KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Grena­di­an-born artiste Bla­ka Dan (Wren­roy Ogiste) grew up in the streets of En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, at a time when gang vi­o­lence was promi­nent in that “hot spot” com­mu­ni­ty.

The artiste, a fi­nal­ist in the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­ons, de­vel­oped a love for so­ca mu­sic from a very young age. His in­spi­ra­tion to pur­sue the genre came from the late Blaz­er Dan who was al­so from that com­mu­ni­ty.

“Be­ing a ghet­to youth grow­ing up in En­ter­prise, the im­me­di­ate role mod­els I saw were the gang­sters; nev­er knew any­thing else,” he said.

“I grew up in church but when you’re young, you look at com­mu­ni­ty in­flu­ence. When Blaz­er Dan got through with so­ca mu­sic, it was as­ton­ish­ing to me, so much so that I be­lieved I could do it as well. I took the good out of what he did in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Bla­ka Dan’s so­ca re­lease, Bless­ings, is one of the biggest songs for Car­ni­val 2025. Writ­ten by the artiste and pro­duced by Damion “Pap­py Boi” La Pompe and Joseph “Tus” Thomas of Loy­al­ty Fam­i­ly, the tune has tak­en over the air­waves, fetes and streets.

“The song, Bless­ing, isn’t just about re­la­tion­ships but, to me, cov­ers any sit­u­a­tion that may be deemed a tragedy and works out for the bet­ter for you in the long run. Hard times are not the end,” he said.

“The suc­cess, thus far, has been tremen­dous. The re­cep­tion giv­en to me from Trinidad and To­ba­go feels like a ‘wel­come home Bla­ka Dan’ mo­ment. I’ve imag­ined this mo­ment a mil­lion times but nev­er once thought it would be like this. I’m grate­ful.”

Bla­ka Dan moved back to Grena­da to pur­sue his ca­reer in the so­ca in­dus­try in 2004 at the age of 18.

“The de­ci­sion to move to Grena­da was hard, leav­ing my friends be­hind es­pe­cial­ly,” he said.

“The ini­tial move was to vis­it my dad in Grena­da for the first time. I end­ed up stay­ing.”

Bla­ka Dan got his break­through in 2012 with the sin­gle, 3 Dol­lar Bread—a track show­cas­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, lyrics and an in­fec­tious melod­ic arrange­ment.

The very next year, Bla­ka Dan won the Groovy Monarch ti­tle in Grena­da with his song, Whole Day We Jam­ming, which was lat­er remixed in 2015 by the late Blaxx.

“That felt amaz­ing. Mu­sic has lit­er­al­ly saved my life. Tal­ent has saved my life,” he said.

“Hav­ing a gift has saved my life and when you’re re­ward­ed for your ef­forts is the cher­ry on the top.”

Bla­ka Dan has stayed con­sis­tent in the groovy genre and has per­formed his mu­sic in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in the USA, Cana­da and the UK.