KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Fay-Ann Lyons-Al­varez is known for be­ing ex­treme­ly con­sis­tent with main­tain­ing a lev­el of phys­i­cal fit­ness that is un­par­al­leled in the so­ca mu­sic in­dus­try. Bal­anc­ing the var­i­ous hats of be­ing a wife, moth­er, so­ca artiste, and fit­ness en­thu­si­ast is all part of her dai­ly rou­tine.

For the past nine years, Lyons-Al­varez has been at the helm of the Hy­brd Na­tion Walk—where friends and fans are in­vit­ed to join her and her team on a pic­turesque pow­er walk up the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Hill in Port-of-Spain.

For Car­ni­val 2025, the so­ca artiste de­cid­ed to take things up a notch by in­tro­duc­ing a new fit­ness event—the Hy­brd Na­tion Boot­camp. “This year I de­cid­ed to do a sta­tion­ary boot­camp at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah,” she said. “Not every­body’s knees can go up the hill. I start­ed on New Year’s Day, and I’m go­ing to go as close to Car­ni­val as pos­si­ble. Every Wednes­day we will be at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.”

Backed by spon­sors, the event is her way of giv­ing back to fans, which in­cludes many chil­dren. “I do have a Hy­brd Kids seg­ment where we fo­cus on fam­i­lies, par­ents bring­ing their chil­dren to ex­er­cise,” she said. “I love do­ing this; it makes sense, and it is ben­e­fi­cial to peo­ple in many, many ways. Health and fit­ness can en­hance your qual­i­ty of life and the way you op­er­ate dai­ly. It can help you save on med­ical bills and ex­pens­es and al­so with fam­i­ly re­la­tion­ships.”

Lyons-Al­varez said the event al­so pro­motes T&T’s unique cul­tur­al of­fer­ings. “It al­so al­lows me to in­tro­duce cul­ture to the peo­ple,” she said. “Not every­one takes their fam­i­ly out for Car­ni­val (Mon­day and Tues­day); this in­tro­duces the chil­dren to the artists who come to sup­port the event and per­form. You can use your cul­ture to do amaz­ing things with your health and fam­i­ly.”

The first event in the Hy­brd Walk se­ries kicked off yes­ter­day. In pre­vi­ous years the Hy­brd Walk at­tract­ed up to 800 peo­ple on Chan­cel­lor Hill. “Every sin­gle year we get some won­der­ful po­lice of­fi­cers who sup­port us,” she said. “I re­al­ly have to thank them. These of­fi­cers don’t just come and stand; they walk and some­times run with the peo­ple go­ing up Chan­cel­lor Hill. They are ac­tu­al­ly in­volved while en­sur­ing every­one is safe go­ing up and back down the hill.”

Daugh­ter Syri joins mom in new col­lab­o­ra­tion

It seems like just yes­ter­day Lyons-Al­varez was on William Munroe’s Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch stage per­form­ing in the Pow­er So­ca cat­e­go­ry and telling the crowd she was feel­ing pain. While she was hold­ing the mike to her preg­nant bel­ly, her fa­ther, Su­perblue, walked up and em­braced her. The crowd erupt­ed when the record­ing of a ba­by’s voice start­ed singing: “… My fa­ther is Bun­ji Gar­lin…” dur­ing her per­for­mance of Meet Su­perblue.

Lyons went on to cre­ate his­to­ry by be­com­ing the first woman to win the 2009 Pow­er So­ca Monarch while her hus­band, the reign­ing monarch Bun­ji Gar­lin (Ian Al­varez), took sec­ond place. Lyons Al­varez al­so won the Groovy So­ca Monarch ti­tle with Heavy T Bumper, with reign­ing monarch Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter plac­ing sec­ond. She al­so copped the Peo­ple’s Choice Award that year.

As they say, life comes full cir­cle, and that babe in the bel­ly, Syri Lyons-Al­varez, has en­tered the world of so­ca her­self, be­com­ing a third-gen­er­a­tion Lyons to do so.

For Car­ni­val 2025, Lyons-Al­varez has col­lab­o­rat­ed with her daugh­ter on Road Meet­ing, a pow­er so­ca tune pro­duced by Travis World (Travis Ho­sein).

“I put her on the in­tro and in the cho­rus,” ex­plained a beam­ing Lyons-Al­varez.

“She is amaz­ing; she does dig­i­tal art; she taught her­self the colour palette to do all the scal­ing and edit­ing and all this tech­ni­cal stuff.

“She is not just in­to the Car­ni­val stuff; she is al­so in­to Broad­way, so she is do­ing Hamil­ton and Rent and all these dif­fer­ent plays. The re­search she does in­to these peo­ple and how she presents the char­ac­ter she is do­ing is amaz­ing for us be­cause, at the end of the day, we weren’t ex­posed to these types of things un­til we be­came adults. We didn’t know about mu­si­cals and stuff.

“She has ex­pand­ed our hori­zon so much in that she is not just Car­ni­val-based but al­so Broad­way-based, and I am ex­cit­ed to see if in the fu­ture she takes Car­ni­val and Broad­way and merges the two in­to some­thing hy­brid and takes it to what­ev­er school she de­cides to go to.”

With Road Meet­ing al­ready en­joy­ing con­sis­tent air­play, Lyons-Al­varez is ready for the hec­tic Car­ni­val sea­son ahead.

“I en­joy my­self, I en­joy the cul­ture, I be­lieve we live in one of the best coun­tries in the world,” she proud­ly stat­ed.

“It’s very dif­fi­cult to find a coun­try that has so many dif­fer­ent cul­tures, races, and peo­ple. There is no war. We have our lit­tle is­sues, but we don’t have war. We don’t have ma­jor is­sues. I am not ex­cus­ing the is­sues that we do have be­cause we should not have them in the first place. But I’ve been to places where dis­crim­i­na­tion was an ac­tu­al thing, and it’s not some­thing they do; it’s a way of life for them.”

If you want to catch Lyons-Al­varez for Car­ni­val 2025, the best place will be at the Hy­brd Na­tion Booth Camp on Wednes­days or the Hy­brd Na­tion Chan­cel­lor Hill Walk on Sat­ur­days. Or you can just head to one of the sev­er­al events where she will be per­form­ing.