Pe­ter Ray Blood

Trinida­di­ans seem to have lost their sense of hu­mour, at least the com­posers of hu­mor­ous ca­lyp­so. Judg­ing the se­mi-fi­nal of the Hu­mor­ous Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion on Sat­ur­day night, at SWW­TU Hall, Port-of-Spain, was a painful ex­pe­ri­ence as most the con­tes­tants sang ca­lyp­soes that were not re­mote­ly fun­ny.

Sit­ting with my fel­low judges through the te­dious four-hour ex­er­cise, I mused on some great hu­mor­ous ca­lyp­soes of yes­ter­year. Some which came eas­i­ly to mind were Bed­bug/Tarzan/ Cat Brain/ Mag­is­trate Try Him­self (Spoil­er); Last Elec­tion/Snake in the Bag (Cypher); Farmer Brown/Ah Soul Man/Screw koo cheek (Fun­ny); No Draw­ers/Back to Ba­sics (Trinidad Rio); Ah Eas­ing (GB); Iron Man/ Fe­male Stick­fight­er (Zan­dolee); Kakaroach (Kitch­en­er); My Lor­ry/ Hold de Pussy (Blakie); Ly­ing Ex­cus­es/Phillip My Dear (Spar­row); Streak­ing Freak­ing (Mighty Duke); Chick­en Chest (Chris­to); Maria (Crazy); and, To Kill ah Cat (Black Prince).

What be­came ob­vi­ous to me on Sat­ur­day night is that our ca­lyp­so­ni­ans need to at­tend a school of ca­lyp­so com­pos­ing and learn what dif­fer­en­ti­ates a so­cial and com­men­tary com­po­si­tion from a hu­mor­ous dit­ty and from a po­lit­i­cal song.

Some of the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, al­so, seemed to mis­con­strue the dif­fer­ence be­tween smut and hu­mour, not re­al­is­ing that they are not one and the same.

Un­doubt­ed­ly the night's strongest singer was Kid Kalaloo (Julien Hunte) of Tu­co's East Zone's Kaiso Kar­a­van. His ar­tic­u­la­tion and de­liv­ery of Change of Ad­dress was per­fect so much so the sold-out au­di­ence ap­plaud­ed wild­ly when he com­plet­ed the song, beck­on­ing him to re­turn to the stage for an en­core. Em­cee God­frey Pierre had to re­mind pa­trons that en­cores are not en­ter­tained in a com­pe­ti­tion.

Com­ing like a breath of fresh air, Kalaloo was the 20th of 29 se­mi-fi­nal­ists to ap­pear. He metic­u­lous­ly re­lat­ed his woes ofac­com­mo­dat­ing a woman in his home who sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly brought in her "fam­i­ly" caus­ing him to end up in the mad house in St Ann's. Kalaloo was al­so the win­ner of last year's se­mi-fi­nal as well.

The night's biggest dis­ap­point­ment was Brown Boy (Knol­ly Brown) from Kaiso House who for­got the lines of his sec­ond verse.

Singing the fun­ny Ho­mo­sex­u­al Rights, al­though he even­tu­al­ly ren­dered his four stan­zas, the judges' penal­ty cost Brown Boy a place among the eight fi­nal­ists to meet de­fend­ing cham­pi­on The In­cred­i­ble My­ron B in the fi­nal, sched­uled for April 5, at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. Brown Boy is now con­tem­plat­ing whether he should re­sign from com­pe­ti­tion as it is not the first time he has had a mem­o­ry lapse in a com­pe­ti­tion.

Hail­ing from Cro Cro's Icons tent, Fritzy (Fritz Tay­lor) al­so im­pressed the judges with his Wha' Dey Take me For, se­cur­ing the sec­ond high­est score.

Kaiso House's La­dy Aeisha (Eliz­a­beth George) al­so suc­ceed­ed in gen­er­at­ing much mirth among pa­trons when she sang Size 12 and Up, a dit­ty that sup­ports the be­lief that the length of man's foot re­veals oth­er mea­sure­ments of his anato­my.

Nin­ja (Ken­son Nep­tune), a vet­er­an of Ka­lyp­so Re­vue, sang What to Write, a dit­ty that chron­i­cles his 18 years of mak­ing it to the Young Kings fi­nals yet nev­er win­ning the ti­tle. Nin­ja itemised all the much younger singers who have won the ti­tle. Nin­ja is well pop­u­lar on the parang so­ca cir­cuit, his best known song be­ing Parang the Wrong House.

In terms of pre­sen­ta­tion, An­ton Roberts of The Mas­ters tent, the­atri­cal­ly per­formed Di­ana, in­clud­ing hav­ing some­one dis­trib­ute pow­er mints to pa­trons as he ex­tolled on the ben­e­fits of suck­ing Di­ana (mints).

Recipes of the Past was the ti­tle of the song that placed Mag­nif­i­cent Glow's Cas­ton Cu­pid in­to the fi­nals. He too pre­sent­ed his song with the use of props which demon­strat­ed tra­di­tion­al, in­dige­nous ptions to trap a man.

The on­ly prop Dr Rhythm (Shawn Mc In­tyre) need­ed for his pre­sen­ta­tion was a cute ba­by boy in arms. A crowd-pleas­er through Car­ni­val at Klas­sic Ru­so tent, Rhythm gave in­tan­gi­ble proof of his pa­ter­ni­ty via the provoca­tive My Son.

The eighth qual­i­fi­er for the fi­nal was Juice­man (Dick Lochan) of Cen­tral Rain­bow Stars, singing Fright­en to Get Old.

A few of the un­placed se­mi-fi­nal­ists drew some re­sponse from the au­di­ence, some not nec­es­sar­i­ly for the cri­te­ri­on be­ing judged. Among these were Tem­po whose Hol­i­day saw his do­ing much high kicks and shrieks; Pie­man, as blue dev­il, singing The Judges Fork; Slicky whose cho­rus for Cough­man was ac­tu­al­ly of him cough­ing; Wiz­ard of ID who sang Ah Not Lend­ing with a live cock un­der his arm; and, Mr Mack for his fa­cial ex­pres­sions in Half Dead PP.

De­fend­ing monarch My­ron B was seen in the au­di­ence on se­mi-fi­nal night and he said is ex­cit­ed to face the chal­lenge of the eight qual­i­fiers.

Panora­ma 2014 cap­tured on DVD

On the steel­band front, this year's scin­til­lat­ing steel­bands' per­for­mances at the Na­tion­al Panora­ma Medi­um and Large Con­ven­tion­al Fi­nals are cap­tured "live" on DVD.

Cel­e­brat­ing the Evo­lu­tion of Pan - Panora­ma 2014, is a DVD pro­duced by Pan Trin­ba­go, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ad­vance Dy­nam­ics Home En­ter­tain­ment which has al­ready demon­strat­ed its ca­pa­bil­i­ty to de­liv­er a high end qual­i­ty prod­uct.

The DVD promis­es to be a col­lec­tor's item with sights, sounds, in­ter­views and mu­sic nev­er be­fore ex­pe­ri­enced on dig­i­tal for­mat. It al­so promis­es to fill the void for many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans at home and abroad and those who want a sou­venir of na­tion­al cul­ture and her­itage pre­served and dis­played like nev­er be­fore.

Disc One fea­tures 11 large bands, in­clud­ing cham­pi­on Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove, Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars, bpTT Rene­gades and Wit­co Des­per­a­does; while Disc Two com­pris­es ten medi­um bands, in­clud­ing Pan El­ders, Courts Sound Spe­cial­ists of Laven­tille, Petrotrin Katzen­jam­mers and NGC Cou­va Joy­lan­ders, as they ap­peared at the Grand Fi­nals at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

Avail­able in Sur­round 5.1 Sound, the DVD Video is a trib­ute to the skills of the mu­si­cians, tuners and arrangers.

The orig­i­nal Panora­ma DVD can be pur­chased at most of the ma­jor mu­sic stores, i.e. Cleve's One Stop Mu­sic Shop, Fred­er­ick Street; Cros­by's Mu­sic Cen­tre, West­ern Main Road, St James; Kam's Record Store, Long Cir­cu­lar Mall; MM, Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port; Sanch Elec­tron­ics; and, at Pan Trin­ba­go Head Of­fice, Park Street, Port-of-Spain.