Soca…ahhh sweet sweet soca. How can I describe my love for this music. This music is my natural high, my pick me up, my java, my …sighhh. When this music hits me …to steal a phrase ‘I feel no pain’. This is the only music that can take me from depression to happiness in less than 30 seconds, you just need to find the right song. Sometimes it’s not even the words (lyrics) themselves, its the beat…a beat that I can often hear coming loooong long before anybody else in the fete. The renditions of David Rudder, Baron, Gypsy, Sparrow, Kitchener, Black Stalin, Machel Montano, Sherwin Winchester….just to name a few.

There are those songs, I swear I could feel touch my soul, so deep that I have no other option than to get on the dance floor and lose myself in the power of the music. Let it sweep me back to the times when my ancestors used it to build community, to foster kinship, to celebrate the rituals of life, happy times and sad times. To wallow in the sheer sweetness of it, to dance till I am weary and soaking wet, all form of shame gone out the window leaving only the music tugging my heart-strings on the inside. Calling me to come, chanting come to me…lose yourself in me forget the world just listen to your spirit.

For me soca music is a soul connection, I can’t keep still once it starts to play. Often times before leaving home I would promise myself..”T, tonight you are going to stand and bop your head like everyone else…” Hmmmm …let me tell you it’s an embarrassment how long that resolution lasts; all it takes is one song, ONE SONG and I’m lost, caught up in the music, on a high…a SOCA high that’s like no other.

Soca music is an integral part of my make up…I wouldn’t like to imagine what my world would be like without it….And so happy I’d never have to find out.