Ebuzz News
Archived: Terri Lyons Has A Lot on Her Mind. Her Heart Hurts For Soca and Culture.
She has given us great music. Whether the songs she’s delivered time and time again, have made it to the mainstream soca circuit in Trinidad and Tobago, is another story. For Terri Lyons, her fight to maintain the true sound of the Soca genre, is more important. She believes we’re losing the essence of what Soca is, altering the sound a bit too much, something she says will have adverse effects for the culture of Trinidad and Tobago, in years to come.
Terri Lyons wants youths to be educated from early childhood, on the various cultural elements of Trinidad and Tobago.
EBUZZTT.COM spoke with the younger of SuperBlue’s two daughters in entertainment, recently. She admitted that evolution, while often hard to accept, is essentially inevitable, but lamented that while much is changing about Soca music’s sound, the attitude of the population when it comes to accepting the genre’s worth and that of the artistes who give so much of themselves, to keep it going, is not changing. “One thing that isn’t changing much is our attitude toward our own culture- to us, to keeping our heritage and history alive,” said the younger Lyons. She wants the people of Trinidad and Tobago particularly, to defend the genre more. Lyons is also calling on the powers that be, to play a more instrumental role in influencing the youth from a young age, to appreciate the culture of the country. “Every school in T&T should have a pan room- a properly sound proofed pan room. That is our national instrument. That is something we should have. We have no respect,” said a passionate Lyons.
The young mother of one who doubles up as a frontline vocalist with Nadia Batson’s all female band, SASS, says while many people would not want to hear what she has to say on this topic, she feels Trinidad and Tobago places more effort on promoting foreign artists that they do, their own. “A lot is changing but again I say, the attitude toward our own culture, isn’t. There is just too much back biting in the industry and a lack of appreciation for the artistes,” she argued.
Lyons has teamed up with Grenada’s Mr. Killa on a brand new single ahead of Carnival 2019.
Terri has released a new single with Grenada’s Mr. Killa. The track which is called, “Wey Yuh Dey” is described as a call for all Caribbean people to show the rest of the world, just how hard islanders party. The track is laced with Afro beats and rides the Afro Jab riddim. She certainly isn’t against collaborations and fusing the sounds of the Caribbean, but for Lyons, the heartbeat of Soca must not be sacrificed for global appeal. She says when it comes to the soca music genre, she feels there should be no compromises and the world should know it as Soca- regardless of how it’s spelt. She says any attempt to change the name of the genre, which was birthed in Trinidad and Tobago, is disrespectful and should never be accepted.
Her only son, Mathias, a major driving force in her life, Terri is calling for more to be done in the school system in Trinidad and Tobago, to educate the impressionable youth on the history of T&T’s culture. “Kids in school need to be educated about our culture. They know more about Fetty Wap and Lil Uzi, than they know about Kitchener and Sparrow or Cro Cro, or Shadow. We have to start to educate the kids from young,” she pleaded.
Lyons said it is sad that many of this country’s foundation artistes, on whose shoulders soca music was borne, are not being respected in the land of their birth. “We talk a lot of big talk about this and that, but the people in charge really aren’t doing anything,” she said.
CHECK OUT TERRI’S NEW SINGLE WITH MR. KILLA.
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Ebuzz News
T&T Visual Artist AndyVenture Readies for First Solo Exhibition at the Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago.
The Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago will host the inaugural solo exhibition of Trinidad-based visual artist and musician AndyVenture, known professionally as VENCHA. OVER YA HEAD opens on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 and runs through July 4, 2026. Admission is free and the public is invited to experience a body of work that deliberately resists easy interpretation — placing the viewer in direct contact with ideas that exceed ordinary perception.
OVER YA HEAD is a multidisciplinary exhibition spanning painting and visual narrative. The works explore perception, ascension, limitation and expanded states of human experience, presenting images that challenge fixed ways of seeing reality and imagine possibilities beyond ordinary existence.
Drawing from Einstein’s theory of relativity and mathematical concepts of higher-dimensional space, AndyVenture treats the exhibition as an invitation to encounter ideas that operate at the outer limits of human comprehension. The title itself is both provocation and promise – the work is not designed to be immediately understood, but to be genuinely felt.
Central to the exhibition is an evolving visual mythology: recurring figures known as Ahomi and Dem appear across paintings as anchors of a larger conceptual world that AndyVenture has been steadily constructing across his practice.“I want the audience to encounter something that sits outside of familiar understanding. There isn’t an expectation of immediate understanding. The experience is about confronting something that operates beyond what is easily grasped,” said Ventura.
A Little About The Artist.
AndyVenture (VENCHA), born Andre Allong, is a Trinidad-based visual artist and musician whose practice spans painting, music and multimedia expression. His work draws on graffiti art, hip hop and rapso lyricism, comic book art, science fiction and contemporary culture to create vibrant, conceptually layered works that move between the personal and the cosmic.
Visually, his work reflects the influence of legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby, whose expansive sense of scale and form shaped how AndyVenture approaches composition and impact, alongside local luminaries Leroy Clarke and Carlisle Chang, whose practices carry a strong sense of vision and cultural identity. He further developed his artistic foundation through the Visual Arts Certificate Programme at The University of the West Indies.
Conceptually, the work is rooted in a rejection of cycles of conflict and suffering that are routinely accepted as fixed features of human existence. In their place, AndyVenture imagines the possibility of an evolved human consciousness – one oriented towards perception, potential and transformation. One of the conceptual anchors running through his practice is the interplay between the words axis and access – a linguistic shift that reframes mathematical structure as a metaphor for perception itself and how different ways of seeing might open entirely different experiences of reality.
“I’m interested in the possibility that human perception and behaviour can evolve beyond those patterns. The work comes from a rejection of the cycles of conflict and suffering that are often accepted as part of human existence.” –AndyVenture (VENCHA)
