Single Spotlight Queen Destra
If ever an album title was apt, this is it. Queen, Destra Garcia’s new album, her eleventh, is both deserved and ironic. In an industry where soca accolades are still measured by competition wins instead of concert ticket and album sales, Destra stands out as the most popular female soca artist in the islands and diaspora, without the added marketing push of that ever-elusive title, never having won either Road March or Soca Monarch. This album compilation of recent Trinidad Carnival songs, including her recent hits “Dip and Ride” and “Normal”, also rounds up three duets featuring Jamaicans Peetah Morgan and Tanya Stephens and Trini chutney queen Drupatee Ramgoonai, challenging norms. Racy, ribald, and risqué, the album and the artist continue to push all the right buttons — tight productions, varied tempos and rhythms, sonorous voice — to still keep crowds dancing in a career approaching twenty years, further reinforcing her earned moniker of queen of bacchanal.
Sigui Stima Levi Silvanie
Levi (pronounced LAY-vee) Silvanie is a Curaçaoan singersongwriter and one of his country’s most popular artists. His new single “Sigui Stima”, which in Papiamentu loosely translates to “follow love,” is a clarion call for a kind of selflessness that recognises material things alone can’t give satisfaction, but enveloping love in one’s life is necessary: “Smile / Pursue your happiness / Have no fear, don’t wait too late, / ’cause you got one life to live.” Silvanie collaborated with Curaçaoan guitarist Willem Blankenburgh to create this song that sat on a shelf for nearly a decade only to be reborn after a recent tragedy at home. “Music gives me the strength to cope with these things,” Silvanie notes. Floating between EDM, pop, and his native ritmo kombina, and sung in both English and Papiamentu, this tune percolates with a positive message that grooves along to keep it on high rotation in your head and heart. Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell
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