Would you believe it if someone told you they saw me “wukking” up to soca music and even singing the songs lyric for lyric? lol well my friends the day has come when me Tanya A Wright is known as the soca queen. Now I wouldn’t go that far, more like a soca tete. What nice so lol
I should have known I couldn’t fight it that long (a good 20+ years) but it was a good fight and for a good reason. Mario Davis will tell you that there was a time that soca was so good to me I even got lost lifting my leg up https://youtu.be/HDHV7-i1tDo on the road behind the revellers lol oh yes but I was able to sing a sankee and find my way back home.
To be honest I think I fell out of love with soca because of the hypocrisy dancehall received in comparison. I mean our home grown genre loved by many outside our shores and a certain class in Jamaican seemed to always get blamed for everything negative in our culture and critiqued for the type of outfits the female patrons wore to the parties. However, once carnival time rolled around a certain class in Jamaica would be out in the numbers with even less on than their dancehall counter parts and you not here a peep from anyone. Maybe the only people who has an issue was the people going to church on a Sunday. Otherwise you didn’t hear a peep.
Fast forward to 2015 when I moved to live in Saint Lucia, just in the time of band launches and cooler fetes. Every party I would go to all they played was soca music. Your girl would not have a good time until they got to the 2 minutes of dancehall and even that was questionable because they didn’t know how or what to play much less mix. The struggle was real; every party was lame in my eyes because not one of the soca songs I knew. But when in Rome and you have a true soca queen for a friend you have to adapt. Every morning I would go to the gym my friend would sing “from you wake up this mawning you’s a winna” (cheers to life by Voice) https://youtu.be/W2DIb1gCmBw and that song stuck in my head so much that even I started singing lol. Btw this is still happening but with various songs.
Then friends started telling me I have to go to such and such party and play mas. Which brings me to 2016 when I participated in my first road March! Lol wooiiiieee nuhbaddie Neva tell me a so it nice!!! You should see me holding on the big truck, wining behind the big truck lol oh look at that there are photos.
It is also where I met my person 😍😬😁 who BTW gave me the idea for this blog but I digress that’s another story for another time.
Now in 2019 I completely enjoy myself since I’m getting the best of both worlds! Oh yes the DJs have come a long way to playing more than 2 minutes of dancehall and I now know most of the soca songs playing so I can definitely wuk up myself and have a whale of a time.
So if you see me chipping down the road not to worry dancehall holds a special place in my heart
mouttamassytanya 