To­ba­go-born Do­minic “Blessed Mes­sen­ger” Wal­ters is the 2021 Ster­ling Gospel Mu­sic Awards’ (SG­MA) Caribbean Artist of the Year.

The fifth an­nu­al SG­MA, which is a Ja­maican-based awards cer­e­mo­ny es­tab­lished to recog­nise tal­ent and award ex­cel­lence in the gospel in­dus­try through­out the re­gion, was staged vir­tu­al­ly last Sat­ur­day in Ja­maica.

Wal­ters beat out oth­er top gospel artists in the cat­e­go­ry, in­clud­ing Samuel Medas, J Prince and Jaron Nurse, for the ho­n­our.

Wal­ters, who has over 20 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the gospel in­dus­try lo­cal­ly and is no stranger to ac­co­lades for his con­tri­bu­tion, said he was “elat­ed and shocked” when he heard about his achieve­ment.

“When I was nom­i­nat­ed, it was an ho­n­our be­cause of the cal­i­bre of oth­er artistes that were al­so nom­i­nat­ed but when I won it was sur­re­al,” Wal­ters told To­ba­go To­day.

The 37-year-old artiste, who is cur­rent­ly based in Trinidad, said he has been in the in­dus­try for over 20 years. Wal­ters has sev­er­al hits, in­clud­ing Thanks in Ad­vance and Famalay and says he sees the award as God show­ing up in and out of sea­son.

“Due the pan­dem­ic we can’t do much in the in­dus­try, every­thing is vir­tu­al. We can’t per­form or even record mu­sic so to win this dur­ing a pan­dem­ic is a bless­ing, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause it recog­nis­es mu­sic through­out the Caribbean,” said Wal­ters, who grew up in Bethel. Con­tin­u­al­ly in­spired by God and his per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences, he said his mu­sic pro­vides him with an out­let to share his per­son­al tes­ti­monies and his mu­sic spreads the mes­sage of faith.

“At times, things may look re­al­ly dif­fi­cult but it’s im­por­tant to hold the faith, love each oth­er be­cause we don’t know what to­mor­row holds,” he said.

Wal­ters said he is cur­rent­ly work­ing on his third al­bum and ad­di­tion­al projects, in­clud­ing mu­sic videos and de­vel­op­ing Blessed Mes­sen­ger mer­chan­dise such as hood­ies and hats.

He al­so urged peo­ple to get clos­er to God as we go through the pan­dem­ic.