Cori Baynes

From the mo­ment Lyn "La­dy Gyp­sy" Steele stepped on­to the stage at Palm's Club, San Fer­nan­do, she im­pressed the pa­trons and judges and ce­ment­ed her­self as one of the crowd favourites. So it came as no sur­prise when Steele, the moth­er of for­mer Road March champ, Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez, got the nod of the judges and took top ho­n­ours at the Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Ca­lyp­so Com­pe­ti­tion. Her melo­di­ous voice en­ter­tained the pa­trons with her ren­di­tions of Zan­doolie's Man Fam­i­ly, and her new song, My Dues, which told of the strug­gles and the un­fair treat­ment met­ed out to her by oth­er mem­bers of the ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty over the years.

How­ev­er, the vers­es car­ried the ex­pres­sion of grat­i­tude and pride over the suc­cess of her daugh­ters, who both have carved their names firm­ly in­to the na­tion's en­ter­tain­ment are­na.

The event was or­gan­ised by the Tu­co South Cen­tral zone, and held on Oc­to­ber 16 in cel­e­bra­tion of Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month.

Each en­trant was re­quired to per­form two songs, one vin­tage song and a new com­po­si­tion. Known for his hard hit­ting lyrics, Mis­tah Shak's per­for­mance of Kaiso Blues, and Stick Man, was enough to win him the sec­ond place ti­tle. Tamei­ka Dar­ius, who per­formed first in the com­pe­ti­tion, was all smiles when it was an­nounced that her ster­ling ren­di­tions of the songs Un­grate­ful You, and Flag Woman, put her in the third spot.

Al­so de­liv­er­ing com­mend­able per­for­mances were La­dy Tall­ish, Mighty Tall­ish, Hezeki­ah Joseph, Fritzy, Ali­cia Richards, and Count Robin. Speak­ing af­ter the com­pe­ti­tion, Tu­co's South Cen­tral Zone chair­man, Steve "Ras Kom­man­da" Pas­call, said he was sat­is­fied with both the judg­ing and the re­sults. "Five peo­ple were judg­ing each cat­e­go­ry and there was a ma­tu­ri­ty in the judg­ing sys­tem be­cause there was no ev­i­dence of bias," he con­tin­ued. Pas­call al­so com­mend­ed the con­tes­tants on their lev­el of prepa­ra­tion for the com­pe­ti­tion. "Be­cause this is Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month, we felt that the ca­lyp­son­ian need­ed to go in­to re­search mode to prop­er­ly rep­re­sent the old­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans." "Lyn is a vet­er­an, and she puts her all in­to her pre­sen­ta­tions and she de­served her plac­ing," he said.