Gillian Cal­iste

It's Car­ni­val! It's al­so 20 years since De­stra Gar­cia aka Queen of Bac­cha­nal and Lucy dropped her first al­bum with the icon­ic sin­gle of the same name, and the en­ter­tain­ment di­va is serv­ing up rous­ing rhythms, glam looks, and fire for 2023.

Gar­cia has been charg­ing up the at­mos­phere at sev­er­al cor­po­rate Christ­mas events ahead of C2K23 teas­ing her die-hard fans and the pub­lic in gen­er­al with what they can ex­pect from her as “the Moth­er of All Car­ni­vals” takes form.

Un­chained is her of­fer­ing as she marks the 20-year mile­stone of her first al­bum Red, White, Black which fea­tured her time­less Car­ni­val an­them It's Car­ni­val with so­ca king Machel. Her 16th al­bum, Un­chained will be launched of­fi­cial­ly at a date to be an­nounced. In the mean­time, Gar­cia told Sun­day Guardian: “I just want to share the sen­ti­ment of every en­ter­tain­er across the board that this is the “the Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals” and you can­not have “the Moth­er of All Car­ni­vals” if the Queen of Bac­cha­nal is not there in full ef­fect, so I will be there in full ef­fect.

“We have two years to make up for and I'm not hold­ing back.”

Com­bin­ing two decades of of­fer­ings as a fore­most fe­male in so­ca with hot new sin­gles re­flect­ing the artiste's range of moods, Un­chained cel­e­brates Gar­cia's per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al evo­lu­tion and fea­tures 13 to 16 tracks.

Her groovy nos­tal­gia-in­duc­ing Nev­er Gonna Let You Go writ­ten by Jaime Pin­der out of The Ba­hamas and pro­duced by Guade­lou­pean Fab­rice Hugues Raquil, her vibesy Crazy Feters on the Boun­cy Ting rid­dum, her Rem­e­dy on the Cool Breeze rid­dum de­clar­ing Car­ni­val the “Tylenol” to her “fever” which oth­ers could use for their aches, and her in­fec­tious groovy rag­ga dit­ty Easy by Ja­son “Shaft” Bish­op and Lu­natix Pro­duc­tions about too much wa­ter “bust­ing” pipe have been en­joy­ing favourable ro­ta­tion on the air­waves and re­cep­tion at her on­stage ap­pear­ances.

Gar­cia dropped the pi­cante sin­gle Fuego (Fire) on Box­ing Day, en­cour­ag­ing her au­di­ence to “dale para aba­jo (go down) and go down low...tra­ba­ja­lo (wuk it).” Penned and pro­duced since 2018, Fuego is her first re­al at­tempt at a Latin pow­er so­ca. She wait­ed un­til she felt the coun­try would be more re­cep­tive to a bilin­gual so­ca, she said.

“In 2021, af­ter the lock­down, it start­ed to speak to me. It start­ed to say it's time.

“This is a whole new recipe that I hope peo­ple love be­cause we need it too. We have a whole lot of Span­ish-speak­ing peo­ple on the is­land who don't know about our Car­ni­val per se.

Destra Garcia will launch her C2K23 album Unchained soon.

“In the last two years where our Span­ish pop­u­la­tion has be­come stronger, we did not have Car­ni­val. So this song Fuego is re­al­ly like an in­tro­duc­tion for them to me let­ting them know who I am. I am just like you, my last name is Gar­cia. I'm telling you this is how you en­joy so­ca mu­sic,” she said.

In her fam­i­ly, there is Span­ish her­itage on both sides–a mix­ture of French and Span­ish from her moth­er, and African and Venezue­lan from her fa­ther's fam­i­ly. Fuego sim­ply ex­press­es an­oth­er side of her, she ex­plained.

“Peo­ple don't re­alise that I al­so speak Span­ish. So it's just me ex­plor­ing a part of my­self a lit­tle deep­er. As an artiste you have to do that, you have to give as much of your­self as you're com­fort­able with at the time and now I feel that I can ex­plore that side of my­self, not that it's been hid­den,” the pro­lif­ic artiste said.

For the sin­gle, she col­lab­o­rat­ed with British Vir­gin Is­lands song­writer Ka­mau Georges (Ooh La La Lay, Wine of the Cen­tu­ry), pro­duc­er DrewThoven out of Guyana (Clos­er and Fam­i­ly), and Lu­natix Pro­duc­tions.

Gar­cia's last al­bum Queen­dom dropped just be­fore the pan­dem­ic in 2020 and she re­leased a few sin­gles in the in­ter­im.

The Bon­nie and Clyde singer erupt­ed on­to the so­ca scene some 23 years ago af­ter be­ing draft­ed as a lead vo­cal­ist by Roy Cape All Stars. Hav­ing nev­er set foot in a fete at the time, ask­ing her fa­ther's per­mis­sion to per­form every­where be­came part of her rou­tine, with Cana­da be­ing her first in­ter­na­tion­al venue.

Be­fore that, she had par­tic­i­pat­ed in pri­ma­ry school ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions and at the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch.

Demon­strat­ing her en­vi­able abil­i­ty to move be­tween gen­res, the so­ca di­va can de­liv­er an elec­tri­fy­ing so­ca or sul­try groovy, or belt a soul­ful trend­ing R&B or pop oldie in the same per­for­mance. Apart from her trea­sured col­lec­tion of clas­sics and mu­si­cal ver­sa­til­i­ty, Gar­cia's down-to-earth na­ture, re­lata­bil­i­ty, and sauci­ness while com­mand­ing her fans dur­ing per­for­mances have won her world­wide ap­peal and longevi­ty in the in­dus­try. She is of­ten seen main­tain­ing strong ties with her close to 600,000 on­line fol­low­ers.

In 2017, af­ter suf­fer­ing a bro­ken an­kle when she fell dur­ing an on-stage per­for­mance in Bermu­da, it was her fans who gave her the courage to stand again. Urged by one that “you don't sing with your legs, you sing with your voice,” she showed her true grit, push­ing her­self to ap­pear on crutch­es at a Wash­ing­ton show three weeks lat­er.

Gar­cia said an in­de­scrib­able pas­sion con­sumes her when she gets on a stage.

“I'm al­ways in my head be­fore I get on­stage. But then, they hand me the mi­cro­phone and I see the au­di­ence. I trans­form in­to some­body else and I can't ex­plain that. The in­hi­bi­tions dis­ap­pear,” she said.

“I think it's the pas­sion that takes over…the love for what you do. It's al­most like go­ing home for Christ­mas and see­ing your fam­i­ly, that's how I feel when I get on a stage. I feel like I'm home.”

The so­ca star found an­oth­er means to con­nect with the pub­lic in the De­stra Gar­cia Talk Show launched dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. She thor­ough­ly en­joyed be­ing on the op­po­site side of the cam­era in­ter­view­ing oth­ers.

“That was so much fun. I think that gave me some san­i­ty, as well, where I could per­form in some way and still touch the peo­ple. The peo­ple are a big part of who I am,” she said, adding that she hoped to rekin­dle the talk show in the fu­ture.

Lit­tle sur­prise then that in a re­cent IG post, one of her fans dubbed her “Queen of the Peo­ple's Hearts”.

The dy­nam­ic en­ter­tain­er said she was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to see that the pub­lic had wait­ed anx­ious­ly for her to tour again when the pan­dem­ic start­ed eas­ing in 2021.

“It was re­fresh­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence the love all over again.”

She ad­mit­ted that she was still bask­ing in the love of the peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly as the pan­dem­ic gave her a re­set, boost­ing her al­ready close fam­i­ly ties, con­nec­tions with fans, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and metic­u­lous­ness about her mu­sic.

“I think I took a lit­tle of the pan­dem­ic with me in terms of grat­i­tude for what I do, I ap­pre­ci­ate it so much more now...every­thing is a lit­tle bit more per­son­al,” she said.

In No­vem­ber, Gar­cia test­ed her the­atri­cal chops at the Bri­an Mac Far­lane pro­duc­tion “Christ­mas Joy: The Mag­ic Re­turns” as an an­gel singing Mary Did You Know and as a woman ren­der­ing a Tri­ni ver­sion of Mari­ah Carey's All I Want for Christ­mas is You to her love. The ca­ma­raderie and cos­tumes were fan­tas­tic, she said, not­ing that the strict rou­tine and hav­ing to learn the lyrics to oth­er peo­ple's songs were a bit dif­fer­ent from the spon­tane­ity and free­dom of be­ing on a so­ca stage.

Gar­cia's daugh­ter, Xi­aya, was in the au­di­ence to cheer on her moth­er. She had her own de­but re­cent­ly with her St Joseph's Con­vent school choir at the John Thomas con­cert Be­lieve. Gar­cia proud­ly shared that Xi­aya's stage ex­pe­ri­ence in­clud­ed bal­let shows in her ear­ly years and a so­lo at Mu­sic Fes­ti­val in 2020. She al­so loves pi­ano, has done a bit of act­ing, and is al­so a so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer, forg­ing her own iden­ti­ty, her moth­er in­formed.

As to her own look for C2K23, Gar­cia, who has sport­ed from punk rock to girlie pop princess to edgy Queen of Bac­cha­nal en­sem­bles, will be try­ing to move away from her typ­i­cal be­jew­elled/sparkles and glit­ter style as some­one re­cent­ly point­ed out to her, she laughed. Of course, her glam will re­flect her C2K23 songs and there will be sur­pris­es, she promised.

Q&A with De­stra

Twen­ty-three years is a long time. Your so­cial me­dia pres­ence is phe­nom­e­nal, your reach ex­tends to a wide in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence, what would you say has been re­spon­si­ble for your longevi­ty in the en­ter­tain­ment busi­ness?

Well, there are two things–the first thing I would say are the fans. Be­cause I've had fans that were ba­bies when I sang It's Car­ni­val. They grew up with me and they're still fans to­day. I re­mem­ber go­ing in­to schools and these lit­tle chil­dren writ­ing me let­ters say­ing: Thank you, Aun­ty De­stra. We love you! Come back again next year. This one school that I went to–near the prom­e­nade in San Fer­nan­do–I re­mem­ber stay­ing and sign­ing every sin­gle au­to­graph and I re­mem­ber re­ceiv­ing a bag from every sin­gle stu­dent. I still have that bag (Laugh­ter).

So I think the fans play a big part. I've per­formed for au­di­ences across the board. I guess I was per­son­able. If I see my fans, it's al­ways a hug, it's al­ways love. So I think those things re­al­ly stayed with them and they con­tin­ued to love the mu­sic and sup­port me.

Two, I think it would be the pas­sion that I have for mu­sic. I'm pas­sion­ate about singing, pas­sion­ate about danc­ing, I'm pas­sion­ate about per­form­ing. I love get­ting on a stage. It's not as easy as peo­ple think to get on stage though.

Sun­day Guardian pulls up by De­stra for New Year's, what are we do­ing, what we cook­ing, what we eat­ing?

New Year's Day prob­a­bly would be more of a bar­beque day. Be­cause Old Year's is usu­al­ly pelau, or rice and peas for us. And usu­al­ly, we're a fam­i­ly of prayer, so Old Year's in­to the New Year, we al­ways gath­er as a fam­i­ly. I try not to go out un­less I have an in­ter­na­tion­al show. New Year's Day is re­al­ly just to wake up late be­cause I'm leav­ing my par­ents' house (in the wee hours) by the time I get home, I'm wak­ing up late, about 11. We just go­ing to bar­beque, prob­a­bly go­ing by the pool or go to the beach. It's a wa­ter and bar­beque day. Christ­mas Eve, Christ­mas, Box­ing Day, Old Year's and New Year's are fam­i­ly days. I feel peo­ple should al­ways make time for their fam­i­lies.

What is your pet peeve?

There are two. Women who don't stand up for them­selves, who al­low them­selves to be be­lit­tled. We see so much abuse and I look around and see some women who feel like they need to set­tle for less, or hide­away their voic­es. Noth­ing gets me mad­der than if I see a fe­male be­ing abused or feel­ing so timid that they can't speak up. I al­ways feel like I have to speak up for them and then I end up be­ing called the b-word which is my chap­ter in the Vi­ra­go book (War­rior Women book fea­tur­ing 15 in­flu­en­tial T&T women in­clud­ing De­stra)...that is a pet peeve; not hav­ing enough fe­males who speak up for them­selves and peo­ple putting you in­to a cat­e­go­ry be­cause you do. The next thing, I hate an un­tidy bath­room. A lot of times I try to stay away from bath­rooms when I go out.

What makes you hap­pi­est?

See­ing peo­ple hap­py, es­pe­cial­ly when it's be­cause of me...see­ing a smile on my daugh­ter's face. I don't know if that is hap­pi­ness or pride be­cause a lot of times the emo­tions that come with my daugh­ter are re­lat­ed to pride; see­ing her do some­thing spe­cial or putting the lessons I gave her in­to prac­tice gives me a sense of joy.

Any fam­i­ly mem­ber or fan, or even some­one I just met, do­ing some­thing kind for them and see­ing a smile on their face brings me joy.