Pre-show rituals & backstage secrets

Backstage, at this stage in my career as a singer, is usually where people can still easily see me, so it is more like off-stage than backstage. But I do have rituals. Here they are:

1/ Deep breathing (to calm the nerves)

2/ Lip trills (if I can isolate myself in a bathroom I do them to scales or arpeggios or combinations of both)

3/ Articulation exercises (taught to me by Anne-Marie Baksh-Brimacombe)

4/ Vowels on arpeggios or scales, or vocal warmup using VocalEase app

5/ Memorization drills (if I'm doing a new song, poetry or spoken word) - this usually involves me trying to connect images with lyric lines, so it's easier to remember successive lines. This also helps calm my nerves and gives me something to look forward to.

If late, I try to fix my hair and makeup before the show at the venue. I am a naturalista so usually this is quick: I just take down my twists for a crisp twist-out, or I neaten up my edges with a rat-tail comb. If my throat is really sore from trying to teach in poor acoustics, my ritual must involve the chewing of raw ginger. This can be nerve-wracking because when I know my vocal folds are tired I don't want to do 3 or 4 which are important for helping me know what my voice can actually be asked to do during the performance.

I haven't sung effortlessly and unconsciously since 2008. I had a bad cold in July of that year, and after my voice stopped sounding like a male version of myself, I was not able to just let my voice fly wherever I wanted it to within my three-octave range anymore. It would hurt too much afterwards, and one night of sleep wouldn't fix it. Now, when I sing live, I have to do these rituals, or else my self-consciousness would completely ruin the expressiveness of the performance.

(Below: Me before performing at Gulf City Mall, Lowlands, Tobago, for International Women's Day 2014. Do you notice the TWO bottles of water?)