Pe­ter Ray Blood

The week­end past was the most en­joy­able one for me, with plen­ty to do. Aside from Mon­day's mam­moth Eman­ci­pa­tion pro­ces­sion, there were two tru­ly en­joy­able events that both in­volved lots of good food.On Sat­ur­day night, Bel­mont Boys' Sec­ondary Ex-Pupils As­so­ci­a­tion (BELEX) host­ed of An Evening of Culi­nary De­lights and on Sun­day, St James Tripo­lians held its Men Can Cook con­test be­tween the band's sec­tions.

Held at Bel­mont Boys' Sec­ondary RC School, on the cir­cu­lar road, the BELEX lads re­al­ly out­did them­selves. For the oc­ca­sion, they in­vit­ed oth­er past-stu­dent orgni­sa­tions, and treat­ed pa­trons to en­ter­tain­ment by PCS Sil­ver Stars Steel Or­ches­tra and ca­lyp­son­ian Tam­i­co Moore (Spicy).Schools ac­cept­ing the in­vite to par­tic­i­pate were St Mary's Col­lege, Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, St Joseph's Con­vent (PoS), Holy Name Con­vent, Prov­i­dence Girls' School and Ari­ma Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary.

To say the va­ri­ety of culi­nary de­lights was mind­blog­gling, as well as de­li­cious, would be an un­der­state­ment. For me though, the high­light of the night was when Sis­ter Ar­lene of St Do­minic's Home sur­prised all in at­ten­dance by vol­un­teer­ing to get the karaoke ses­sion rolling, singing Glo­ria Gaynor pop­u­lar women's an­them I Will Sur­vive.

The best de­ci­sion I made on Sun­day evening was to ac­cept Kei­th Simp­son's in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend Tripo­lians' Men Can Cook. Yes, the food was noth­ing short of heav­en­ly, with the band's dou­ble sec­onds sec­tion win­ning the cov­et­ed prize for "best cook­ing sec­tion," but it was the five-hour chit chat with Kei­th and his broth­er Roger that re­al­ly made my night.It re­quires much more space than I have at my dis­pos­al to­day to re­port on the wealth of in­for­ma­tion the broth­ers shared with me about pan, its mu­sic and Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tions as they are tru­ly liv­ing archives.

One of the things that amazed me was the fact that Tripo­lians pa­n­yard ac­tu­al­ly sits atop of a chil­dren's ceme­tery, and next to the in­fa­mous Hang­man's Ceme­tery, "home" of no­to­ri­ous mur­der­er Boysie Singh. As I sat in the pa­n­yard awestruck, Kei­th fur­ther dis­closed that a Ro­man Catholic ex­or­cism had to be per­formed years ago to qui­et the sounds of dead chil­dren run­ning around and laugh­ing play­ful­ly at night in the pa­n­yard.

With the re­cent pass­ing of archivist Gideon Maxime, I am strong­ly ad­vis­ing Pan Trin­ba­go, the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, the NCC and NC­BA, and Ken­ny Phillips' We Are Cul­ture Krazy (WACK) ra­dio sta­tion to seek out and ex­ploit the knowl­edge pos­sessed by the Simp­son broth­ers, as well as the ex­haus­tive mu­sic and print col­lec­tion on the his­to­ry of the steel­band and T&T Car­ni­val in their pos­ses­sion.

The Latin Night launched at Jen­ny's on the Boule­vard, Port-of-Spain a fort­night ago, is off to a tremen­dous start. To be held every Wednes­day night, Jen­ny's cel­lar lounge has been filled to its rafters as Latin dance en­thu­si­asts show off their fan­cy moves on the well-pol­ished wood­en dance sur­face.Last week's event al­so at­tract­ed of­fi­cials from His­pan­ic mis­sions, in­clud­ing Venezuela Am­bas­sador Mar­cia Casa­do and her Cos­ta Ri­can coun­ter­part Ri­car­do Thomp­son Thomp­son.

Ma­jor loss­es tosteel­band move­ment

Last week, in one day, the steel­band and Car­ni­val fra­ter­ni­ties lost not one, but two stal­wart mem­bers with the pass­ing of Ald­wyn Chow Lin On and Gideon Maxime. Chow Lin On, fa­ther ra­dio sta­tion boss Tony Chi­nese Laun­dry Chow Lin On, was a past pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go and founder of San­gre Grande's Cordettes Steel Or­ches­tra, while Maxime was one the coun­try's fore­most archivists/re­searchers of pan and mas.Maxime, 64, host­ed the much-lis­tened-too ra­dio show San­coche every oth­er Sat­ur­day on I95.5 FM, as­sist­ed by sight-im­paired tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tor An­tho­ny Tom (Stormin' Tom.) Maxime au­thored pub­li­ca­tions that were wide­ly con­sid­ered com­pre­hen­sive ref­er­ences for many cul­tur­al en­thu­si­asts and stu­dents.

Aside from his in­valu­able work with Cordettes, pan and the com­mu­ni­ty of San­gre Grande, Chow Lin On was al­so a vi­tal tech­ni­cian in Pe­ter Min­shall's mas fac­to­ry play­ing a ma­jor role in the cre­ation of cos­tumes like Man Crab, Tiger Tiger Burn­ing Bright, the Mid­night Rob­ber, Man Rat, and Callaloo Danc­ing Tick Tack Toe.The void left by the pass­ing of these two men will be ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to fill. On be­half of all T&TG read­ers, Pulse ex­tends con­do­lences to their fam­i­lies.

Whistling in meh head

The past few weeks I've been haunt­ed by whistling. Yes, the whistling on Machel Mon­tano's newest hit sin­gle Gyal Wuk, ap­pro­pri­ate­ly on the Whis­tle Rid­dim. Al­so on the same rhythm is Wuk Yuh Waist by Duce Man, fea­tur­ing Swap­pi. While this cut was time­ly for Bar­ba­dos' Crop Over, I would have liked to see what would have hap­pened had the So­ca Em­per­or re­leased it around No­vem­ber month-end for our own Car­ni­val.

I am still un­shak­en in my be­lief that 2011 had some of the best so­ca mu­sic com­posed and re­leased for quite some­time, led of course by hits like Ben­jai's Tri­ni, Kees' Wot­less and Iw­er's Come to Mih. Nonethe­less, one of the most cre­ative ca­lyp­soes I've heard this year is a dit­ty sung by Daz, ti­tled Wrap­ping Fork in Nap­kin. This song is scan­dalous­ly fun­ny and was ob­vi­ous­ly well thought out by its com­pos­er.

Con­tin­u­ing to be among my favourites this year are Touch de Road (Busy Sig­nal),Wine to the Side (Ben­jai), I am Blessed and Woi Woi (Blaxx), Con­sid­er it Done (Fay Ann Lyons), Wine (All Rounder), Flirt (Farmer Nap­py), Ah Ting (Kees and Ker­win Dubois), Wig­gle (Tim­mel Ri­vas), Hard Wuk (Machel Mon­tano), Sweet for my Sweets (Lil Bits), Dusty (Pelf), and Un­cle Jack and Be Care­ful what you ask for (Karene As­che).