Kavelle Anglin-Christie, Staff Reporter
DJ/singer Heather Cummings. - CONTRIBUTED
YOU CAN'T help but cheer, stomp your feet, dance, when you hear Heather Cummings sing.
Yes, Heather Cummings, the disc jock - she is also singer, and a good one too.
Her latest release includes Give me Back the Love and Hope You Dance. A few years back, she emerged with Hanky Panky Love. Now, Cummings' sultry voice is a hit among fans and her songs have been getting heavy rotation on the radio.
However, merging the two careers has its difficulties. Cummings says she sometimes feels uncomfortable playing
her songs, although they are requested by her fans.
GREAT RESPONSE
"After a while people used to call and argue with me about not playing my own music. They have tracks that they call their favourite tracks, so the response has been great ... but being on the radio and playing your own songs is difficult - at least for me. My mother always told me not to blow your own horn, but I think my songs have a very strong message, so I will play them from that angle, but it's still the weirdest," she said with a coy smile.
Like many singers, Cummings started singing when she was a child attending church. "I started singing when I was six years old ... then while I was going to church, I was singing in this gospel group, it was with my sister, two other ladies and myself. We did a lot of gospel shows and one year we even won the silver medal in the gospel festival." She says that was almost ten years ago and after that, she took a hiatus from music.
BACKGROUND VOCALIST
She later re-emerged as a background vocalist for Yasus Afari. "That was the first secular performance that I did ... it felt OK to me mainly because I was moving from gospel to cultural music," she said of Garnett Silk's birthday bash.
Since then she has toured and sang back-up for a number of artistes, including Black Uhuru, Sizzla, Maxi Priest, Buju Banton, Diana King and Luciano. She also did background vocals on Luciano's Sweep Over My Soul and Sleep With Angels on Shaggy's Clothesdrop album. "I gained a lot of experience in those five years," she says of her touring experience.
Now that Cummings has come full circle, she is preparing to release her debut album by September this year. "I am tempted to call it 'People Change' but I'm not sure yet. There will be a little gospel on it ... I also teamed up with Sizzla for a song originally done by Chakka Khan ... fans should expect everything. Expect me to be very fun-loving, conscious and romantic."
