FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

A tal­ent­ed singer and song­writer, her sig­na­ture re­frain of “it’s Nailah­hh” has made Nailah Black­man an un­mis­tak­able house­hold name in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider re­gion.

Com­ing from a ge­net­ic pool of well-loved and tal­ent­ed mu­si­cians, it is im­pos­si­ble for Black­man to re­call a time in her life where mu­sic was not at the cen­tre. She has al­ways been a mu­si­cian.

The grand­daugh­ter of Ras Shorty I, one of the most im­por­tant mu­si­cians in Trin­bag­on­ian his­to­ry, Black­man did not al­ways en­vi­sion pur­su­ing the path of so­ca, but has un­doubt­ed­ly carved and stayed true to her own unique style of so­ca, blaz­ing her own trail.

As a child, Black­man re­mem­bers mov­ing from place to place be­fore set­tling in Rio Claro with her fam­i­ly. Through­out this con­stant mov­ing, mu­sic re­mained a fun­da­men­tal an­chor, as her par­ents and aunts and un­cles were all mu­si­cians. Hav­ing dis­cov­ered her tal­ent for singing at just three years old, she had her first per­for­mance at the age of four. At 11, she joined her aunt’s gospel band where she al­so learned to play the gui­tar and write her own songs.

She de­scribes that as a turn­ing point. Al­though she al­ways loved mu­sic for its ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fits, she was cer­tain at that stage that she want­ed to pur­sue mu­sic pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Up­on com­plet­ing sec­ondary school, Nailah hoped to fur­ther her ed­u­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States, but end­ed up stay­ing in Trinidad and be­gan her BA in Fine Arts at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT).

Cop­ing with the de­mands of school and her com­mit­ment to writ­ing and per­form­ing was dif­fi­cult for her and she even­tu­al­ly struck a com­pro­mise with her moth­er to take a one term sab­bat­i­cal from school in 2017 to fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing her mu­si­cal ca­reer.

Born in­to the roy­al, first fam­i­ly of so­ca, one might ex­pect it was a nat­ur­al course for Nailah to start singing so­ca. How­ev­er, dur­ing her uni­ver­si­ty years, she was fo­cused on her own style of mu­sic, which she de­scribes as “folk, Caribbean pop, al­ter­na­tive mu­sic”. In true Tri­ni style, her de­ci­sion to en­ter the so­ca world came from a host of ar­gu­ments that took place in max­is dur­ing her com­mute from San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain. Al­ways armed with her gui­tar, Black­man would end up in spir­it­ed dis­cus­sions about so­ca with strangers who were com­plete­ly un­aware of her mu­si­cal blood­line.

“I would get so an­gry when peo­ple would say that so­ca is on­ly jump and wine, and I found my­self ex­plain­ing over and over that it’s a rhyth­mic struc­ture, a pulse, a Caribbean ex­pres­sion.”

Af­ter these dis­cus­sions, Black­man would won­der to her­self if she was a “so­ca hyp­ocrite”, as a staunch de­fend­er of the genre, who nei­ther played nor sang so­ca.

The year was 2017, and Black­man was of­fered a record deal by a Hawai­ian la­bel. With a sense of un­cer­tain­ty about whether she was pre­pared to leave, and tired of the count­less maxi so­ca ar­gu­ments, she de­cid­ed to step in­to the so­ca are­na. That year cat­a­pult­ed her ca­reer and served as a piv­otal mo­ment for her as she sang “Work­out” with Kes the Band. This col­lab­o­ra­tion pro­pelled her on­to the so­ca scene, in­stant­ly earn­ing her the en­dur­ing ado­ra­tion of fans.

She went on to re­lease well-loved hits, in­clud­ing “Bad­dish”, “Sokah”, and “Baila Ma­mi”, among oth­ers.

This year, along­side Vin­cent­ian artiste Skin­ny Fab­u­lous, Black­man en­tered the So­ca Hall of Fame, win­ning the Road March, with thou­sands of mas­quer­aders cross­ing the stage belt­ing out the lyrics to the ode to the re­turn of Car­ni­val, “Come Home”.

“My style of so­ca has al­ways been dif­fer­ent and unique,” she says, “so hav­ing a Road March con­tender was a step up. I was able to be au­then­tic to my style of mu­sic and still achieve the things peo­ple didn’t ex­pect of me.”

Be­ing au­then­ti­cal­ly her­self is not some­thing new to Black­man, as through­out her child­hood and young teenage­hood, she has al­ways con­tend­ed with crit­i­cism of be­ing “too dif­fer­ent”, and “too odd.” She cred­its her moth­er, Ab­bi Black­man, a mu­si­cal icon in her own right, with help­ing to in­still self pride in­to her, teach­ing her to “al­ways be me no mat­ter what.”

Black­man ac­knowl­edged that the jour­ney to self love and pride hasn’t al­ways been the eas­i­est, but deal­ing with un­kind peo­ple from a young age has made her faith in her­self now un­shake­able. She even de­scribes the way that she was raised, say­ing that “my moth­er and fa­ther in­grained in me and my sib­lings that we are not Black or mixed by de­f­i­n­i­tion, we are Africans,” and it is this iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that ini­tial­ly root­ed and ground­ed her from ear­ly on, giv­ing her con­fi­dence in her­self and her skin.

“My con­fi­dence comes from know­ing where I’m from, and who I am.”

Black­man is 25 years old with an un­wa­ver­ing self be­lief that of­ten takes many peo­ple years to cul­ti­vate. She has achieved so much al­ready, but is re­lent­less in her pur­suit of more mile­stones.

“I want to keep push­ing the bound­aries of what I can achieve,” she says, and some of those lega­cy plans in­clude win­ning a Gram­my, sell­ing out sta­di­ums world­wide and tak­ing her mu­sic to the fur­thest cor­ners of the globe.

These big dreams are part of what mo­ti­vates her. When she re­cent­ly per­formed at Afrobeats Fes­ti­val in Hous­ton, she de­scribes feel­ing ner­vous as there were no oth­er so­ca or dance­hall artistes in the line­up. Chan­nel­ing those nerves fu­els her dri­ve to per­form her heart out and make both her mu­sic and per­for­mance mem­o­rable to new au­di­ences.

An­oth­er part of her lega­cy en­com­pass­es reach­ing back­ward to younger, tal­ent­ed artistes. Black­man re­mem­bers her own hum­ble be­gin­nings and the fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty that can come with be­ing a mu­si­cian, but she wants to give young artistes op­por­tu­ni­ties, spaces and plat­forms, “to just be artistes.”

Nailah Black­man is a Woman to Watch, not on­ly in the space of so­ca, but as a mul­ti-tal­ent­ed gui­tarist, singer, song­writer and en­tre­pre­neur in the fash­ion in­dus­try. She de­scribes grat­i­tude as a tool to­wards her con­tin­ued achieve­ment, and it is through her ap­pre­ci­a­tion of what she has ac­com­plished that bless­ings flow her way.

With her strong, deep roots in Trinida­di­an mu­sic, Black­man is strid­ing con­fi­dent­ly in­to the fu­ture, ground­ed in the rich­ness of her her­itage, and walk­ing a path il­lu­mi­nat­ed by her in­cred­i­ble tal­ents.

Fay­ola K J Fras­er is a pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are­na. She has a BA in In­ter­na­tion­al (Mid­dle East­ern) Stud­ies and an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions & Diplo­ma­cy from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.