Hinds just keeps on rolling

Alison Hinds is aptly daubed the “Queen of Soca”. Her powerful, emotional vocals and high-energy live shows are legendary in the Caribbean. Her first solo album, Soca Queen, is a diverse selection of soca tunes with hot, pulsating rhythms with a standout song ‘Roll It Gall’. It became an international hit a decade ago and is still a favourite wherever soca fans party. Like all great records, it has transcended all genres of music and is ubiquitously played at every event.

Hinds has won numerous awards and gleans rave reviews wherever she performs.

Hinds’ album Caribbean Queen delivers her positive message of love and upliftment for one and all and is a celebration created for her fans worldwide. She is incredibly popular in Jamaica. It spawned combinations with Richie Spice ‘King and Queen’, Jah Cure ‘Call On Me’ and Shaggy ‘Can’t Let My Love Go’. Her classics ‘Roll It Gal’, ‘Togetherness’, and ‘Faluma’, are also included in the album with a mix of high energy to mid-tempo as well as the soulful ballad ‘Island Girl’.

Hinds is a proud Barbadian although she was actually born in London on 1 June 1970 and grew up in Plaistow on the east of the city. Both of her parents were from Barbados, her father a worker at Ford's Dagenham plant. When she moved to Barbados with her mother, aged 11, after her parents split up, Hinds joined the soca band Square One as soon as she finished high school.

Hinds competed in the Richard Stoute teen talent contest in 1987, finishing third. She was a lead vocalist in the popular band Square One, and recording several albums with the band before leaving in 2004 after her daughter Saharan was born. Hinds won the Barbados Song Contest in 1992 with a duet with John King ‘Hold You in a Song’, and the Road March in 1996 and 1997 and Party Monarch competition in Barbados in 1997.

After 11 albums and numerous Caribbean hits and tours, Hinds took a break from the band in 2004 to get married and start a family, and soon after she appeared on a remix of Kevin Lyttle's brilliant ‘Turn Me On’.

When Lyttle's song became a massive worldwide hit, taking soca places it had never been before, the opportunities increased and Hinds began considering a solo career. Her first solo track, ‘Roll It Gal’, was released in 2005 and topped the charts in Barbados, Trinidad, and Jamaica and was a hit in many other countries. She has recorded a ‘Roll It Gal’ remix collaboration with Machel Montano so reaching another generation of fans.

Hinds lives in Barbados with husband Edward Walcott and 13-year-old daughter, Saharan, on a horse farm, which her husband manages. Her band, The Alison Hinds Show, formed in 2005, with Hinds the main singer and most of the other members of the band young dancers and musicians.