Soca music, Carnival anthems and Caribbean party classics
Trinidad and Tobago · Calypso
Sandra DesVignes-Millington — calypso's most important female voice of her generation.
“Cleansing Fire (2017 Soca).” Official audio/video via JulianspromosTV (verified promoter channel).
Singing Sandra came up through the Mighty Sparrow's Young Brigade tent in the 1980s and became calypso's most important female voice of her generation. Her 1987 song “Die With My Dignity” (also known as “Sexy Employees”) took a stand against men demanding favours from women seeking work, and won her the National Calypso Queen title. In 1999 she became only the second woman ever to win the Calypso Monarch crown, and in 2003 the first woman to win it twice, singing songs about healing, the ghetto, and the African diaspora. She also formed the United Sisters quartet with Lady B, Tigress, and Marvellous Marva, a show of women's strength in a male-dominated art. Proud of her Grenadian roots in Gouyave, she sang for the voiceless until her death in January 2021.