DAVID CUFFY

He has been writ­ing and per­form­ing his own work for the past 50 years and con­tin­ues to charm and fas­ci­nate au­di­ences with sto­ry-telling and hu­mour.

Last Sat­ur­day night at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain, was an­oth­er oc­ca­sion on which a large turnout of pa­trons was on hand to en­joy the bub­bling well of hu­mour that is Paul Keens-Dou­glas, as he reached in­to the in­ner­most crevices of our­selves and our cul­tures, and brought joy and feel­ing to the re­al sweet­ness of our Caribbean so­ci­eties.

De Band Passin was the ti­tle of the 2012 edi­tion of the an­nu­al Keens­dee Pro­duc­tions stag­ing of Tim Tim, a ti­tle lift­ed from the first po­em he ever wrote. It was an evening of clean com­e­dy and plain old sto­ries that gave an in­cred­i­ble in­sight in­to the coun­try's his­to­ry.

A stage back­drop con­sist­ing of en­larged copies of past news­pa­per ar­ti­cles of Keens-Dou­glas' work, and a set made to re­sem­ble a book­case with the books' spines show­ing sev­er­al of his pub­li­ca­tions, in­clu­sive of Tan­ti At The Oval, Bobots, Is Town Say, Twice Up­on A Time, and oth­ers, cre­at­ed the mood for the oral show­case by one of the best-known racon­teurs and so­cial com­men­ta­tors in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.

The top­ics he cov­ered in­clud­ed crick­et, su­per­sti­tions found in Caribbean is­lands, fool­ish peo­ple, char­i­ty shows, judg­ment day, spon­sors, and even the Chris­t­ian sto­ry of cre­ation, re­told in his inim­itable style. He com­ment­ed on how peo­ple in this coun­try en­gage in a lot of talk, sug­gest­ing in­stead that we take time to lis­ten. "Why you think the words 'silent' and 'lis­ten' are made with the same let­ters," he asked rhetor­i­cal­ly.

Keens-Dou­glas has al­ways ex­pressed con­cern over the lack of re­spect that sto­ry­telling re­ceives in terms of State al­lo­ca­tions, and the con­se­quent need for those who love the art­form to per­se­vere in or­der to keep it alive. The re­mark­able thing about his work is its wide ap­peal, an ap­peal that cov­ers all class­es and age-groups.

Al­so fea­tured on the pro­duc­tion were guest artistes pop­u­lar vi­o­lin­ists Janelle and Ja­nine Xavier of Xavier Strings, and jazz per­former, Vaugh­nette Big­ford who, ac­com­pa­nied by gui­tarist Theron Shaw, put their unique spin to pop­u­lar ca­lyp­sos Progress and No Mon­ey No Love.