SAN­DRA L BLOOD

Mark­ing an­oth­er mile­stone in his ris­ing in­ter­na­tion­al pro­file, so­ca star Aaron “Voice” St Louis added a pres­ti­gious ac­co­lade to his grow­ing list of achieve­ments on Feb­ru­ary 26.

The San Juan-born singer and song­writer re­ceived the 2025 African En­ter­tain­ment Awards USA (AEAUSA) Ca­lyp­so/So­ca Award in a pri­vate pre­sen­ta­tion at his San Juan mu­sic stu­dio.

The award was for­mal­ly pre­sent­ed by ii-Kaya Is­es, Trinidad and To­ba­go-born in­ter­na­tion­al mod­el and AEAUSA Caribbean Am­bas­sador, who de­scribed the recog­ni­tion as both per­son­al and far-reach­ing.

“This is all yours. This is a pri­vate mo­ment, but it car­ries pub­lic im­pact,” Is­es said dur­ing the in­ti­mate cer­e­mo­ny.

“It is an ho­n­our for me to stand here and for­mal­ly present you with this award. Not on­ly has your mu­sic en­er­gised count­less stages, but it has im­pact­ed the land­scape on an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Your ex­cel­lence, your hard work and ded­i­ca­tion, your cul­tur­al con­tri­bu­tion to the arts—we’d love to give this to you be­cause it’s well-de­served.”

Voice ex­pressed ela­tion, not­ing that the award af­firms the de­lib­er­ate di­rec­tion his team has tak­en over the past few years.

“I would be putting this in a glass case, for sure,” he said.

“It’s an ho­n­our to be rec­og­nized for your work. We’ve made a com­mit­ment over the past two or three years—my pro­duc­er, man­ag­er, the en­tire team—to push the en­ve­lope and re­al­ly try to make an im­pact with our mu­sic, through mu­sic, through our in­flu­ence. So, get­ting this award is def­i­nite­ly a step in the right di­rec­tion. We feel like we’re do­ing the right thing. And it’s not just me, it’s the en­tire team. To all the Voice sup­port­ers and the so­ca lovers, we got one.”

The recog­ni­tion fol­lows a land­mark Car­ni­val sea­son for Voice, high­light­ed by his sold-out Vibes With Voicey X – Cheers To 10 con­cert, cel­e­brat­ing a decade since his break­through in the so­ca are­na.

Found­ed in 2015 by Do­minic Tamin and a group of Pan-African­ists from Africa and the Caribbean, AEAUSA is a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion head­quar­tered in New Jer­sey with field of­fices in over ten coun­tries. The or­gan­i­sa­tion recog­nis­es and pro­motes ex­cel­lence in African and Caribbean arts, mu­sic, and cul­ture while fos­ter­ing glob­al uni­ty and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

For Voice and his team, the AEAUSA ho­n­our sig­nals con­tin­ued growth not on­ly on the road but al­so be­yond bor­ders, as so­ca mu­sic con­tin­ues to ex­pand its in­ter­na­tion­al reach. The award is a tes­ta­ment to his ded­i­ca­tion to cul­tur­al ex­cel­lence and the glob­al in­flu­ence of Caribbean mu­sic.