Living the Life with Orande!

BY LA SHAWNA GRIFFITH

Miguel ‘Orande’ Hamilton is a Barbadian singer, songwriter, and host of Live with Orande. He has recently released Gi Way De Ting ft Rio B & DaSilva on YouTube.

Who is Orande and why is he so passionate about music?

Orande who is a professional vocalist lives and resides in Barbados and first got into music at his church where he was the worship leader. He soon realized that he had a passion for singing and wanted to become a singer for the rest of his life.

“I started forming various groups outside of Church and I started doing small shows across Barbados. This led to people in the industry seeing me and inviting me to perform on bigger sites.”

Orande has made a name for himself in Barbados being a backup singer for House of Soca Calypso Tent. He said the experience working with known calypsonians was amazing yet challenging at times.

“The experience was amazing at times and still challenging especially in the first stages of my career, but I took the sweet with the sour because I really love what I do and I always had a goal in mind that I wanted to reach, so I struggled until I achieved it.”

 Outside of being a professional singer and backup singer he is also a vocal coach. He said becoming a vocal coach was never in his wildest dreams until his friends started asking him for vocal advice.

“I never wanted to be a vocal coach. However, as I started progressing in my singing career a lot of my friends who had an interest in singing began asking me for some tips on how to become better. All of a sudden they were turning to me for advice. This led to persons seeing the work that I was doing with my friends and deciding to contact me about my vocal coaching services and it just flowed organically from there.”

Orande’s recent single Gi Way De Ting features an afro-centric song that has an upbeat rhythm. The song forces you to dance to its catchy lyrics and rhythm. He said the hook, which was sent to him by his producer, was outside of his comfort zone, as he prefers to sing R&B. However, the words started to come to him, and Gi Way De Ting was born. He said he has had a positive response to the song thus far.

“The response has been amazing with many persons in the creative sector reaching out to me letting me know that they enjoyed the song. The respect I received from the cultural industries on the song started a fire in me to bring something else that would be even better than Gi Way De Ting.”

The multi-talented vocalist has embarked on a new venture this year, which arose out of the COVID-19 shut down occurring in Barbados. He has begun his Instagram live series, “Live With Orande” where he interviews artistes from Barbados as well as artistes with Barbadian heritage.

“Live With Orande is a show I wanted to do for the longest time, I am such a fan of “Talk”, so it just seemed like a natural progression when I had the idea to do a show. We are currently living through one of the worst pandemics that the world has ever seen. I used the lockdown to my advantage and I just started going live with creatives to share our experiences coming up in the industry and inspire young artiste who was interested in pursuing a career in the arts.”

Orande said one of the highlights for him since starting Live With Orande has been the response he has received from the creative community, as many artists have reached out to him to congratulate him for the stellar work he was doing with the show.

He said he would love to interview Edwin Yearwood and Machel Montano on his show as they are both legends in the art form and he is a fan of their particular styles of soca music. He said the feature that has stood out the most to him thus far was with Mikey Mercer and Kirk Browne.

Orande invites people who may want to be a part of his show to follow him on Instagram @orande_hamilton246.