NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Na­pari­ma Bowl is set to come alive with the sounds, flavours and art of Trinidad and To­ba­go on April 12, as the Crème Brûlée Fes­ti­val of Arts and Mu­sic re­turns for its sec­ond stag­ing. This time, the show will ho­n­our the late, leg­endary ca­lyp­son­ian Win­ston “The Mighty Shad­ow” Bai­ley.

Pa­trons will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to browse and pur­chase prod­ucts from lo­cal ar­ti­sans, en­joy a range of foods, and take in sev­er­al live per­for­mances. The artiste line-up in­cludes lo­cal stars such as Mi­cal Te­ja, Coutain, Vaugh­nette Big­ford, Er­phaan Alves and Chris­to, among oth­ers — and, of course, Shar­lan Bai­ley, son of The Mighty Shad­ow.

The show’s founder and ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er, Kyle Pe­ters, told Guardian Me­dia he be­lieves ho­n­our­ing those who paved the way in the in­dus­try is cru­cial.

A three-time Road March-win­ning gui­tarist, pro­duc­er and ed­u­ca­tor, Pe­ters said: “The his­to­ry needs to con­tin­ue. We still need to know about these peo­ple.” He re­called teenagers in a Ju­nior Best Vil­lage class not know­ing who The Mighty Shad­ow, The Mighty Spar­row and David Rud­der were — some­thing that shocked him.

“So I think it is im­por­tant to keep their lega­cy alive. They are the ones who paved the way for up­com­ing artistes; they are the ones who would have toiled and made it pos­si­ble for us now.”

He has deep re­spect for Shad­ow, but said what fur­ther in­flu­enced his de­ci­sion to se­lect him as this year’s ho­n­ouree was Voice’s Car­ni­val 2025 song High­er, which sam­pled the ca­lyp­son­ian’s hit Stranger.

“That kind of led my spir­it… just that en­er­gy. And I told the team, and they agreed.”

Singers and mu­si­cians will per­form ren­di­tions of some of the leg­end’s great­est hits from his ex­ten­sive cat­a­logue.

The team de­scribes the show as a “cel­e­bra­tion of un­bri­dled cre­ativ­i­ty, re­flect­ing the rich cul­tur­al ta­pes­try of T&T”. It adds that all at­ten­dees will leave with a deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the “un­par­al­leled depth and bril­liance of T&T’s cul­ture”.

The idea stemmed from a project Pe­ters un­der­took at UWI, St Au­gus­tine, while pur­su­ing his mu­si­cal arts de­gree.

“I de­cid­ed to do a fes­ti­val project in­stead of a the­sis. Orig­i­nal­ly, it was to show­case the tal­ent that comes out of UWI.” How­ev­er, his lec­tur­er ad­vised him in­stead to de­vel­op a se­ries of work­shops teach­ing the busi­ness of mu­sic.

“But I still had the con­cept of the show. So last year I de­cid­ed to go ahead with it.”

He said it was named af­ter the pop­u­lar dish be­cause it is lay­ered and burst­ing with flavour — liken­ing it to lo­cal cul­ture and tal­ent. “I didn’t just want it to be an­oth­er con­cert, which is why there are so many el­e­ments.”

He said the first stag­ing was a suc­cess, adding that he learnt a lot, as it was his first time pro­duc­ing an event. “Peo­ple re­al­ly en­joyed the ex­pe­ri­ence and left say­ing they can’t wait for the next one.”

He ex­plained that the ini­tial idea was to pay trib­ute to Lord Kitch­en­er, but be­cause it was not ex­plic­it­ly men­tioned in the ti­tle, some may have missed the em­pha­sis. “So my plan for shows mov­ing for­ward is to con­tin­ue ho­n­our­ing leg­ends — even those who are still alive.”

Pro­duc­tion man­ag­er Gabrielle Le Gen­dre said a show like this “opens up the space for a dif­fer­ent type of event-go­er”. She al­so as­sist­ed Pe­ters with his fes­ti­val project in 2024.

“There are peo­ple who may pre­fer to go and wine and jam, but there are al­so those who gen­uine­ly want to dress up and at­tend a cul­tur­al­ly cu­rat­ed ex­pe­ri­ence,” she said.

Both al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of sup­port­ing young and emerg­ing tal­ent, which is why the event will fea­ture In­tel­lec­tu­al Chut­ney Monarch Janavi De­ok­ie-Ram­per­sad and ris­ing star DJ Say­eed, among oth­ers.

“We just want peo­ple of all ages to come out and have a good time,” Pe­ters said.

Show­time is at 5 pm.