A love­ly crowd of so­ca lovers took to the 69 Sports Bar & Grill, St Ann’s from 6-9 pm on Jan­u­ary 3 and wit­nessed the of­fi­cial launch of the so­ca mu­sic video, My Head Is Bad, host­ed by Tri­ni Fmili Mat­ter­rz. Guest artistes were Umi Mar­cano and Ter­ry Seales, and dee­jay Sky­line ham­mered in some oth­er sweet mu­sic. My Head Is Bad was writ­ten and pro­duced by mul­ti-tal­ent­ed singer, ac­tor and en­ter­tain­er, S.O. King, and mixed and mas­tered by GQ MAXz­i­MUM.

The name Toni SuratS­ingh is one that many may be fa­mil­iar with lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, but when it comes to her mind, pas­sion, cre­ativ­i­ty and con­fi­dence, many are not aware of how far her stretch takes her.

Nailah Black­man’s Sokahchel­la (So­ca Chiller) drew an ap­pre­cia­tive crowd to SAPA-South last Sun­day.

Dar­ryl Hen­ry aka “Farmer Nap­py” is on some bold mis­sions in 2023. He is bent on bring­ing a new vibe to so­ca as the voice of the peo­ple, mak­ing up for the ab­sence of the late so­ca bard Dex­ter “Blaxx” Stew­art, and cap­tur­ing a Gram­my award.

Sud­den­ly I was think­ing of pos­si­bly dis­ap­pear­ing from the world. It was a roller­coast­er. And I didn’t know how much time I had left."

The Pa­gani­ni of the Steel­pan as he’s favourably dubbed, is the hum­ble, il­lus­tri­ous, high­ly-dec­o­rat­ed Pro­fes­sor of Mu­sic, Di­rec­tor of Steel­pan Stud­ies at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty (NIU) and renowned leader of the NIU Steel­band, Liam Teague, a na­tive of San Fer­nan­do, Trinidad.

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.

Tya Jané Ramey, Miss Uni­verse Trinidad and To­ba­go jets off to the in­ter­na­tion­al pageant this week, in New Or­leans, USA, to meet 89 oth­er del­e­gates from around the globe to en­gage in an im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence that will change her life for­ev­er. No stranger to in­ter­na­tion­al pageant par­tic­i­pa­tion, hav­ing copped the Miss Caribbean World ti­tle back in 2019, she still ex­press­es new-found ex­hil­a­ra­tion to her next ven­ture.

The word Stal­in de­rives from the Russ­ian word for a ‘man of steel’ (stal), and black, all artists or colour spe­cial­ists are aware, is the most pow­er­ful, and strength­ens every colour un­der the sun. The late hand­some­ly-recog­nised ca­lyp­son­ian for­mer lim­bo dancer, that hailed from south Trinidad, Black Stal­in (Leroy Cal­liste), was the epit­o­me of both.

This time two years ago, Christ­mas sea­son 2020, med­ical staff couldn’t catch them­selves; couldn’t breathe in more ways than one—ei­ther ow­ing to hav­ing con­tract­ed the dread­ed COVID-19 dis­ease or be­ing over­whelmed, over­worked, overused, over­stressed, yet couldn’t give up. While fear­ful for their own lives, many had to help col­leagues who be­came pa­tients; sig­nal their pass­ing as well as non-med­ical pa­tients, in­clud­ing fam­i­ly and friends.

Moth­er, wife and au­thor, Terneisha Amun, holds an As­so­ciate de­gree in Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a stu­dent aide at the Pri­ma­ry school lev­el, but her un­wa­ver­ing pas­sion for pro­mot­ing cul­tur­al ed­u­ca­tion, “one book at a time”, re­sult­ed in the launch of her first book, The Ca­lyp­so Ba­by.

The Pres­tige Past Stu­dents Foun­da­tion would con­tin­ue along the same trend as years gone by host­ing Pre­sen­ta­tions Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do’s ma­jor fundrais­er with Car­ni­val fete on Jan­u­ary 29.