Features
Melissa Doughty
Turn your devices to ITV and tune in to this year’s edition of The Voice UK and, in no time, the sound coming from it will be familiar.
It’s soca from Rodell “Triniboi Joocie” Sorzano.
The 33-year-old UK-based Trinidadian is a semi-finalist on the 11th season of the long-running Voice UK show, which started in 2012. He will give his semi-final performance on Saturday.
This year’s judges are Will.i.am, Anne Marie, Sir Tom Jones and Olly Murs.
Triniboi Joocie’s journey to being the first soca artist on the show started 12 months ago.
However, he is not the first to perform at such international shows. In 2018, Olatunji Yearwood competed on the United Kingdom’s X Factor. Other Trinidadian, non-soca artists have also competed in these types of shows. Earlier this year, 16-year-old Camryn Champion secured a spot on American Idol.
Triniboi Joocie said, “The pageant decided to contact me. The talent scout for the show made it twice, actually. The first time they contacted me, I refused. I said no. These shows don’t really represent artists that I consider to be artists. I think it’s quite manufactured.’
In the next stage, Triniboi Joocie will compete against two other teammates with only one from Team Anne Marie making it to the final round. –
“Then they contacted me again and assured me that they were interested in me as an artist and what I bring to their platform. Essentially. I think they were changing their whole reach in the show and how he’s represented.”
There were many auditions before he made it to the live stage with the blind auditions.
“It was just a very exciting, exciting experience. But I made sure I could be just as true to who I am and they appreciated that.”
He first appeared in the fifth episode, which aired on October 1.
At the audition, he was asked to sing four songs.
“I came in, I sang and they said: “Yes! Yes! Trinidad, we want this.”
After numerous meetings and more auditions, he advanced to the blind auditions. In the blind audition on 1 October, he sang his 2020 single Bottle Over Head, which saw British singer/songwriter and judge Anne Marie make a quick comeback.
“I was the first act on the second day of auditions. At 6 in the morning I gave them authentic soca,” he said.
He then progressed to calls, in which he did a Trinidadian-style version of Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber’s I Don’t Care.
It is important for Triniboi Joocie to be an authentic soca artiste on this platform because, for him, he feels that the soca that hit the charts before has either been diluted or has different elements added to it.
Being at shows like these is opening people’s minds more to soca and its many possibilities, he said. It was making people more open to the indigenous genre being played all year round, as opposed to just at carnival time.
During the calls, Triniboi Joocie was sent a song two days in advance and then had to make his own.
“And I asked them, ‘How far can I take the song?’ and they said, ‘Listen, ‘mix it up.’ Do it Joocie. Give us Trinidad.’ And I said, ‘Sure? Because I’m going to take it out of that box and approach it like a Soca Monarch show, basically.’
And they said, ‘Yes. Do you.”
He said that’s when he was able to stand out from other competitors.
He thinks that because soca is such a new genre, it can be difficult for some to describe.
“What Anne-Marie said is, ‘Triniboy is fun’. They’re associating my performance as fun. It’s happy.
“But I really want them to understand that there’s craft. There’s depth to it. There’s layers.”
He believes that moving to the UK in 1998 allowed him to immerse himself more in TT culture because he was away from it. He grew up in Laventille before moving to the UK. He is also a science teacher.
That’s why he’s an ambassador for Notting Hill Carnival. He has been advocating for soca in Europe for more than a decade, said a press release about his entry on the show. He was also the UK Soca Monarch in 2012 and 2013.
In June, Triniboi Joocie performed the late Lord Kitchener’s Pan in A Minor, backed by a 100-piece ensemble, at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations at Buckingham Palace.
Regardless of the Voice UK result, Triniboi Joocie aims to give his best for soca, TT and the region. Using a cake analogy, he said it was just one of the many “flavors” he was adding to his career as the bowl was still being stirred.
Another press release said his decision to take part in the show was a deliberate move to advance his career as well as showcase TT and Caribbean culture.
Triniboi Joocie also thinks that once people take music seriously, it will be recognized.
“Quite often, we are afraid to be as authentic as we need to be. To make it palatable, we water it down.”
Afrobeats is now mainstream music because its artists stuck to the roots of their music and were unified, he said.
He said that if soca is constantly being changed, there would be no identity or recognizable factor that would make people say, “This is soca.”
He called on soca artists to be more confident in what they do.
The message that Triniboi Joocie wants the world to take away from his appearance on The Voice UK is that soca is not just about entertainment, it is the song of a people and country that are underrepresented in the mainstream industry, and it also needs to . day in the sun
