You know her from her many acting roles in theatre at Centre Stage as well as being one of the hosts of ’Smile Jamaica Morning Time’, but did you do know that she can also hold a note with the best of them? In recent weeks, with the rebranded festival song competition 2020, Sakina Deer has been propelled once again into the spotlight, this time for her singing and performing prowess as she stacks up against some heavy musical hitters and is easily holding her own.
An introvert living in an extrovert’s body, Sakina shared that while she loves to sing, she previously never thought to do so for an audience, much less at a national level, but when asked to stir response to duties call, she thought about it long and hard and then concluded: Why not?
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“My manager felt that I needed to boost my visibility online so I was doing a song of the day series on Instagram and I really enjoyed it as it was cathartic especially with covid -19 going on. Someone then said ‘hey you sound good ennuh, you should enter festival this year’ and I said no sah as that requires me singing in front of people and anyone who knows me know that singing in front of people is not my thing but they said think about it and so I did and said why not get out of my comfort zone and give it a go.”
Unlike most of the other entrants who are seasoned veterans, Deer comes to the festival platform a relative virgin to the music industry. However as a born entertainer, she was able to not only see the big picture but formulate a plan that had her embrace every aspect of the process and working alongside song writer Jon Williams and others, she learnt the craft and made the song memorable, sweet, relevant, relatable and simply Sakina’s.
Her 2020 entry’ We Are Jamaica’ speaks to renewed hope and pride of the people in all that makes the island diverse and unique. Jamaicans have to unite together in order to move forward and that is why one hand and indeed one pot cover ‘caa clap’.
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