Nigel Teles­ford

So­ca Queen Patrice Roberts re­claimed her throne last Sun­day when she ex­plod­ed on­to the So­ka In Mo­ka all-in­clu­sive fete stage, ig­nit­ing the au­di­ence with a demon­stra­tion of un­bri­dled con­fi­dence, show­ing off a sexy physique and com­mand­ing pres­ence.

She thanked her fans for sup­port­ing her over the past year as she griev­ed the loss of her fi­ancé, Ri­car­do Drue. Roberts al­so hopped down in­to the crowd for a fi­nal jump up among “her peo­ple” be­fore clos­ing off a high­ly en­gag­ing set from The A-Team Band.

The so­ca di­va emerged just af­ter 9 pm, adorned in a re­veal­ing gold­en en­sem­ble capped with a blond bob hair­style. This fol­lowed an en­liven­ing se­quence which saw ster­ling per­for­mances by guest acts such as the hit song­writ­ing duo of Full Blown, the mus­cu­lar and con­fi­dent Swap­pi, Trin­i­ty Col­lege alum­ni tal­ent, Shal Mar­shall; NY-based ladies favourite Lyrikal and a new­com­er from Do­mini­ca, Tril­la-G, who per­formed the smash hit Some­one Else mi­nus his col­lab­o­ra­tors, Litle Boy and Quan.

Tak­ing con­trol of the mass­es as she whipped them in­to a fren­zy with hit af­ter hit from her ex­ten­sive cat­a­logue, Roberts even at­tract­ed the at­ten­tion of crick­et icon, Bri­an Charles Lara, who ap­peared de­ter­mined to take on her ro­bust der­rière, taller frame and pro­fes­sion­al win­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties. How­ev­er, Roberts did not com­mend his win­ing ef­fort too much, in­stead de­clar­ing his crick­et­ing prowess his main tal­ent and stat­ing that “we ap­pre­ci­ate you in the coun­try” be­fore dis­miss­ing him back to the side­lines.

More em­bold­ened by this demon­stra­tion of her dom­i­nance, Roberts had the crowd eat­ing out of her hands there­after and ce­ment­ed it with her fi­nal jump up amid the mass­es as she sang her 2024 hit, Anx­i­ety. She al­lowed fans to em­brace, dance, film and take self­ies with her on the dance­floor.

“I didn’t plan any of that,” she said af­ter­wards, “these things just hap­pen some­times and we go with the flow and make it work for the peo­ple’s en­joy­ment.”

Per­form­ing in the sec­ond slot, Roberts’ en­er­gy pre­vailed on the night along with the ef­forts of front­line singers, Joel “Zan” Feveck, Ker­lene “Ker­lz” Joseph, Nishard M and the mu­si­cal dy­namism of the A-Team band. To­geth­er they se­cured favour with the as­sem­bly af­ter an ap­pe­tiz­ing warm-up by Ray­mond Ram­nar­ine and Dil-E-Nadan.

Left to close the 25th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, Col­lege Boy Jesse, An­dre “Viking Ding Dong” Houl­der, Mi­cal Te­ja and D All Starz kept the en­gine run­ning along with spe­cial guests Ted­dyson John from St Lu­cia, Blac­ka Dan from Grena­da and Trin­i­ty Col­lege’s own, Olatun­ji Year­wood.

Pro­ceeds from So­ka In Mo­ka will as­sist in up­grad­ing the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem at Trin­i­ty Col­lege.

The event ce­ment­ed its po­si­tion and sig­nif­i­cance on the fete cal­en­dar as the first of­fi­cial fete with mul­ti­ple live bands and per­form­ers and the first live test of songs and per­form­ers for the Car­ni­val sea­son.