Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Twen­ty years in the so­ca in­dus­try is no small feat. It takes re­silience, adapt­abil­i­ty, and a love for the craft that goes be­yond the fleet­ing mo­ments of Car­ni­val sea­son. For Shiv­onne “Lil Bitts” Churche-Isaacs, cel­e­brat­ing this mile­stone isn’t just about look­ing back; it’s about giv­ing back.

To mark the oc­ca­sion, she host­ed Am­pli­fy, a spe­cial event at Wood­ford Café on No­vem­ber 2, 2024, fea­tur­ing an all-star cast, in­clud­ing Mi­cal Te­ja, La­dy La­va, and Yung Bred­da. But the night wasn’t just about es­tab­lished names. Lil Bitts in­clud­ed three young, up-and-com­ing artistes in the line-up.

She re­called when she was once a young artiste wait­ing for a chance.

Lil Bitts re­called how, 20 years ago, Bun­ji Gar­lin col­lab­o­rat­ed on her song.

“He could have told me no, but when I ap­proached him, he loved it, and, you know, he want­ed to be a part of it. I wasn’t known, and he took that chance with me. So now I’m in a po­si­tion where I am do­ing my own ... but it was re­al­ly im­por­tant to me to have the un­known artistes that are try­ing to get their names out there,” she ex­plained.

On her role in help­ing to el­e­vate and sup­port emerg­ing tal­ent, Lil Bitts named three artistes she brought on her show to give them ex­po­sure.

“So I had Su­cre, who won the Ul­ti­mate So­ca; he was on the cast. I al­so had Tri­ni Ba­by, and she has writ­ten for count­less artistes, and pro­duced for count­less artists. I al­so had Tish Of­fi­cial, who has been un­der IKO for quite some time, and she’s one of the front-line singers for Evo­lu­tion, the band,” she said.

Lil Bitts’ love for mu­sic start­ed long be­fore the bright lights and big stages. She was raised in a home where her moth­er, Emeri­ta Sam­bra­no-Churche, be­lieved in her dreams and ac­tive­ly nur­tured them.

Un­like many young artistes who strug­gle to con­vince their par­ents to in­vest in their as­pi­ra­tions, Lil Bitts had a moth­er who saw her po­ten­tial ear­ly on. She was en­rolled in ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions, where she de­vel­oped the skills that would lat­er shape her so­ca ca­reer.

“If it wasn’t for ca­lyp­so, there wouldn’t be a Lil Bitts in so­ca,” she says.

Com­pet­ing in those ear­ly years built the foun­da­tion for her con­fi­dence, stage pres­ence, and deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion for Caribbean mu­sic, which led her to be­come a cham­pi­on in her own right.

This year, Lil Bitts added an­oth­er re­mark­able achieve­ment to her name, win­ning the Queen of Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion along­side Rish­ma Ram­lal.

It wasn’t a ti­tle she had been chas­ing, but when the op­por­tu­ni­ty came, she em­braced it.

Hav­ing grown up watch­ing chut­ney greats like Dru­patee and Rik­ki Jai, she al­ways want­ed to ex­plore the genre. When she was ap­proached to col­lab­o­rate with Rish­ma, she wasn’t sure what to ex­pect.

“I didn’t know much about Rish­ma, but I liked a lot of her vibe. I just went and checked her out on her so­cial me­dia and all of that, and I said, you know what, this girl is a vibe, and I was like, let’s do this. Yeah. And I don’t know; the process just seemed very easy,” she said.

When the song and video dropped, the re­sponse was over­whelm­ing. Even mak­ing it to the fi­nals was un­ex­pect­ed for Lil Bitts, who doesn’t see her­self as a com­pet­i­tive per­son. But step­ping on­to that stage and claim­ing a na­tion­al ti­tle proved to be a defin­ing mo­ment.

“I hon­est­ly am not a com­pet­i­tive per­son. I don’t like com­pe­ti­tion, and my rea­son for not lik­ing com­pe­ti­tion is that there’s a lev­el of anx­i­ety that you get with com­pe­ti­tion. It’s dif­fer­ent if you’re just go­ing and do­ing a per­for­mance, a reg­u­lar per­for­mance; you’re more re­laxed, you’re hyped, you’re ex­cit­ed, and all of that. With com­pe­ti­tion, I feel as if it cre­ates that lev­el of anx­i­ety that I don’t want to be feel­ing. I just want to be able to go out and per­form and en­joy my­self. But I did the chut­ney so­ca, and now I have a na­tion­al ti­tle,” she said.

Longevi­ty in the so­ca in­dus­try comes with its chal­lenges. Mu­sic evolves, trends shift, and au­di­ences change. For Lil Bitts, stay­ing rel­e­vant over the past two decades hasn’t al­ways been easy.

“One of the chal­lenges, I would say, for all artistes is rel­e­vance. You have to re­mem­ber how mu­sic sound­ed 20 years ago. How so­ca sound­ed 20 years ago and how so­ca sounds now, it is not the same way. And it is very dif­fi­cult to stay rel­e­vant in this be­cause you could end up out­dat­ed, and it hap­pens with artistes, and they kind of spi­ral and don’t un­der­stand why peo­ple are not grav­i­tat­ing to the mu­sic or lik­ing the mu­sic,” she ex­plained.

Al­though she men­tioned rel­e­vance as be­ing her biggest chal­lenge, she over­comes it every day by hav­ing that one pos­i­tive thing to keep her mo­ti­vat­ed.

“Some­times it’s just the lit­tle things. You ever re­alise some­times you’re hav­ing a bad day or things are not go­ing your way, and just that one thing would make you feel so much bet­ter and keep you mo­ti­vat­ed to keep go­ing?” she ex­plained.

One mo­ment that changed every­thing for her was her col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bun­ji Gar­lin on the song called Car­ni­val in Meh Coun­try. Be­fore that, she was per­form­ing on small stages, mak­ing a name for her­self lit­tle by lit­tle. But once that song dropped, every­thing shift­ed.

“That song changed my life, and I ex­pe­ri­enced things that I nev­er thought I would,” she said.

Now, she’s look­ing for­ward to fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tions and has her eyes set on work­ing with Mi­cal Te­ja.

While mu­sic is her first love, Lil Bitts has found an­oth­er cre­ative pas­sion, which is act­ing. She is ac­tive­ly in­volved with the Na­tion­al The­atre Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go, where she per­forms in lo­cal pro­duc­tions. She strong­ly en­cour­ages fel­low so­ca artistes to ex­plore act­ing, be­liev­ing it en­hances stage pres­ence and sto­ry­telling.

When she’s not per­form­ing, she en­joys the sim­ple things, binge-watch­ing TV shows, es­pe­cial­ly re­al­i­ty se­ries like Love Is Blind, and in­dulging in her love for cook­ing shows.

Her song Bump is a per­fect ex­am­ple of how un­pre­dictable the in­dus­try can be. While many so­ca hits peak dur­ing car­ni­val, Bump took off af­ter­wards, prov­ing that great mu­sic finds its au­di­ence in its own time.

Af­ter 20 years in the in­dus­try, Lil Bitts has learnt a lot. If there’s one piece of ad­vice she would give to young artistes, it’s this: “Put God first and nev­er un­der­es­ti­mate what you could do as an artiste, or what you have, or your tal­ent. Do not sec­ond guess your­self; what you have is so spe­cial and so unique be­cause we are not like any­body. Every in­di­vid­ual is their own in­di­vid­ual,” she ad­vised.

For Lil Bitts, so­ca isn’t just mu­sic; it’s cul­ture, it’s his­to­ry, it’s lega­cy. And as she cel­e­brates this mile­stone, she’s not just re­flect­ing on where she’s been but al­so look­ing ahead to what’s next. With pas­sion, per­se­ver­ance, and pur­pose guid­ing her, there’s no doubt that her jour­ney is far from over.