The sky is the limit

We rising, we rising, we woman rising,

(Easlyn Orr, cited in Ottley 1992, p. 154)

In February 1999, two women of Afro-Caribbean ancestry won their respective societies' highest musical honours. On 14 February, Singing Sandra was crowned Trinidad-Tobago's Calypso Monarch 1999 – the second woman ever to win this coveted title, a full twenty-one years after the country's first woman calypso monarch, Calypso Rose. Two weeks later in the USA, Lauryn Hill received five Grammy awards, the most in any single year for a female performer or a hip-hop artist. This trend continues in Great Britain, where ‘rude girl’ DJ Patra has a growing posse of fans, and in West Africa where the pop music stylings of Benin's Angelique Kidjo and Mali's Oumou Sangaré enjoy mass followings.