Aba A. Luke

In Feb­ru­ary, 2009 he came to Trinidad to ex­pe­ri­ence the sea­son of so­ca and mas. Lit­tle did he know that he'd meet a ris­ing so­ca star who would recog­nise his bud­ding tal­ent and a col­lab­o­ra­tion would emerge. D' Voice- re­al name: Dwayne Stew­art, hails from dance­hall is­land, Ja­maica. At 22, he has a keen un­der­stand­ing of what it means to be an en­ter­tain­er. He knows the im­por­tance of be­ing busi­ness-mind­ed and says he strives to be bet­ter in­formed in all as­pects of the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try. In re­cent weeks, he's been trav­el­ling the high­ways and by­ways of Trinidad.

Dur­ing his vis­it in Feb­ru­ary, a chance en­counter with HD Fam­i­ly vo­cal­ist, Umi Mar­cano, paved the way for a col­lab­o­ra­tive track that he nev­er saw com­ing. "I met Umi Mar­cano at a friend's birth­day par­ty and two days lat­er, we were in the stu­dio, writ­ing and record­ing." D' Voice says the track, Poster­Girl, was like a hap­py ac­ci­dent, as he nev­er imag­ined he'd have been in­volved in so­ca mu­sic so soon. In Ja­maica, he's build­ing his mu­sic em­pire from scratch. "A cou­ple friends–Big Beef and IKanz and I–we've as­sem­bled the stu­dio and a pro­duc­tion de­part­ment in Ja­maica," he says, adding that he'll be shoot­ing the video for a track called Grand­ma's Love, when he re­turns.

Stew­art's col­lab­o­ra­tion with the In Front Of Me singer, though un­ex­pect­ed, is not that sur­pris­ing as he says his years of train­ing in the UK, where he lived with his man­ag­er/fa­ther, Ellsworth Stew­art, helped in struc­tur­ing his over­all out­look on the in­dus­try. Al­though he start­ed off with R&B and soul, this young vo­cal­ist has man­aged to adapt to var­i­ous gen­res, in­clud­ing reg­gae and dance­hall and now, so­ca. Stew­art takes ex­am­ple from Machel Mon­tano, one of the front-run­ners of the so­ca genre.