Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Long be­fore the stage lights, the tours, and the chart place­ments, there was a lit­tle girl in To­co singing at the top of her lungs dur­ing fam­i­ly praise and wor­ship.

At 37, Shake­ma Rowe, known to the So­ca world as Miss Cali, has craft­ed a ca­reer that bridges Trinidad and To­ba­go and Cana­da. Still, her sto­ry is deeply root­ed in the qui­et, coastal vil­lage where her grand­par­ents raised her.

To­co shaped her. The At­lantic Ocean breeze, tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty life, and the steady pres­ence of her grand­moth­er, Geral­dine James, af­fec­tion­ate­ly called “Granny,” formed the emo­tion­al foun­da­tion she still car­ries to­day. Her moth­er, Bet­ty-Ann Rowe, re­mained an im­por­tant fig­ure in her life as she tran­si­tioned be­tween Trinidad and Cana­da.

“To­co will al­ways be my foun­da­tion be­cause it’s where I first learned the mean­ing of love and be­long­ing,” she said.

Mu­sic was nev­er forced. It flowed nat­u­ral­ly. While cousins teased her dur­ing fam­i­ly gath­er­ings, she sang any­way. “I’m a feel­er,” she says. “I feel the mu­sic be­fore I even write it, and I want peo­ple to feel it too.”

Her teenage years took her be­yond To­co to Mor­vant and then Tacarigua, where she at­tend­ed Five Rivers Ju­nior Sec­ondary School. Af­ter Form Two, she mi­grat­ed to Toron­to, a move that would sig­nif­i­cant­ly shape both her life and artistry. In Cana­da, she at­tend­ed West Hill Col­le­giate In­sti­tute, ad­just­ing to a new cul­ture while hold­ing tight­ly to her Caribbean iden­ti­ty.

It was there that “Miss Cali” was born.

Wait­ing at a bus stop on her way to school, some­one asked her name. Not want­i­ng to share it, she glanced at a near­by sign that read, “Wel­come to Cal­i­for­nia, warm and sun­ny place,” and replied, “Cal­i­for­nia.” The nick­name stuck and even­tu­al­ly evolved in­to her stage name.

In Toron­to, she be­gan de­vel­op­ing her song­writ­ing skills, ex­plor­ing R&B and Hip Hop while ab­sorb­ing the Caribbean pulse with­in the di­as­po­ra. But in 2014, she felt a strong pull back to Trinidad.

Re­turn­ing home, she im­mersed her­self in the in­dus­try be­hind the scenes, work­ing events and learn­ing the me­chan­ics of So­ca from the ground up. A turn­ing point came through her con­nec­tion with St Lu­cian pro­duc­er Penn Tyge­son of Stu­dio 758, known for his work with Machel Mon­tano, Kes, and Fay-Ann Lyons.

Ini­tial­ly hired to write for an­oth­er artiste, Miss Cali end­ed up record­ing the track her­self af­ter time ran out.

“Penn looked at me and said, ‘Cali, why don’t you sing the song?’ I was ter­ri­fied, but he be­lieved in me,” she ex­plained.

That song, Re­man Li, re­leased in 2016, marked her of­fi­cial en­try in­to the So­ca are­na.

De­ter­mined to build mo­men­tum, she en­tered the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch that same year. With­out ma­jor fi­nan­cial back­ing, she cre­at­ed her own out­fit for the se­mi-fi­nals.

“I didn’t have a big bud­get, so I grabbed a nee­dle and thread and made it work. It tru­ly took a vil­lage,” she re­calls.

Over the years, she ex­pand­ed her cat­a­logue, work­ing with pro­duc­ers such as Mega Mick and con­tin­u­ing to sharp­en her iden­ti­ty as an artiste ground­ed in emo­tion and lived ex­pe­ri­ence.

In 2024, she re­leased De Last Time, pro­duced by KesKeyz and writ­ten by Ja­son “Shaft” Bish­op. The song res­onat­ed wide­ly, chart­ing at num­bers sev­en and nine on the iTunes World Mu­sic and Reg­gae Cana­da charts.

She fol­lowed up with Doh Force De Jam, her lat­est re­lease, al­so writ­ten by Bish­op and pro­duced by Nigel Lewis of Rhythm Pro­duc­tions. The track re­flects her per­son­al out­look. “It’s about flow. The vibe, the good en­er­gy. We don’t force ex­pe­ri­ences. We don’t force in­ter­ac­tions. We don’t force the jam,” she ex­plained.

Her ca­reer has con­tin­ued to ex­pand in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. She has been fea­tured on Toron­to’s Flow 98.7, com­plet­ed a Cana­di­an sum­mer tour and per­formed at the TD Bank Toron­to Jerk Fes­ti­val, where she won the first-ever So­ca cat­e­go­ry. In 2024, she launched her in­au­gur­al Toron­to Carib­ana Tour, per­form­ing at events such as Taste of the Caribbean, Toron­to Chow Fest, and Afro-Carib Fest.

While con­sis­tent book­ings in Trinidad have not al­ways come eas­i­ly, she re­mains con­nect­ed through Car­ni­val tele­vi­sion fea­tures, in­clud­ing Nikky Cos­by and Break Dawn.

“You don’t need to live in the Mec­ca to make it in So­ca,” she says. “My jour­ney has been about an­swer­ing the call of home, no mat­ter where I am.”

A song­writer across R&B, Hip Hop, Reg­gae and So­ca, Miss Cali con­tin­ues to draw in­spi­ra­tion from every­day life. Off­stage, she de­scribes her­self as a home­body who en­joys trav­el, food, the beach and spend­ing time with her teenage child.

She says her jour­ney is not de­fined by ge­og­ra­phy, but by con­nec­tion. From To­co to Toron­to and back again, Miss Cali is proof that home is not just a place, it is a rhythm you car­ry wher­ev­er you go.