Parang so­ca pi­o­neer Ed­win Ay­oung, fond­ly known as Crazy, was ho­n­oured by Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co) for his ster­ling con­tri­bu­tion to the art form for over 33 years. The event took place at Nu Pub, Wood­brook, on De­cem­ber 1. Among those present were Tu­co pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba and Broth­er Kare­ga Man­dela. They were joined by scores of artistes and well-wish­ers, who shared in the Christ­mas spir­it Tri­ni style. So­ca parang con­nois­seurs sang and danced along to a slew of hits in­clud­ing Coro Coro, Span­ish Woman and Leroy.

Ay­oung was pre­sent­ed with a tro­phy and a por­trait of him­self per­form­ing at Di­manche Gras fi­nals. Among Ay­oung's reper­toire are gems like Yvonne, Maria, Tito Lara, and Put Je­sus In Your Christ­mas. He has al­so been work­ing with the young­sters of Crib to en­sure the sur­vival of so­ca parang. Re­flect­ing on his con­tri­bu­tion, Ay­oung said, "When I pass on, peo­ple will still get a taste of my mu­sic. It will form part of my lega­cy. I know peo­ple thought I was mad when I ex­per­i­ment­ed with parang so­ca."

He laud­ed stal­warts like Baron, Scrunter and Ken­ny J for con­tin­u­ing in the so­ca parang vein. Apart from pi­o­neer­ing so­ca parang, Ay­oung said he had the dis­tinc­tion of pre­dict­ing Amer­i­ca would have a black pres­i­dent (Barack Oba­ma). He urged Trinida­di­ans to sup­port their in­dige­nous mu­si­cal ex­pres­sions-be it ca­lyp­so, so­ca, tas­sa, parang and so­ca parang. "I sup­port Win­ston Pe­ters (Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism) dri­ve to­wards giv­ing every­one a stake in the cul­ture. He wants to in­clude every­one. That is a good move."