Fay-Ann Lyons - The Well Dressed Viqueen!

My next soca tribute goes out to the indomitable Viqueen of Soca, Fay-Ann Lyons. Her powerful voice and kickass personality have been a major addition to the soca world for a good decade, and not least because she's the only Soca songstress, in my humble opinion, who knows how to dress!! ...well most of the time...  

Now soca is not exactly a politically correct, feminist art form... Fay-Ann's hubby's Red Light District last year made my Western European sensibilities cringe, (while my Trini lack of sensibilities wined away as they do to pretty much all female body objectifying soca...) but do the women have to dress so tackily?  The men tend to wear jeans and a t-shirt. Some dress it up a little, adding in a jacket or a hat which gets ripped off, when we're lucky with the t-shirt, (revealing different degrees of tone ..usually approximating 6-packness the closer to carnival it gets...), as the electrifyingly energetic, incessant jumping up and down of any serious soca star causes all attire to be drenched with sweat within minutes of them hitting the stage. 

Why can't the women wear something similar? I don't mean to make themselves unattractive, but why not rock a nice, sexy, well fitting pair of jeans and a cute top rather than the ever more ratchet catsuits, and pum pum shorts??  

In case you're wondering where this rant is going, the last paragraph is in fact relevant as I've never had to restrain myself from writing a strongly worded letter to Fay-Ann after yet another sartorial assault.  In fact I've often been impressed by her bold and quite theatrical choices.  Still not usually jeans and a shirt, and of course she often does show off a good bit of her enviably toned body, but almost always tastefully. Obviously anyone can have an off day or two, and it must be exhausting coming up with 3-4 outfits a night during the height of carni season...sometimes it might just be easier to go on stage in your undies (red ones...but hey it was Fire Fete!) But in general Fay-Ann's catsuit days and performing in carnival costumes seem to thankfully be a thing of the past, and rather than asking myself why soca singers don't possess mirrors I regularly nod my head in approval.

As for her music, in addition to the big Soca Monarch/Road March contending tracks, she produces sweet sounding groovy riffs which sometimes avoid the major playlists but creep up on me and get stuck in my head, often numbering among my absolute favourites for the season.

Are We Doing this Owah? was a cool song, and was pretty popular. I just loved the line about men these days wanting to romance you in the band when a girl just wants a wine...I mean you can't even hear the lyrics with the speaker box vibrating your very bones!! Then of course Heavy T Bumper...was a big hit back in 2009, allowing her to win the Groovy Soca Monarch title heavily pregnant, along with the Power Soca title with Meet Superblue (the unborn baby even sang a verse...how we laughed at the sheer audacity of it...). However, I almost more preferred Start Winin', set off nicely by Busy Signal's gruff voice, which won me over after she did a subtle but really cute performance of the song at the post carnival Champs in Concert show in 2010....and then there's Pressure, soulful, sexy & insistent...

Now, over the last couple of years: Fay-Ann and her Soul Train Award winning husband, Bunji Garlin, have started coming out with very different sounding soca, more so than other artists.  So last year we had the rock inspired, soul pumping Catch Me. Then, as if our pores were not sufficiently raised by that, this year's initial offering with heavy soul vocals kicking it off before a slowed down rave rhythm kicks in, Raze, does something powerful to every serious female masquerader's heart....we see the road before us, we sense the sequins stuck to our heavily made up faces, we feel the feathered headpiece balancing precariously on our heads, we feel an almost painful build up of anticipation somewhere around our solar plexus which will only be released when after weeks of seriously heavy partying, we collapse after two full days of jumpin', dancin', drinkin' and posin' up in the brutally hot sun...sigh...five weeks to go....

Obviously I've only listed a few of Fay-Ann Lyons' tunes here, my favourites, and she has many more, quite a few crowd pumping rev up kinda power songs...but these are what I think of when I think of the most powerful female soca artist.

...and on top of all that, apparently after hours of performing, without even taking a drink to unwind or a nap, the woman goes home and cooks fish!