Newly-crowned National Calypso Monarch, Roderick "Chucky" Gordon, yesterday admitted to being shocked by claims that Sunday's results were altered in his favour.Gordon, the son of the late well-known musician, calypso judge and cultural activist Roland Gordon, was particularly disturbed by an allegation that his stepmother had something to do with his victory.
He explained, "Norma Clarke, she was my stepmother when I was very young. She and my deceased father, they were together, and that was a long time, when I was in primary school, so I don't know, based on that, and the fact that my father died several years ago, she could still be considered my stepmother."He said, however, that Clarke was not on the judging panel when he won with his renditions of Wey Yuh Think and Wedding of De Century, so talk of her alleged involvement was just malicious.
"At the end of the day, I would expect negative comments from all circles. Is Trinidad and Tobago we living in, you know," he said."We living in a kind of disconnected society, where people don't know all the facts. I don't want to be the one to say I deserved to win, but based on comments from others, that the two songs were delivered over the two rounds at a very high standard, but at the end of the day you expect negativity."
Noel and others have also commented on Gordon's Wedding of the Century, saying it was not true calypso.At the end of his delivery of the song depicting a marriage between soca and chutney, Gordon brought on stage three iconic representatives of chutney, pan and soca in the form of Drupatee Ramgoonai, Ray Holman and Super Blue.
"Calypso remains the root of everything we try to celebrate, rapso, chutney, even the chutney and soca Chucky sang about, and no disrespect to Chucky or the song, but at a calypso competition where the theme is 100 years of calypso being recorded, for somebody to come and sing about the marriage of chutney and soca and you depict the chutney aspect of the thing more than the soca aspect fo the thing, that is the height of disrespect," Noel argued yesterday.
In defending the song, however, Gordon said, "Oh my goodness. Oh Lord, oh God, this society is something else. "First and foremost, if they listened to the song, listen to how the music was treated, listen to the melody, you hear calypso, you hear the elements of pan in it, you hear elements of the tassa. Listen to how the verses are structured, it's calypso in its original form. The tempo is calypso. The song talks about a fusion, a marriage of cultures, it's obvious you will have to get all elements of our indigenous artform involved."
He added, "So if I had sung a soca song, would they have said I should not be judged. If I had sung my popular song Blazing, would they say I should not have been judged."