Sokah Origins 'festival'

ONE only has to look on Nailah Blackman’s social media pages to see the many places and spaces she’s visited. Whether it’s driving through the desert for four hours to get to Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival or performing with Bosnian-born Swedish DJ Salvatore Ganacci in New York, Blackman has experienced music events in many forms.

She hopes to create a blend of these experiences with Sokah Origins Worldwide: The Festival Edition.

Blackman’s annual concert will be held on December 7 at Paraiso Gardens, St Margaret, south Trinidad. Many of TT’s top artistes will appear on Blackman’s stage including Voice, Patrice Roberts, Kees, Blaxx, Destra, Jaron Nurse, Erphann Alves, Sekon Sta, Farmer Nappy, Trinidad James, Shal Marshall and Olatunji.

Hennessy Carolina, the concert’s host and rapper Cardi B’s sister, is one of the international surprises at the event. DJ Boof, the DJ for the Wendy Williams Show which is aired on Fox and BET channels, is also expected to be there.

“He is going to come and do a North American-themed set... We are also bringing in a lot of executives from Universal Records, from YouTube music, Sony as well as France’s Because Music group,” Blackman’s manager Anson Soverall said.

He added her team is always seeking to grow the event and to have people expect something different from Blackman’s events.

“If you would have looked at Nailah’s career path, she would have travelled all over the world, did so many new festivals, events, places, and countries.

“She is basically bringing back, in her own little way, bits and pieces of the things that she would have experienced out there, that was just different from a party. She wanted to find a way to incorporate that into our concert,” he said.

He added that even the show’s format was changed to “more mimic a Coachella” and the venue will be transformed to include a lot of the elements Blackman and her team encountered on their trips.

Asked if there were plans on turning the event into a music festival, Soverall said, no, as they still wanted it to be Nailah’s show. But in a small way that it was like a music festival as there is a “very large cast of artistes...”

Next year, Blackman’s fans can expect the launch of her clothing line called Sokah Gyal and also look forward to a number of collaborations with artistes such as Shal Marshall, Olatunji, and Jamaican dancehall singer Konshens.

Sokah Origins is a concert meeting a festival, Soverall said.