Aba A Luke

She may be tiny, but mu­si­cal­ly she's still grow­ing. At 25, she has pri­ori­tised her ca­reer, tak­ing a chance on her in­nate abil­i­ty that she knows will lead to suc­cess. She's left her full-time job in the field of ship­ping, and now she's a full-time vo­cal­ist. Be­yond that, though, she's aim­ing to con­quer the mu­sic in­dus­try in T&T, with the help of a per­form­ing arts cur­ricu­lum.

Care­ful, eh!

In 2009, Shiv­onne Churche, bet­ter known as Lil Bitts in the so­ca fra­ter­ni­ty, un­leashed Hold Meh, a track writ­ten by her 22-year-old broth­er, Sher­rard. She said it's been do­ing phe­nom­e­nal­ly well over­seas. In 2010, she's call­ing on fete lovers to be Care­ful. The track, which was writ­ten by Sher­rard and pro­duced by Richard Char Su Ahong, was con­cep­tu­alised by the young writer. "Sher­rard went to a par­ty and de­cid­ed to ask a girl for a dance. He said she told him be care­ful how he win­ing," she ex­plained, with a laugh.

Keep­ing it in the fam­i­ly

The pride she has in her broth­er's ca­pa­bil­i­ties shines through her words. "Sher­rard is a re­al­ly good writer. He plays the pi­ano and he's nev­er been taught. Right now, I'm try­ing to get him in­to Costaatt, where he can ful­fill his full po­ten­tial." Bitts her­self is pur­su­ing an as­so­ciate de­gree in per­form­ing arts at Costaatt. She is ex­cit­ed about her aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suits, so much so that she re­veals, "Since I start­ed the de­gree, peo­ple have re­alised that things have changed with my mu­sic. My vo­cal qual­i­ty is a lot bet­ter."

The Bel­mont singer has been in the spot­light lo­cal­ly, since her teenage years. Her hit, Bump, was her ini­tial claim to fame, but then came a col­lab­o­ra­tive Car­ni­val cre­ation with Bun­ji Gar­lin that went through the roof, tak­ing the tiny so­ca sen­sa­tion to an even high­er lev­el. She has al­ways been mu­si­cal­ly in­clined. "Every­one in my fam­i­ly is in­volved in mu­sic at one lev­el or an­oth­er." She said when she meets up with old school friends, they al­ways muse over her suc­cess. How­ev­er, her cur­rent ca­reer in mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment has nev­er come as a shock to them.

So­ca parang

This past Christ­mas sea­son, Bitts con­tin­ued her so­ca parang ser­e­nade tra­di­tion, this time, do­ing a re­make of an old hit. Shar­lene Boodram's Ma­maci­ta was brought back to life and, ac­cord­ing to the en­ter­tain­er, the re­make was ap­pre­ci­at­ed by many peo­ple around the coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly those from the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty. Ex­plain­ing that it took her two to three years to find her­self, the young en­ter­tain­er, who aims for in­ter­na­tion­al celebri­ty, said that in 2010, she would en­ter the Groovy So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion.

She cred­its the aca­d­e­m­ic pro­gramme at Costaatt for her new­found pas­sion to cre­ate qual­i­ty mu­sic. "Every­body talks about get­ting on to the in­ter­na­tion­al scene, but no­body re­al­ly tries to ed­u­cate them­selves on the busi­ness of mu­sic. There are a lot of mu­sic schools and Costaatt is free–we have Gate." Bitts said she's now in Car­ni­val mode and work­ing on a "big tune," hav­ing com­plet­ed ex­ams in De­cem­ber. She'll be in full cos­tume on the road in 2010 and, be­yond that, she said she's very ex­cit­ed about work­ing with the young, up-and-com­ing vo­cal­ists and pro­duc­ers here in T&T.