Hi, my name is Ananda aka Santiwah to my friends, I am the site administrator for Sokah2Soca. This is the story of Sokah2Soca and how I got into blogging about our music and culture. This story started in a chat box and evolved, I will try to be brief with the details. Many years ago, during the start of Wack Radio 90.1 FM (San Fernando, Trinidad), the site webpage had a chat space that facilitated open chat. It got crazy at times with people going after each other with total disregard for how their messages were received. It is easy to say things using an anonymous pen name, it empowers people to say things that they would not do face to face. At that point, I realized how bad and, at the same time, how good communicating one's thoughts online can be to others. I was intrigued by this concept (communicating and curating relevant information for visitors to the site) and wanted to do more; I created my first blog. My intentions were good but that first attempt (at blogging) was a joke!
I thought that since people are empowered to say things when behind a keyboard, shrouded in secrecy without an identity to the world I could use a Trini phrase to name the blog. At that time it made sense to me and using that phrase was a no-brainer. It was a classic mistake but I went with, "When Cock Get Teeth". I am sure you understand that 'Trini saying'... but guess what, the name pulled up porn when a search was done for that blog name. After laughing my arse off, I decided to scrap it and move on to better things. Then came Typepad, a very nice site but I got bored doing Trini things only and quit that blog; it is still on Typepad but inactive for years now. Full disclosure, the name of the blog on Typepad is Santiwah, which is the name I use to post articles to Sokah2Soca.
As time went by, I decided to give it (blogging) a go again and started 'TriniZagada'. That name was done out of fun and was chosen from childhood memories of my experiences with the Trinidad house lizard. Yes, 'back in the day' there were these little brown lizards that lived in the houses, usually hiding behind the laths of the galvanized roofs. That blog dealt with culture, short stories, childhood memories, and some calypso and carnival information. Gradually, I started posting more information about Calypso and Soca music. Why? The answer to that question takes me back to my interactions with the 'We Are Kulture Krazy' radio station once again. WACK radio continued to expand its reach/change and those who followed the growth of the station became more involved chatting about the music that was played by the jocks hosting the shows. The radio personalities asked questions and the listening public (mainly foreign residing Trinis) called into the radio station to answer and ask questions. We fed off each other and we all were better informed about our music and culture. I got the idea to transform the blog to curate and disseminate Calypso information and then Soca music information that kept flowing into the radio station and from sources on the Internet.
Once again, I got the 'fiddling itch' and a change had to come once again; I decided to change the name of the blog. I came up with KaiSoca to reference Calypso and Soca but for some crazy reason, I went with Sokah2Soca. That was done because I thought it was cool to use the original spelling of the genre, Sokah, and show the move to Soca (Roy Boyke misspelled the name for an article he published about Shorty doing 'Soca'). It just felt right to me and voila, from Sokah to Soca became Sokah2Soca.
This current site has close to 5,000 posts dealing with the music, people, and culture of Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean region. The important links are nestled in the menu at the top of the blog; that menu is just awesome! The daily posts now deal with Soca music releases since Calypso remains seasonal (Carnival period only). We intend to continue posting and celebrating the new music styles released throughout the English-speaking Caribbean region. We ask you to share the site address with your peers; we are closing in on 3 million page views to date; thank you to everyone who helped us get to the 3 Million page view mark. So there you have it, Sokah to Soca is now a music blog. Sokah2Soca = Soca!
Santiwah