MANY compare Natasha Benjamin’s singing to “the voice of an angel.”

The mezzo-soprano takes pride in making people smile and dance with her performances.

And after working on cruise ships for several years, she has anchored herself back home in TT.

Benjamin, 46, told WMN she began singing as early as eight years old while attending the Lower Morvant Government Primary School.

“I actually started off in calypso,” she said.

“So I would have been taking part in the Junior Queen competition and that sort of stuff.”

She also participated in the school’s calypso competition and placed second.

While she could not recall the title of the song that her mother, Una Benjamin, wrote for her, she was able to recite it almost perfectly.

She sang, “I mehself didn’t listen to miss, doin’ dat and ah doin’ dis/When school over, is time to go, bacchanal till we reach home…

“We laugh and we sing and we play and we jump…”

She said her mother was her “biggest motivator” at the time.

“She was a singer and background vocalist with Ed Watson and the Brass Circle and back in the days, so I would have kind of mimicked everything she was doing.”

Benjamin continued her songbird ways at the Lower Morvant Laventille Secondary School.

Once they recognised her talent, she said, the teachers believed in and supported her.

“And in 1993, I won the national Junior Calypso Queen with a song called From Laventille to Carnegie written by Raymond Gonzales, one of my teachers.”

He taught science, she recalled.

“All of my teachers at school were a big part of me pushing forward. “They all pushed me all the time, even if they didn’t teach me – even if they weren’t my personal teachers."

So what made her decide to choose music as a full-time career?

She told WMN she had “a few odd jobs” after finishing secondary school but “the singing was still in me."

“I just couldn’t get out of it.

“I remember I was invited to sing somewhere and I was spotted by (local singer) Marcia Miranda at the time, and she started inviting me to sing.

“So I started doing that and then from there, I got noticed by other people and started singing casinos and doing a little bit of background work at the Kalypso Revue (tent).”

But she was still juggling this with her main job as a secretary at a company.

So she had a choice to make.

“At the time, the money as a secretary was not making any sense to me so I was like I want to go work on a cruise ship.”

Her first stint was at Princess Cruises where she worked for seven years.

But she said she needed time to think about starting a family, and she also felt like she needed a break.

[caption id="attachment_1125255" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Three friends, Carla Furlonge-Walker, Nicole Pandohie and Dr Indira Couch enjoy a live perfomance by Natasha Benjamin as she sings at Hyatt Regency Trinidad on Wrightson Road, Port of Spain on December 4. - Photo by Faith Ayoung[/caption]

“My voice was pretty much very overworked because of the amount of time we had to work while we were ther