BIGSONG:
Destra Garcia (born 10 November 1978) is a Trinidadian musician, singer and songwriter of soca music. She is also known by the mononym Destra. She is one of the most popular female soca artists in the world.
Destra Garcia was born in Laventille to Lloyd Augustin Garcia and Debra Garcia. Her paternal great-grandfather was from Venezuela. Her maternal great-grandfather was from France while her maternal great-grandmother was from Spain. The eldest of four siblings, Destra was raised in the community of Desperlie Crescent, Laventille directly east of Port of Spain, and attended Woodbrook government secondary school and St James Secondary School where she discovered her passion for singing and music. She not only won her school’s Calypso Monarch title for five consecutive years, she composed every one of her songs. Her musical roots came from her grandfather the late Frankie Garcia (Bourg Mulatresse, Santa Cruz), an island jazz musician. Her father Lloyd Garcia is an accomplished guitarist.She joined a quartet called Psyke which disbanded after only one year. Following the demise of the group, Destra attended the School of Business and Management earning a diploma in Sales Management.
Music and recording career
In 1999 Roy Cape All-Stars took notice of her single titled Ah Have A Man Already with Third Bass and invited her to join the Roy Cape All-Stars band as one of the lead vocalists. She pursued a solo career briefly, but eventually joined the band Atlantik in late 2002. She remains the frontline singer for Atlantik and has forged a successful songwriting partnership with Kernal Roberts (until 2005 inclusive), churning out hits such as “Whe Yuh Want”, “Negative Vibes” and “Bonnie & Clyde”.In 2003 Destra released her first album Red, White, Black which included her hit duet “It’s Carnival” with fellow Soca artist Machel Montano. The song became the virtual anthem of Trinidad and Tobago carnival that year and is widely known throughout the Caribbean and by extension, the world .
Career highlights
Destra won the Carnival Road March title in 2003 at the Labour Day Carnival in Brooklyn, and also placed second in the Trinidad and Tobago Soca Monarch competition in that same year.She is yet to win either the Carnival Road March or Soca Monarch title in Trinidad although she has come close in the Road March race, placing second in 2003, 2004 and 2009. Despite this, she has become successful in the local music industry, specializing in pop-sounding soca compositions as well as fusion music encompassing aspects of East Indian culture.In 2006, Caribbean Beat magazine described Destra’s music as “the kind of sound that a young person, living at the crossroads of cultures and technologies that is Trinidad and Tobago today, is likely to produce, and the breeziness of her music may well act as an antidote to the hard edge that often characterises life not only in Trinidad and Tobago, but in many other corners of the globe.Also in 2006, the Digicel mobile telecommunications group named Destra as its spokesperson in a two-year endorsement deal.
Cultural influence
With Caribbean roots going back to Trinidad and Tobago, Destra Garcia values the tradition of her culture. As a young girl, she took after her father and grandfather in her musical interest. Her father was a guitarist, a western instrument influenced by the Middle Eastern Al-oud, and her grandfather played brass instruments, both utilizing common instruments true to the Soca traditional style. Destra started by experimenting with Calypso as well as R&B and gospel. She was recognized for her mastery in the Calypso style for five consecutive years in school. It was not until Destra was introduced to Soca that she would find her passion and place. Both originated in the Caribbean with Trinidadian roots. Soca, “Soul Calypso”, was created by Lord Shorty to respond to societal interest changes. The music essentially was calypso with sexualized vocals and a faster pace. As we look into her musical content, one of her most popular songs, called “It’s Carnival” talks about an annual event held in the Caribbean. This carnival happens to be the most significant event in the world. One of her lines of the song, she states, “Carnival in T&T is so special to all ah we” where T&T is Trinidad and Tobago and she is expressing intrapersonal significance. The content of her songs typically pertains to her Caribbean roots, with this as one example.As Destra further explored the genre, she reached both an overwhelming struggle. Destra Garcia wanted her fan base to grow but it was fundamental for her to stay true to her roots and her Caribbean culture. The struggle with this was that she knew that her traditional values might need to be compromised to allow for a more open mind when working with outside artists to grow to her full potential. She believes that with a larger audience, it would be easier to implement the less popular sounds of Soca, ultimately bringing the genre back from a pop version to its origin while allowing for more exposure than before. She also makes mention that the biggest setback she faces is the pressure she feels from Trinidad to stay within traditional confines of the Soca style. All in all, Garcia cautiously is proceeding into new grounds, responding to modernity in order to keep expanding her fan base. She mentions that she is hoping to be able to maintain exploring her artistic boundaries while still having her culture and Trinidadian fan base stay loyal.
