Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

Dubbed ‘the Voice in the Sky’, the per­fect­ly toned voice that in­tro­duces the pre­sen­ters be­hind the cur­tains as they skirt on­to the stage, the voice you hear an­nounc­ing the nom­i­nees, the voice that holds all in an­tic­i­pa­tion - that voice be­longs to none oth­er than Aisha Man­rique.

WE sat down in a deep dive to un­veil the per­son­al­i­ty, the dri­ve and the pas­sion be­hind that voice as Man­rique pre­pared for the

most mon­u­men­tal role of her jour­ney.

The in­au­gur­al Caribbean Mu­sic Awards 2023 was an un­for­get­table night cel­e­brat­ing Caribbean mu­sic’s rich his­to­ry span­ning many gen­er­a­tions and our very own Man­rique made his­to­ry as the first fe­male se­lect­ed to be the live an­nounc­er.

How­ev­er, the voice in her head, that some­times plays on re­peat, her ul­ti­mate cheer­leader, is that of her moth­er, Cheryl Cha Cha, a voice from heav­en, that says: “Aisha you will achieve great­ness, God blessed my womb when I con­ceived you!”

And favourable her jour­ney has cer­tain­ly been.

From voic­ing and script­ing for the char­ac­ter, Queen La Di­a­b­lesse for one of the Miss La Reine Rive 2023 fi­nal­ists here in T&T; to voic­ing the pro­mo­tions for the St Lu­cia Jazz and Arts Fes­ti­val; to be­ing in­vit­ed to at­tend the largest voice over con­fer­ence in his­to­ry in At­lanta, the VO At­lanta 2023 Con­fer­ence and in­ter­act­ing with one of her men­tors,

Ms Ke­sha Monk, the voice of the BET Soul Train Awards; to voic­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ini­tia­tives, for a client in Ger­many and then the char­ac­ter of a British vil­lain in a pro­duc­tion, soon to be re­leased, led by a tal­ent­ed an­i­ma­tor out in Nige­ria; Man­rique shares: “There is no lim­it to where our Caribbean tal­ent is recog­nised and val­ued, once we are brave enough to pur­sue our dreams.”

Cre­at­ed to cre­ate

Man­rique, hails from New Grant, Princes Town, is proud of her ‘coun­try roots’ and is a high­ly sought af­ter fe­male voice tal­ent from Trinidad and To­ba­go, script writer, keynote speak­er, event host, pub­lic speak­ing and voice over coach, pro­vid­ing her unique tal­ent for the cre­ative di­rec­tion and suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion of nu­mer­ous projects. Man­rique was cre­at­ed to cre­ate.

Her jour­ney be­gan more than two decades ago where she re­ceived a schol­ar­ship to pur­sue broad­cast­ing, writ­ing and voic­ing com­mer­cials af­ter ‘woo­ing’ a live au­di­ence with an ad she quick­ly wrote and voiced right on the spot.

“At age 16, I re­ceived the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent my sec­ondary school, Gas­par­il­lo Com­pos­ite, at a Re­gion­al Youth Lead­er­ship Awards Con­fer­ence. Lit­tle did I know that that con­fer­ence was go­ing to be the por­tal God was us­ing to change my life. The con­fer­ence was a three-day con­fer­ence and on day three, one of the speak­ers at the event in­vit­ed any­one in the au­di­ence to come on stage to par­take in a chal­lenge.

“The thought of hav­ing to ex­press your thoughts in front of hun­dreds of teenagers across the Caribbean was a bit daunt­ing at first, but nonethe­less I said yes and em­barked up­on the jour­ney. The crowd got very silent. You could hear a pin drop be­cause we all know about that dread­ed pub­lic speak­ing fear. At that mo­ment how­ev­er, I was bat­tling two voic­es with­in me.

“You know in the movies there’s the an­gel with the ha­lo on the left and there’s the oth­er crea­ture on the right with the fork. I had that ex­pe­ri­ence whilst sit­ting in the au­di­ence. The an­gel on the left said, ‘Aisha go up there, you can do it’” Whilst the crea­ture on the right said to me ‘You bet­ter stay in that seat! You will make a fool of your­self and they will all laugh at you!’ It took me a good two min­utes bat­tling with­in my­self if I should do it or not. Thank­ful­ly the good an­gel won.

“Look­ing back I can safe­ly say it was God’s pres­ence es­cort­ing me un­to that stage. What hap­pened next still to this day is in­de­scrib­able but on that stage I re­ceived the chal­lenge and in one minute gath­ered my thoughts, con­cep­tu­al­ized the script for an ad and de­liv­ered it. When the au­di­ence stood on their feet and screamed in de­light at the end of my de­liv­ery, I felt in­vig­o­rat­ed! On that day, I re­ceived a schol­ar­ship to pur­sue broad­cast­ing, writ­ing and voic­ing com­mer­cials. That day, this pro­fes­sion chose me.”

The epit­o­me of re­silience

Los­ing her moth­er and broth­er months apart of each oth­er al­most crum­bled Man­rique.

“Till this day peo­ple ask me how do I find the strength to do all that I do de­spite these ex­pe­ri­ence and all I can say is, ‘It’s by God’s grace.’ My broth­er’s pass­ing was trag­i­cal­ly sud­den, while car­ing for my moth­er who was di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer.

“From the day of the di­ag­no­sis till her last breath I took care of my moth­er and it was the most chal­leng­ing time of my life. The chal­lenge was not the phys­i­cal strain of hav­ing to take her for treat­ment each week, or lift­ing her out of the wheel­chair, or rush­ing her to hos­pi­tal dur­ing wee hours of the night. No, that wasn’t the most dif­fi­cult part.

“The most dif­fi­cult part was see­ing your hero lose her strength more and more each day, fea­tures chang­ing right be­fore your eyes and not be­ing able to do any­thing about it, oth­er than what­ev­er you can to keep them com­fort­able.

“My moth­er was a fash­ion­ista, a di­va, a per­form­ing arts ex­tra­or­di­naire. She had heels and jew­ellery to co­or­di­nate each out­fit. She took great pride in her im­age and the man­ner in which she spoke and pro­nounced her words. She fought as best as she could un­til she couldn’t any­more. Her wis­dom stays with me as I ap­ply her teach­ings every­day to my life.

“As a child, of­ten at the wee hours, on awak­en­ing me, she would say, ‘The heights by great men reached and kept were not at­tained by sud­den flight, but they, while their com­pan­ions slept, were toil­ing up­ward in the night’.”

Man­rique said this quote by Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfel­low is em­bed­ded in her DNA, keeps her re­silient and fu­els her dri­ve, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing chal­leng­ing mo­ments.

Any pet peeves?

“Hm­mm….hear­ing peo­ple say ‘I can’t do it.’ This irks me be­cause I hon­est­ly be­lieve that there’s al­ways a way, you just have to want it bad enough. We all have cir­cum­stances we wish were dif­fer­ent, none of us that walk this earth are ex­empt­ed from in­se­cu­ri­ties, pain and dis­ap­point­ment but we can­not al­low that to crip­ple our dreams and the vi­sion God had for our lives when we were formed.

“You have to push through and I mean se­ri­ous­ly push through cause I’ve been through some things but I kept at it. You have to be will­ing to fail, fall and fo­cus hard­er to go again, just wis­er and more equipped this time.”

Her pas­sion for com­mu­ni­ca­tion

“If there were lim­it­less pos­si­bil­i­ties, I would cre­ate a state-of-the-art acad­e­my specif­i­cal­ly for voice tal­ents. The voiceover in­dus­try is a bil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try and I think it’s time our lo­cals rec­og­nize their tal­ent and po­ten­tial. My in­ter­ac­tion and in­volve­ment with in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets has proven how far we as lo­cal tal­ents can go, but I can’t do this by my­self.

“The pow­er of col­lab­o­ra­tion can ac­cel­er­ate the po­ten­tial of our Caribbean voice in­dus­try. Cur­rent­ly I teach pub­lic speak­ing, ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­niques and voice over train­ing, teach­ing them the lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I be­lieve we should have voice act­ing and pub­lic speak­ing on the cur­ricu­lum in schools, col­leges, uni­ver­si­ties.

“While some peo­ple are nat­ur­al-born com­mu­ni­ca­tors, it can be re­fined once you’re will­ing to put in the work and trust the guid­ance be­ing giv­en. I want to be that ves­sel for plac­ing our Caribbean voice tal­ents on the world stage in a pow­er­ful and im­pact­ful way. The world must know we ex­ist and ap­pre­ci­ate what we bring to the art­form.”

Lega­cy of be­ing fear­less

Man­rique con­tin­u­ous­ly poured ad­vice and wis­dom as the in­ter­view con­clud­ed.

“I want my lega­cy to be one of coura­geous­ness be­cause to achieve great­ness you have to be stronger than the fear that tries to crip­ple our dreams every sin­gle day! Time isn’t promised to any­one. There are many per­sons wish­ing they had your gifts. Don’t un­der­es­ti­mate your gifts and tal­ents. God gave you those spe­cif­ic gifts for a rea­son and God makes no mis­takes so what does that tell you?

“Take the time to nur­ture your gifts, in­vest in your­self. Don’t ex­pect any­one to do it for you. If along your jour­ney you meet some­one who helps you along your path in some way or the oth­er, count your bless­ings. Al­so, you have to be your own cheer­leader at times. You owe you! You have to be­lieve in your­self and your process.

“Be pa­tient with your­self as you con­tin­ue to grow and de­vel­op. Al­ways re­mem­ber suc­cess leaves clues, you must pay at­ten­tion. Once you put in the work con­sis­tent­ly and re­main hum­ble, your stars will align, trust me. Con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing in your gift. The world is YOUR STAGE and it is wait­ing for you!”

To con­nect with Aisha Man­rique

We­biste: https://aishaman­rique­me­dia.com/

Email: aishaman­rique­me­dia@gmail.com

The 2023 In­au­gur­al Caribbean Mu­sic Awards

The Caribbean Mu­sic Awards (CMA) was held on Au­gust 31 at Kings The­atre, Brook­lyn, New York.

The CMA is a plat­form to rec­og­nize, ho­n­our and cel­e­brate Caribbean tal­ent who have made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the en­hance­ment of our mu­sic and the de­vel­op­ment of our rich and di­verse cul­ture.

The event cu­rat­ed by Caribbean peo­ple for Caribbean peo­ple will al­so help to break the stig­ma that per­sons in the di­as­po­ra of­ten fail to boost their own cre­atives and as such they end up hin­der­ing ef­forts to push the cul­ture to the fore­front in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

With the launch of an event like this, with epic pro­duc­tion val­ue on an in­ter­na­tion­al scale, the Caribbean voic­es will be giv­en a stage to spark growth in the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty.

CMA is com­mit­ted to the ex­pan­sion of the Caribbean cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty, unit­ed with those sim­i­lar­ly aligned and ded­i­cat­ed to the em­pow­er­ment of our Caribbean tal­ent.

https://carib­mu­si­cawards.com/