?

Bun­ji Gar­lin: I don't want to use the word 'vin­di­ca­tion' per se be­cause as far as I'm con­cerned the fight is al­ways there. As long as we ex­ist, there will al­ways be a per­cep­tion of what con­tem­po­rary so­ca should or could sound like. Any­thing that is dif­fer­ent is go­ing to face ques­tions; in my case, it would be more ob­vi­ous be­cause I might come across with a lit­tle more grit and that may not go over well with every­one.

So how would you class your brand of mu­sic nowa­days, as a sort of neo-rag­ga so­ca?

Bun­ji Gar­lin: Not “Hard Fete”, maybe oth­er songs like “Up on The Cool­er”, and oth­er Viking tracks. Not “Hard Fete”. It fits right in with all the oth­er pow­er so­cas of the past that didn't have all that melody and so on, was just raw pow­er.

You've been able to bal­ance your ca­reer with be­ing a mum, and wife, deal­ing with record pro­duc­ers, and the fit­ness ven­ture. How are you able to do all of this?

Lyons-Al­varez: First­ly, you have to like what you're do­ing be­cause when it gets tough, you're not go­ing to go back and do it again. The stress that comes with it is go­ing to throw you off and you're go­ing to quit in the mid­dle of the project or the mis­sion. So, I like it, I ac­tu­al­ly like what I do.

The oth­er thing for me is pri­ori­tis­ing. A lot of times things get criss­crossed be­cause you don't pri­ori­tise and struc­ture what you have to do. I know that peo­ple would have seen that for the Car­ni­val, we went from fetes to our daugh­ter's school to sup­port her for the Car­ni­val jump-up they had and even the Sports Day, so for us, it's pri­ori­tis­ing and find­ing a bal­ance.

We saw your abs even back when you first came out, did you al­ways have this knack for fit­ness?

Lyons-Al­varez: Well, I grew up in the bush. (Laugh­ter) Coun­try liv­ing is a dif­fer­ent type of liv­ing. Back in the day, you had to walk a lot. You had to be fit be­cause I had to walk to and from school. I went to Fyz­abad Com­pos­ite so some­times I would walk from Fyz­abad to Siparia Road (a 40-minute walk). So you ei­ther made it some­thing that stressed you out or some­thing you did in the fastest time. I grew up bathing in the riv­er, go­ing in the bush for fruits and hunt­ing, so it was nat­ur­al to be fit. We didn't have cars–I grew up in a small vil­lage called Thick Vil­lage–, we didn't have wash­ing ma­chines, dish­wash­ers and then I made it a thing to do ac­tiv­i­ties in school. So, it went from some­thing you did be­cause of ne­ces­si­ty to some­thing you in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to your lifestyle.

Bun­ji, jour­ney­ing back a bit, would you say an­oth­er cru­cial point in your ca­reer and life was when you and Fay-Ann were emerg­ing as a so­ca cou­ple?

Bun­ji Gar­lin: Yeah! We had both es­tab­lished our in­di­vid­ual ca­reers and we re­al­ly didn't know what the jour­ney would be like be­ing to­geth­er. We start­ed to do col­labs, and ex­change ideas, so nat­u­ral­ly Fay would rub off on me with ideas. I would rub off on Fay with ideas. Things we would not have ex­pe­ri­enced in the world of mu­sic, we start­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence. We sort of flowed over in­to each oth­er's cup mu­si­cal­ly. So that was a piv­otal mo­ment be­cause we had new en­er­gy and op­por­tu­ni­ties to vis­it new spaces and see new re­spons­es.

All sorts of feel­ings and views from dif­fer­ent peo­ple hap­pened in­side of this but we did what we had to do. In our so­ci­ety, you know you have some fa­thers en­cour­ag­ing the males to go out and live wild and some moth­ers that en­cour­age their sons and daugh­ters to go out and live. We had sur­passed, in terms of ma­tu­ri­ty, that kind of ex­pec­ta­tion. Peo­ple thought we were still in that mind­set and they couldn't un­der­stand that we had al­ready nav­i­gat­ed that. The com­ments didn't faze us.

It all worked be­cause we didn't get to­geth­er for a show. We fell for each oth­er be­cause we gen­uine­ly like each oth­er. We feel some­thing for each oth­er and they re­alised these are two peo­ple that love each oth­er and want to do things their way.

And Fay Ann, Bun­ji said part of it is that you like each oth­er and had ma­tu­ri­ty, what do you feel keeps the part­ner­ship go­ing?

Lyons-Al­varez: He's right, it's been near­ly 20 years since we start­ed dat­ing and for us, if it wasn't re­al, if it's fake, this is the longest-run­ning fake re­la­tion­ship I've seen. (Laugh­ter) you can see it's not, we have a whole kid, start­ed a whole fam­i­ly, a whole busi­ness life and some­times peo­ple don't un­der­stand, you pick and you don't pick cor­rect­ly and some­times what you pick works. You can't have peo­ple sub­scribe to a par­tic­u­lar for­mu­la be­cause what might work for us, may not work for you. For us, it was al­ways a re­al re­la­tion­ship with re­al in­ten­tions and pur­pose. Once you start the right way, the right things will al­ways ma­te­ri­alise in the end…We wish oth­er peo­ple would ex­pe­ri­ence what we ex­pe­ri­ence in our fam­i­ly life. It would change a lot of per­spec­tives.

You built on your dad, Su­perblue's lega­cy, but of course, you forged your own path. Tell me about that.

Lyons-Al­varez: He def­i­nite­ly opened doors for me not just as an artiste but as a daugh­ter be­cause I was 100 per cent recog­nised as Su­perblue's daugh­ter when I came out. And as grate­ful as I am, for me, that's not a place I want­ed to stay–not Su­perblue's daugh­ter or Bun­ji's wife. Any­body who can't see past those two men be­cause of their great­ness is not look­ing hard enough at me. I de­cid­ed I want­ed to cre­ate my own lega­cy. I can't hand my daugh­ter's grand­fa­ther's lega­cy to her. I can't even pass Bun­ji's lega­cy to my daugh­ter. I have to pass mine on to her and Bun­ji has to do the same.

As much as I ap­pre­ci­ate and love the doors my fa­ther has opened, I al­so have to say that peo­ple do not un­der­stand how dif­fi­cult it is to be a fe­male and have such a great man be your fa­ther. You have to work to get out from un­der the um­brel­la and there are a lot of kids that get swal­lowed by their par­ent's great­ness. Some­times so­ci­ety doesn't see you as an in­di­vid­ual, they al­ways com­pare. But luck­i­ly for me, when they com­pare, I have the same kinds of ac­co­lades–Road March, So­ca Monarch–same as my hus­band, as well.