Artiste Tionne Hernandez is back on the soca stage like she never left. Enjoying every minute of this year’s Crop Over Festival so far, the Starta Pack singer is feeling the love from the fans.
She sat down for a candid chat with Weekend Buzz during which she shared what she’s been up to, why she stepped away from the music scene and what her plans are now she’s returned.
To date, Tionne’s discography includes Island Moon featuring reggae artiste Gyptian and a Christmas Cheer in 2013. More recently, she dropped soca tunes In My Corner, In My Feelings, Home, Wet, Toxic, Breathe, Slow Wine (on the Goddess Riddim) and Fine Twine (on the Jam Puff riddim).
And in case you’re wondering, Tionne said Crop Over has been going “very good”. Her music was released in May and she’s received good feedback and messages. She’s being booked to perform at various events including Rise later this month.
She loves the Crop Over Festival and wanted to contribute this year. She conceptualised the popular song Starta Pack and started writing it before taking it to Shana Pull De Trigga Hinds who co-wrote with her. Hinds also wrote or co-wrote some of her other songs.
Tionne, 28, has plans to release other songs this year outside the festival, which is one of her favourite times of the year. She likes the music, hearing the artistes, the entire vibe the festival brings and the energy she feels at parties and fetes.
But there was a time, she told Buzz, that despite moderate success, music was somewhat of “an uphill battle”, one she kept struggling with to do better and be better, but it wasn’t working.
“I never left fully. I stopped singing soca about 14, 15 years old. Then I was into R&B, which was maybe the Rihanna effect. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do pop music and such so for a while I was just singing at school events. Shana used to manage me. We were 15 and 17 years old and we used to go from school to school doing routines with dancers and we were doing work, but it was within secondary school.
“I was really popular among schoolchildren especially coming off doing soca. When I entered the schools, a lot of them used to know me. We used to have fun doing school pageants.
“From there, when I was around 18 years old and leaving Combermere to go to University of the West Indies (Cave Hill Campus) to do marketing, it was specifically so I could market myself if I decided to jump into the music industry. I wanted to understand how to make myself a product that people would want to invest in.
“I can’t take credit for the idea of studying marketing. It was George Thomas, my manager at the time, who [told me] to study marketing because it allowed me to still be creative in an academic space.”
Tionne didn’t stop singing even though she was at university.
“I was still singing but it was just R&B. I was in a group called Phoenix with Rhea Layne and Tye Blue and we used to perform at pageants and other small gigs. I also did Honey Jam and Honey Jazz for a few years before I stopped singing altogether.
“While at UWI, I decided I wanted to just focus on my studies and after I started working, being a regular citizen. Then I was working in the background with Marlon Legall when I was about 19 years.
“He invited me to be part of his choir, the Elite Vox, and I’m a member to this day. He has done wonders for my voice in understanding harmonies and being part of something bigger than me,” she told Buzz. Tionne was in the choir that performed at NIFCA last year.
She explained that back then she didn’t like the sound of her voice.
“I love music. I love performing but I felt as though my voice was not what I wanted it to be.
I am very critical of what I do, I watch recordings of my performances to try to critique and try to improve. So while performing, I was battling my insecurities. It was a case of ‘I like this, but I don’t know if this likes me back’.
“The first year I auditioned for Honey Jam I didn’t make the cut and I thought that everybody was saying, ‘This girl can’t sing’. That took a toll on my confidence and made me wonder about investing so much time and money, money I didn’t have, to do music when there was no reward,” she said, reflecting on that period of her life.
She shared she had to overcome the need for instant gratification and wanting people to pay attention to what she was doing right away.
So Tionne did what so many other aspiring entertainers do. She got a day job because she couldn’t rely on singing and music solely to pay the bills. She knew it wasn’t practical to wish for a big break so she could reap the rewards she hoped for.
Being a mother, she dug deeper within herself and recognised she had to commit to her beliefs so she could teach her son by her example and not just pay lip service to her dreams.
She returned to soca about three years ago, thanks to Hinds. Her initial goal when she contacted her was to help write music, work in the background and contribute to the music industry while tapping into and expressing her creative side. She did not intend to be up front as a vocalist.
Hinds had other ideas.
“She told me she had a song – Slow Wine – she wanted me to sing with Nikita. Shanta Prince and Faith also had songs on the Goddess riddim). I was pregnant with my son (he turns two next week) at the time and thought, ‘If Shana is telling me to sing, maybe I should’.
“During COVID, when you felt as though everything was coming to an end and life was shutting down, you reflected on your life and realised there were doors you should have walked through that you neglected, so I seized the opportunity when she asked me to and we’ve been running ever since,” she recalled with a smile.
As she headed back to the studio, she was more confident with her voice and using it as a tool and seeing where she could go with it. There was “such an adrenalin rush” and recording with Barry Hill at Dreadhawk Productions “was a breeze”, she said.
With renewed focus, Tionne is proud of her journey, the twists, and turns, and where she is now. She will be staying the course and knows that with God’s help, her investment in herself will pay dividends.
“I intend to stay here, and I will keep singing for as long as possible,” she said. (GBM)
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