By Danielle Swain
In Guyana, you learn early when to hold your breath. Certain rooms tighten when certain people walk in. In sport, in culture, in school, in work, Linden people tend to be those moments. Competitive and allergic to mediocrity, they arrive with a reputation that precedes them. If there’s a Lindener in the room, you’re usually watching them. Or hoping you don’t have to go up against them.
Is it the bauxite? The ore that becomes aluminium, resilient and malleable under pressure?
Linden seems to produce people the same way.
That reputation sat reservedly one night at Searoc Bar in the form of Diana Chapman. She wore a silver and black oversized American football T-shirt and thigh-high black patent boots, simultaneously glamorous and understated. If you didn’t know who she was, you might have missed her. If you did, you were already paying attention.
Searoc felt like the right place for the encounter. The bar once sat on the Georgetown Seawall, where karaoke nights routinely turned ordinary Guyanese into legends, at least for a song. These days, it lives on Lamaha Street, still holding space for creative voices. Its owner, Horace Knights, readily agreed to host the interview, even after the frantic Mashramani season in Georgetown forced two postponements. There was no impatience that the art had arrived late. At Searoc, it seems time bends for the right reasons.
Recently, the bar has begun to feel like something more than a nightlife stop. Consistently, it’s becoming a kind of new ‘Upscale’, the now mythic bus park venue that nurtured poetry, music, and performance through the 2010s. Like its predecessor, Searoc has hosted powerful poetry nights and local showcases, bringing together music, comedy, poetry, dance, and drama under one roof. It’s the sort of space where genres blur, and Guyanese talent is allowed to try.
Chapman, Guyana’s reigning Soca Monarch, and only the second woman to ever hold the title, says she’s an introvert. A homebody who likes the cinema, Beyoncé and Tina Turner. She loves her son, her mother, her family, and Linden.
“Once you have people you can trust,” she says, “it is possible.”
The way she talks about them makes it clear: this is her foundation. Her support system. The place she keeps returning to, even as her career stretches outward.
Don’t mistake her quietness for shyness.
When Diana started to sing, Searoc fell into the kind of silence that only happens for two reasons: embarrassment or greatness. The silence rose into’ mhmms’, a whistle from the back, heads bobbing at the bar. We knew which it was.
Chapman has been performing since she was a child, “I was very young… probably about eight years old,” she recalls. It was Mashramani season, and she was watching rehearsals at school.
“The students were up there. They were enjoying themselves, and I wasn’t part of that. In that moment, I felt left out.” Every afternoon, she’d sneak a look. “Just take a peek…and hope that one day, I would be selected.”
The following year, she was. The rest is history. Mash after Mash. Stage after stage.
“Once I hit the stage the first time… every other year, I was on stage for Mashramani. I just continued performing throughout my entire life.”
That persistence would later define her Soca Monarch journey. Second place, three times. A third. One year she didn’t place at all. “Every time you get second,” she says, “you feel like they just don’t want to give it to a female.”, she made a decision. “You’re going to have to give it to a female,” she told herself. “And that female will be me.”
When she finally won in 2025 with ‘Welcome to My Home’, in Linden, it wasn’t just personal. It was symbolic. The first woman to win Soca Monarch was Shelly G. The second was Diana Chapman, fifteen years later. “It was like… finally,” she says. “I finally did it.”
Chapman doesn’t romanticise the journey. She talks openly about the mistakes that come with growth. “Forgetting lyrics cost me a monarchy once,” she says plainly. “If you don’t put in the work, it shows.”
Theatre training, endless rehearsals – yes, even travelling from Linden to Georgetown for them – and discipline learned the hard way are what she credits for keeping her grounded.
“It’s really tough being in the public eye,” she says. “People are very critical. Rehearsing helps with your confidence on stage.”
What surprises many people, given her dominance in calypso and soca, is where her heart actually lives. “I love all genres of music,” she says, “but R&B, pop music, that’s my favourite.” She talks about Michael Jackson. About performance and production. “I love entertainers who go up on stage and put on a show – the lights, the dancers, the props. That’s my thing.”
For a long time, she says, she had to do what worked in Guyana, now, that’s changing. Her focus has shifted outward, beyond Guyana. Beyond expectation. “My focus now is worldwide.”
Still, Linden remains the anchor. “That’s where I’m from. I’m a Lindener,” she says, with pride. “We rally around each other.” No matter how far she goes, she insists, she’ll keep lifting talent from her hometown. “I could be on a Grammy stage… I will always push talent from my hometown.”
As DJ Kenny set up his karaoke equipment and took song requests, Chapman was asked what she would say to her younger self, the girl watching rehearsals from the sidelines.
She paused.
“I hope she is proud,” she said. “It’s been such a long journey.”
Around her, the bar began to stir again.
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