The Canadian singer Garnetta Cromwell deserves to be read in her autobiography "Time To Shine" whose publication is scheduled for 2025. Her life is a story of battles and overcoming. Born in Montreal, she used to put her ear to the speaker where her mother played Aretha Franklin albums, and at the age of five she became deaf. After partially recovering the hearing after a surgical operation, she continued with the lessons of Aretha, Mavis Staples, Gladys Knight and Diana & The Supremes, and her future as a singer was irremediably left to her. In the mid-90s, she started out as a singer and drummer in a reggae band in Toronto. After that experience she had to leave music and moved to Nova Scotia to get a job and make money to move forward. Racist problems in her work took her to the human rights courts until she obtained recognition from the court and made the fight against racial discrimination her own. She worked in a penitentiary and joined the army, where racial problems continued in both places. Her physical complexity led her to the sport of weightlifting, participating in international competitions, achieving several gold medals as well as the Canadian record in the specialty. In 2021, one of her three children came close to dying after being shot, which finally made Garnetta reconsider her life journey until then and decide to definitively return to music. In 2022, Garnetta decided to form her own band, The DaGroovmasters, and record this album.
"Time To Shine" is Garnetta Cromwell's first work and features an exceptional singer, a limitless songwriter and a terrific band. These 10 songs summarize a journey in the key of soul and blues for the life of a woman who has made it this far even though this same life has made it very difficult for her. It's conscientious and superlative work.