DAVID CUFFY

It was no sur­prise that the present gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment style was the ob­ject of scruti­ny by sev­er­al bards when Ca­lyp­so Re­vue staged its Port-of-Spain pre­miere at the SWW­TU Hall, Wright­son Road, last Thurs­day night. Af­ter all, it's no se­cret that the main play­ers in that en­ter­prise (Sug­ar Aloes, Skatie, Pink Pan­ther, et al) hold an af­fec­tion for the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, and are nev­er afraid to "ed­i­to­ri­alise in song" their per­cep­tions of the fail­ings of any oth­er par­ty that holds of­fice. But that is their right, for it is one of the pil­lars on which the ca­lyp­so art form was built. What was sur­pris­ing, though, was Pan­ther's choice not to com­ment on gov­ern­ment is­sues, but make a stir­ring and heart­felt plea for Caribbean uni­ty in a well-craft­ed and com­pe­tent­ly-ren­dered song ti­tled Let's Try Again.

In ad­di­tion, the pop­u­lar San­gre Grande ca­lyp­son­ian of­fered what he termed his Road March con­tender in the form of a wit­ty, up­tem­po, tongue-in-cheek com­po­si­tion called Alas-or is it Ah Last? It was Kwe­si Jef­fers, how­ev­er, who won mul­ti­ple en­cores for Dey Low­er De Bar, a song that made metaphor­i­cal use of a lim­bo bar to de­liv­er its cut­ting po­lit­i­cal com­ment. To­ba­go-based Fitzy gave pa­trons an ob­ject les­son in how to ren­der a ca­lyp­so when he per­formed Dey Gone Where The Mon­ey Is. Teni­cia Coop­er had pa­trons nod­ding their heads in agree­ment to her of­fer­ing Doh Hu(r)t Yuh Head.

Nin­ja al­so made use of metaphor-an All Fours card game-to cre­ate Queen of the Pack, with the ap­pro­pri­ate hook-line "you hold Jack too long." Ol­lie was ef­fi­cient in pre­sent­ing Con­ver­sa­tion, while vin­tage Bal­ly came to the fore in Bush Bath. Ex­pos­er was in con­vinc­ing mood es­pous­ing his be­lief that A Woman Worth More Than That. Af­ter a few sea­sons' ab­sence, the Mighty Tri­ni made a tri­umphant re­turn to the ca­lyp­so stage in­form­ing all that Tri­ni Sail­ing Again, open­ly giv­ing cred­it to com­pos­er Gre­go­ry Bal­lan­tyne (GB) and ace arranger Le­ston Paul for the cre­ation. Fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion he re­ceived a de­serv­ing en­core, a sin­cere ac­co­lade that is some­times cheap­ened by bring­ing back singers to do an ad­di­tion­al verse, re­gard­less.

Two songs of in­spi­ra­tion en­hanced the play­bill, co-em­ceed by Spran­galang and CG, Mar­lon Charles' The Peo­ple's Cry and Pe­o­la Fan­nis' Faith, both rich in mu­si­cal con­tent and lyrics, and ren­dered in fine voic­es. De­von Seales of­fered One Is One, a com­po­si­tion, the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of which ap­peared to sail above the heads of pa­trons. Skatie show­cased La­dy Luck, a po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary that needs a bit of pol­ish­ing if it is to com­pete with Aloes' Doh Force Mih Hand, in which the singer donned a wild west gun­slinger's out­fit (com­plete with six-shoot­er and stet­son) to re­in­force the point. His oth­er con­tri­bu­tion was a sur­pris­ing­ly hu­mourous com­po­si­tion that told the tale of a Chi­nese Kid­nap­ping. In­ter­mis­sion was tak­en at 11.40 pm, and the play­bill re­sumed at 12.20 am be­fore a sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced and tired au­di­ence that was fur­ther de­creased by my de­par­ture soon af­ter.