Sean Nero

The Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain might have been built to ac­com­mo­date 1,200 seat­ed pa­trons, but all the 800-plus cul­ture lovers at­tend­ing Baron's (Tim­o­thy Watkins) 40th an­niver­sary con­cert on Au­gust 19, want­ed to do was dance. As fate would have it they got mu­sic to do just that on the show pre­sent­ed by Randy Glas­gow Pro­duc­tions (RGP) which fea­tured su­perb mu­sic ac­com­pa­ni­ment by Pel­ham God­dard and The Band Roots for a first-class per­for­mance of Baron and "the pips"-the cho­rus duo com­pris­ing Mar­i­lyn Williams and Ra­mona Pom­pey. John­ny King and Scrunter (Ir­win Reyes John­son) were ide­al guest per­form­ers on the pro­gramme, and added to the mag­i­cal out­pour­ing of mu­sic.

Slow wines, ball­room danc­ing, con­ga-lines, as well as scenes of jump­ing and wav­ing, filled the precincts of the Lord Kitch­en­er (Ald­wyn Roberts) Au­di­to­ri­um as sat­is­fied pa­trons, who were in no way shy about hav­ing fun, re­act­ed eu­phor­i­cal­ly to the de­light­ful groovy and fast-paced mu­sic melodies on of­fer from a cast plea­sured in the de­liv­ery of it. From mu­sic to com­e­dy and the over­all great vibes that per­vad­ed, pa­trons were glad they chose Baron in Con­cert to jump-start their week­end of en­ter­tain­ment. CT Vibe 105.1FM disc jock­ey CG and co­me­di­an Tom­my Joseph host­ed the event and suc­ceed­ed at gen­er­at­ing the right amount of hu­mour, whether they poked fun at one an­oth­er, pa­trons or world events.

Baron did not achieve four decades of mu­sic suc­cess and ex­cel­lence alone and he want­ed to make this clear to his dis­ci­ples. So the "Sweet So­ca Man" pub­licly praised the men who had been re­spon­si­ble for shap­ing his lyri­cal and mu­sic con­tent. They were Wins­ford "Jok­er" Des Vi­gnes and Le­ston Paul. Baron went fur­ther and pre­sent­ed them with awards. Paul was al­ready in the spot­light as part of the line-up of mu­si­cians that com­prised roots, while a rather frail Des Vi­gnes was seat­ed in the au­di­ence. But as the vet­er­an lyri­cist strug­gled to take up the in­vi­ta­tion to come cen­tre-stage, Baron said to him: "Take your time, your part­ner com­ing for you." Scrunter has made a call for a se­lec­tion from the works of the late Grand Mas­ter of ca­lyp­so Lord Kitch­en­er to be played at every show held at the main au­di­to­ri­um at NA­PA. He won the sup­port of the au­di­ence on this call.