Sean Nero

Pro­mo­tion of the ca­lyp­so art form must nev­er be­come sea­son­al, but rather re­main main­stream says Lu­ta­lo "Broth­er Re­sis­tance" Masim­ba, pres­i­dent of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co). Speak­ing at a re­cep­tion host­ed by His Ex­cel­len­cy Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards and wife Jean Ramjohn Richards at the Knowsley Build­ing, Queen's Park, on Fri­day, the Tu­co of­fi­cial em­pha­sised that the mu­sic should al­ways be em­braced. "This is the mu­sic that will com­fort our na­tion in times of cri­sis, this is the mu­sic that we could em­brace to go for­ward and make our state­ment to the world, this is the mu­sic that would teach and reach all of our peo­ples in this twin-is­land Re­pub­lic be­cause, by ca­lyp­so, our sto­ries are told," he said.

He laud­ed the ef­forts of the Pres­i­dent and his wife in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the event and said no mat­ter how tight their sched­ules were, they al­ways made time to toast the ob­ser­vance of Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month and ul­ti­mate­ly cel­e­brate the peo­ple who have been and con­tin­ue to be pil­lars of the art form. "We re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that as Head of State, you could see the im­por­tance of what we do; that you could wel­come us in­to your pres­ence and we give thanks for that." Broth­er Re­sis­tance told ca­lyp­so­ni­ans they should not take the Pres­i­dent's hos­pi­tal­i­ty for grant­ed. Live per­for­mances from reign­ing Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Karene As­che, de­fend­ing Na­tion­al Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch Aaron Dun­can as well as an ex­tem­po face-off be­tween reign­ing cham­pi­on Shel­don John and Joseph "Lin­go" Vau­tor-La Place­liere filled the precincts at Knowsley to the en­joy­ment of the gath­er­ing.