Jazz vo­cal­ist Vaugh­nette Big­ford was moved to tears dur­ing a heart­felt ren­di­tion of Mem­o­ry of Your Smile as she paid trib­ute to late cul­tur­al and mu­si­cal lu­mi­nar­ies Kay Al­leyne, Mori­cia Ca­gan, Pat­ti Rogers, Raf Robert­son, Clive Zan­da, Arthur Lewis, Mar­lon De Bique, and her grand­fa­ther. This emo­tion­al mo­ment was a high­light of her EMO­JA con­cert, held on Au­gust 2 at the Na­pari­ma Bowl.

The evening was not sole­ly about re­mem­brance. Big­ford al­so cel­e­brat­ed liv­ing leg­ends—Kare­ga Man­dela, Mavis John, and Valenti­no—ho­n­our­ing their con­tri­bu­tions to the na­tion’s cul­tur­al land­scape.

Each was recog­nised through pow­er­ful mu­si­cal salutes and evoca­tive spo­ken word per­for­mances. Spo­ken word artiste Za­kiya “Gri­ot” Gill de­liv­ered stir­ring, dra­mat­ic trib­utes to the three hon­orees, weav­ing their great­est achieve­ments in­to po­et­ry laced with ad­mi­ra­tion and rev­er­ence.

Big­ford’s own mu­si­cal of­fer­ings re­flect­ed the spir­it and re­silience of the icons she cel­e­brat­ed: Nev­er Sur­ren­der and Free Up Africa for Kare­ga Man­dela; I Will Be Your Friend and Use My Body in ho­n­our of Mavis John; and Birds That Fly and Stay Up Zim­bab­we as a salute to Valenti­no.

The “song­bird of the south,” mak­ing two strik­ing wardrobe changes through­out the evening, al­so treat­ed the au­di­ence to a wide reper­toire, in­clud­ing Who God Bless, Na­ture’s Plan, Black Woman, Dif­fer­ent Peo­ple, Caribbean Con­nec­tion, Dream of Me, Rea­son, Say a Lit­tle Prayer, Tell Me Why, and Good Good Spir­its.

One stand­out mo­ment came when Shar­lan Bai­ley, son of the late ca­lyp­son­ian Shad­ow (Win­ston Bai­ley), brought the house down with an elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mance of Stranger, earn­ing a rous­ing stand­ing ova­tion.

It was an evening that bal­anced rev­er­ence with cel­e­bra­tion—a tes­ta­ment to Big­ford’s gift for turn­ing song in­to both trib­ute and tri­umph.