Ny­erere Haynes

She's left Im­ij and Co. and with her 2012 re­leas­es wait­ing in the wings, Michelle Xavier looks fur­ther for­ward to the de­but of her first so­lo al­bum which is due to be launched next Au­gust. Her de­par­ture from the band has been shroud­ed in spec­u­la­tion, with as­sump­tions be­ing made that she has ei­ther re­joined for­mer band mate Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller (with whom she hap­pened to share a Brook­lyn stage ear­li­er this year) or that she left on bad terms. Both state­ments how­ev­er, are far from the truth."I left the band on re­al­ly good terms with every­one to fol­low a so­lo ca­reer. It was dif­fi­cult be­cause mak­ing such a change al­ways is. It is an era of my ca­reer com­ing to an end and mov­ing to­wards a so­lo ca­reer, there is an ex­cit­ing un­cer­tain­ty about it," said Xavier.

Her so­lo al­bum has been in the works for some time now. It promis­es a side of Xavier that many fans have known be­fore."It's been a long time com­ing, I just didn't have enough time be­fore to fo­cus on it due to a very busy sched­ule I kept," said Xavier.She wrote all the songs on the al­bum and ad­mits it's very close to her heart. While she no longer gets ner­vous on stage she states that it's dif­fer­ent now be­cause she has opened up a part of her­self to the world."It's amaz­ing be­ing able to ex­press my­self through my mu­sic and have peo­ple en­joy it," a pos­i­tive Xavier said.Al­though she in­tends to re­lease her so­lo al­bum she has no in­ten­tions of for­sak­ing her So­ca mu­sic and Car­ni­val am­bi­tions. She is look­ing for­ward to Car­ni­val 2012 per­for­mances and hopes that she will be re­quest­ed at the fetes. Her 2012 re­leas­es are ex­pect­ed on the air­waves from No­vem­ber and once every­thing goes ac­cord­ing to plan, next Car­ni­val should be what she has al­ways known; non-stop per­for­mances.

In keep­ing with her changes she has start­ed work with some new pro­duc­ers like Klass, Sher­iff and Mad­men Pro­duc­tions. She in­tends to push her mu­sic to the lim­it and not be con­strict­ed by the lim­its of her own cre­ativ­i­ty."I think I've made a name for my­self and I just want to re­lease good mu­sic that al­lows peo­ple to have a good time. It makes me hap­py; I love Car­ni­val in all its forms. I played Ju­nior Car­ni­val for nine years in a row and have won sev­er­al tro­phies. When peo­ple see them they think it's from singing but it's from Car­ni­val. I've al­ways been at home on the stage and I've paid my dues be­cause I've put in a lot of work," said Xavier.In 2008 and 2009, she re­leased the songs Wake Me Up and Thank You and she per­formed them on the Dig­i­cel Out­ta Con­trol Tour to the de­light of her fans. Even­tu­al­ly, she plans to re­lease a com­pi­la­tion of all her So­ca songs from her per­for­mances through­out the years.