Two of the top fe­male acts in So­ca will be hit­ting the stage to show­case their lat­est projects this Sat­ur­day night - al­beit in very dif­fer­ent places and for vast­ly dif­fer­ent shows. Whilst QOB De­stra Gar­cia presents her long-await­ed Gospel al­bum and con­cert en­ti­tled Re­flec­tions at Queens Hall in Port of Spain, Trinidad; the Sokah Found­ing Grand­daugh­ter of Ras Shorty I, Nailah Black­man will head­line the DC Car­ni­val and Cul­tureFest DMV’s "Sat­ur­day Night LIVE!" con­cert se­ries on the same Sat­ur­day night April 12, at Wash­ing­ton D.C.’s his­toric Howard The­atre in the USA.

Fresh from Trinidad Car­ni­val 2025 stages, the Sokah Princess, Nailah Black­man will per­form with the Eclipse In­ter­na­tion­al Band, as she marks her first head­lin­ing con­cert in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. with the sup­port of a live band. The April 12 event at the Howard The­ater is al­so Black­man’s first head­lin­ing con­cert in the U.S. for 2025. Speak­ing with Over­time Me­dia re­cent­ly, she said:

“I’ve been com­ing to Wash­ing­ton D.C. to per­form since the be­gin­ning of my ca­reer, so it’s ex­cit­ing to fi­nal­ly be able to give au­di­ences a taste of my full-band live per­for­mance, which is the full ex­pe­ri­ence that they might see me per­form at my fes­ti­val back home called Sokah Ori­gins.”

The "Sat­ur­day Night LIVE!" se­ries has pre­vi­ous­ly host­ed So­ca con­certs at the Howard The­atre head­lined by Kes and Machel Mon­tano, but is just re­turn­ing to promi­nence af­ter a sev­en-year hia­tus. Or­ga­niz­er, Arthur Grif­fith de­scribed the event as "D.C.’s pre­mier Caribbean live per­for­mance plat­form for So­ca, Reg­gae and Afrobeats" and added that "Nailah is Caribbean Roy­al­ty on the rise" who is trend­ing up­wards along with the po­ten­tial of the se­ries to as­sem­ble and unite the Di­as­po­ra au­di­ence that lives and works in the DMV and sur­round­ing ar­eas.

Nailah re­cent­ly host­ed the sixth edi­tion of her suc­cess­ful "Sokah Ori­gins" Car­ni­val con­cert se­ries and is prepar­ing for busy sec­ond and third quar­ters of 2025 with shows across the Caribbean and North Amer­i­ca, in­clud­ing: her de­but at this year’s "Roots Pic­nic" event in Philadel­phia (May 31 - June 1), where she will be­come the first so­ca artist to per­form on the main stage in the fes­ti­val’s eigh­teen year his­to­ry.

The Howard The­atre, which was added to the Unit­ed States’ Na­tion­al Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places in 1974, has been a pil­lar of the Wash­ing­ton D.C. com­mu­ni­ty since open­ing in 1910. Hav­ing ar­rived in Wash­ing­ton D.C. on Tues­day April 8th well ahead of the con­cert, Black­man will spend the week vis­it­ing Wash­ing­ton, D.C.'s icon­ic land­marks; vis­it­ing the Em­bassy of Trinidad and To­ba­go; in­ter­act­ing with stu­dents at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty and be­ing in­ter­viewed on CBS af­fil­i­ate, WUSA 9 on their af­ter­noon show, "Great Day Wash­ing­ton". Black­man comes to the US capi­tol now hav­ing just an­nounced her forth­com­ing sopho­more al­bum Born A Di­a­mond (B.A.D.), which is sched­uled to be re­leased this sum­mer on Philadel­phia-based Big Mon­ey Records. Guest fea­tures on the project, in­clude: Shenseea, Nicky Jam, Sad­boi, DJ Obi and Roy Woods, who col­lab­o­rat­ed with and is seen and heard on the al­bum’s hot new lead sin­gle, “Feels Like Love”.

De­stra Gar­cia mean­while had reclused her­self from Trinidad Car­ni­val 2025 in or­der to com­plete her long over­due Gospel mu­sic project and will launch the 12-track al­bum of clas­sic cov­er songs with a con­cert per­for­mance at the renowned Queen's Hall Au­di­to­ri­um in St Anns, Port of Spain.

"This was def­i­nite­ly on my buck­et list of things to do and I felt the time was right and once I start­ed work­ing on it, every­thing else just fell in­to place. Long be­fore I was even in­tro­duced to So­ca mu­sic, Gospel was the first genre I ever sang, so it's not some­thing new for me or to me. In fact, I in­clud­ed a Gospel song on each of my first few al­bums, un­til I re­alised that most peo­ple couldn't in­ter­nal­ize it be­cause it was placed along­side all the So­ca hits. So I said I would do a full project one day - in­stead of try­ing to mix the two dif­fer­ent gen­res and worlds and now, that day is here!"

Gar­cia ad­mit­ted that she re­mains un­cer­tain about her next moves af­ter the Re­flec­tions al­bum and con­cert, but will ful­fill her So­ca book­ings and oth­er con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions.

"Ah cyah re­al­ly an­swer all the ques­tions about my fu­ture that I know you and oth­ers are ask­ing cause ah doh re­al­ly know what comes next af­ter Re­flec­tions," she re­vealed, "but ah kin­da like that free­dom and that un­cer­tain­ty for a change. I'm tak­ing it day by day and by the Grace of God as we say, but I am a pro­fes­sion­al, so I will still ful­fill my book­ings and oblig­a­tions. I might just dress a lil dif­fer­ent­ly or per­form a lil dif­fer­ent­ly... or I might not! I doh know, yuh see... All I know is that work­ing on this al­bum has changed me, but how that change will man­i­fest is left to be seen..."

Those at­tend­ing April 12’s "Sat­ur­day Night LIVE!" Event in DC can pur­chase tick­ets on­line at dc­car­ni­val.com or cul­turefest­d­mv.com, whilst tick­ets for De­stra's "Re­flec­tions" con­cert are avail­able at the Queen's Hall Box Of­fice or at queen­shalltt.com