Singer Natasha Benjamin's career journey brings her home

MANY compare Natasha Benjamin’s singing to “the voice of an angel.”

The mezzo-soprano takes pride in making people smile and dance with her performances. And after working on cruise ships for several years, she has anchored herself back home in Trinidad and Tobago.

Benjamin, 46, told WMN she began singing as early as eight years old while attending the Lower Morvant Government Primary School.

“I actually started off in calypso,” she said.

“So I would have been taking part in the Junior Queen competition and that sort of stuff.”

She also participated in the school’s calypso competition and placed second.

While she could not recall the title of the song that her mother, Una Benjamin, wrote for her, she was able to recite it almost perfectly.

She sang, “I mehself didn’t listen to miss, doin’ dat and ah doin’ dis/When school over, is time to go, bacchanal till we reach home…

“We laugh and we sing and we play and we jump…”

She said her mother was her “biggest motivator” at the time.

“She was a singer and background vocalist with Ed Watson and the Brass Circle and back in the days, so I would have kind of mimicked everything she was doing.”

Benjamin continued her songbird ways at the Lower Morvant Laventille Secondary School.

Once they recognised her talent, she said, the teachers believed in and supported her.

“And in 1993, I won the national Junior Calypso Queen with a song called From Laventille to Carnegie written by Raymond Gonzales, one of my teachers.”

He taught science, she recalled.

“All of my teachers at school were a big part of me pushing forward. “They all pushed me all the time, even if they didn’t teach me – even if they weren’t my personal teachers."

So what made her decide to choose music as a full-time career?

She told WMN she had “a few odd jobs” after finishing secondary school but “the singing was still in me."

“I just couldn’t get out of it.

“I remember I was invited to sing somewhere and I was spotted by (local singer) Marcia Miranda at the time, and she started inviting me to sing.

“So I started doing that and then from there, I got noticed by other people and started singing casinos and doing a little bit of background work at the Kalypso Revue (tent).”

But she was still juggling this with her main job as a secretary at a company.

So she had a choice to make.

“At the time, the money as a secretary was not making any sense to me so I was like I want to go work on a cruise ship.”

Her first stint was at Princess Cruises where she worked for seven years.

But she said she needed time to think about starting a family, and she also felt like she needed a break.

“My voice was pretty much very overworked because of the amount of time we had to work while we were there. We worked every night we did four sets a night for six months at a time. So it takes a toll on your voice after a while especially if you’re the only singer in the band.”

So she returned home for two years.

“Then I moved to Suriname, where I stayed for three years, came back home for another two years and then I was back on the ship again.”

Throughout her time back on land, singing remained her only source of income.

“I’ve never gone back to doing anything else since.”

She started off cruise ship gigs in a Caribbean band that sang at the pool deck, then moved to the lounge.

In addition to Princess Cruises, she has worked on the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship and Norwegian Cruise Line.

But it was at the latter she got to work in theatre productions – a “dream job” of hers.

But she told WMN, “Whenever I got on a ship and saw people in the theatre on the big stage singing to this huge audience and doing these costume changes and all of that, I was pretty psyched and I was like, ‘I want to be there.’

“I tried out many times on the other cruise ships and they kept telling me, ‘We need you in the lounge,’ and in my mind, I was like, ‘Honey, that’s where you need me but that’s not where I need to be.’”

She urged young people to stand firm on their career goals and to not let others undermine that.

“I got turned down so many times from other places, then I got an e-mail from an agency about Norwegian Cruise Ship looking for theatre singers. I was already back home and the auditions were set to be in New York.

“So I wrote them an e-mail and I sent them a video saying I’m from TT and I’d like to audition for this part but I’m not able to come to New York . And they wrote me back the next day and they were like: ‘We love your voice and we love your look.’”

She said she sings “every single genre” of music, from soca and calypso to Broadway show tunes and ballads.

She has also released a few songs like Miss You, a Christmas ballad, and a soca called Keep Them Waving.

People love her voice.

“After performances, people come up to me and say, ‘You sound like an angel.’ I’ve gone through that so many times. So many times.

“At first, I used to think ‘Yeah, right,’ but after getting it so many times I was like, ‘Okay, it must have some truth to it then.’”

Her own opinion on her voice is that it’s “quite sultry and even a little bit seductive at times depending on what I’m singing. It’s a joyful kind of sound.”

She said she always enjoyed having one of her performances be the first time some foreigners heard TT genres of music.

“They absolutely love it.

“Even when we performed in the lounge, we would incorporate soca and calypso into our sets and people just loved it."

Asked what makes a performance memorable for her, she said immediately said, “I love when I can interact with my audience and get them up and dancing or singing.

“I like leaving a venue knowing that I have imparted some sort of joy to the audience that I’m with. I’m not just like standing in a corner singing just because I’m getting paid but I really want people to enjoy themselves and have a good time and when they leave there they should feel like in that moment, ‘I feel happy, I can do this again, I can go back to see this girl again.’”

She said nervousness is a thing of the past, so she is always able to command her performance spaces.

“I think because I started so young, that would have been an earlier phase…You know how kids are when they’re very young and not afraid of anything. So that phased that out.”

Some artistes she admires include Machel Montano, Nadia Batson, Tina Turner and Whitney Houston.

Is she done with working on cruise ships for good? She thinks so.

“The plan is to be done done,” she said with a laugh.

“But for right now, I’m back here in Trinidad and I’m working on building my life.”

She added, “I want people to know you can do what ever you set your mind to.”

Those hoping to catch one of her performances can visit the Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain on Wednesdays from 6.30-9.30 pm, Royal Princess Casino at South Park Mall on Fridays from 10-11.30 pm, and at East Gates Mall on Saturdays from 10-11 pm.