DAVID CUFFY

Ac­cord­ing to the pro­mot­er, it was "not just Valenti­no@73–The Con­cert, but Valenti­no@73–The Ex­pe­ri­ence."

What a pleas­ing ex­pe­ri­ence it turned out to be at the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, where a full house of pa­trons gath­ered last Sun­day evening, for the trib­ute con­cert.

The con­cert paid homage to Em­rold An­tho­ny Phillip, deemed "a cul­tur­al icon and ca­lyp­so mes­sen­ger of the high­est or­der."

Pre­sent­ed by The Lega­cy Con­cert Se­ries, the pro­gramme's play­bill took us on a fas­ci­nat­ing jour­ney through 50 years of Valenti­no's mu­sic, par­ti­tioned in­to the­mat­ic pe­ri­ods in his ca­reer, through a blend of live per­for­mances by his peers and choirs, and dance rou­tines by his col­leagues in the per­form­ing arts.

More than 30 of his out­stand­ing com­po­si­tions were rein­ter­pret­ed, re­de­fined and pre­sent­ed in two seg­ments un­der sev­en themes iden­ti­fied as The Ini­ti­ate, The Ac­tivist, The Rasta­far­i­an, The In­ter­na­tion­al, The Mas­quer­ad­er, The Philoso­pher, and The Sur­vivor.

The huge cast of tal­ent­ed en­ter­tain­ers in­clud­ed King Lu­ta (Morel Pe­ters), Black Stal­in (Dr Leroy Cal­liste), Mar­velous Mar­va (Mar­va Joseph), Eu­nice Pe­ters, Heather Mac­In­tosh, La­dy Adan­na (Mar­sha Charles), Bri­an Lon­don, Ras Kom­man­da (Steve Pas­call), Abebele (Neil Bap­tiste), Short­pants (Llewellyn Mac­In­tosh), Lasana (Den­nis Cox), Soft Touch (Emerold Pe­ters), Di­a­mond (Patrick Lewis), 2014 Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch Ronal­do Lon­don, Ane­ka Collins, Cre­ole (Wil­fred Bark­er), Cyril Hunte, Ricky Phillip, San­cha Sci­pio, Joel Phillip, El­e­ments Dance Com­pa­ny, Fyz­abad Con­nec­tion Dra­ma Group, Suite Chorale and lo­cal jazz vo­cal­ist Vaugh­nette Big­ford.

Each per­former brought a cred­itable in­ter­pre­ta­tion to Valenti­no's ca­lyp­soes. Nev­er­the­less, there were stand­out per­for­mances that gained wide­spread ap­proval among au­di­ence mem­bers. Among them were Heather Mac­In­tosh's ef­fort at Bark­ing Dogs, Ricky Phillip's take on Stay Up Zim­bab­we, Car­ni­val Sto­ry by Black Stal­in, Smokey Joe by Lasana, and Tal­k­a­lyp­so cham­pi­on Short­pants' dra­mat­ic stan­za on Where Kaiso Went, that had pa­trons call­ing for more.

Birds That Fly High, one of Valenti­no's more pop­u­lar com­po­si­tions, was pre­sent­ed in three high­ly en­ter­tain­ing for­mats.

Vaugh­nette Big­ford gave it a bril­liant jazz twist, ac­com­pa­nied by Theron Shaw on gui­tar; Ras Kom­man­da of­fered it with a rhyth­mic reg­gae beat; and the duet of Ane­ka Collins and Re­nal­do Lon­don sung it to a swing­ing bossa no­va rhythm.

In the pro­gramme's sec­ond seg­ment, a throne-like chair, built by Ju­nior Bis­nath of Con­struc­tive Ter­mites was brought on stage, and Valenti­no, who was en­joy­ing the per­for­mances from his seat of ho­n­our in the front row, was es­cort­ed on stage by ca­lyp­son­ian Eu­nice Pe­ters to oc­cu­py it, sur­round­ed by his fam­i­ly. A huge birth­day cake (his 73rd birth­day was the fol­low­ing day, Ju­ly 7) was pre­sent­ed, and Abebele led pa­trons in singing his unique Hap­py Birth­day song.

For the fi­nale Valenti­no and his son Joel (on key­boards) teamed up to of­fer a spir­it­ed ren­di­tion of Keep On Singing, pri­or to which Lu­ta sang his trib­ute com­po­si­tion Ode To Valenti­no. It was then time to bring pro­ceed­ing to a close, with the peo­ple's ca­lyp­son­ian do­ing his sig­na­ture se­lec­tion, Life Is A Stage, com­posed over 37 years ago, with the full house of pa­trons singing along, mer­ri­ly.

Valenti­no made his first ap­pear­ance at the Big Bam­boo Ca­lyp­so Tent on Park Street, Port-of-Spain some­time in "ei­ther 1961 or 1962." He was known then as Robin, but an­oth­er ca­lyp­son­ian "stole" the name. In De­cem­ber 1965 he au­di­tioned for the Ca­lyp­so Car­a­van, head­ed then by Kitch­en­er. He was se­lect­ed on the cast, but did not have a so­bri­quet, so Kitch­en­er gave him the name "Valenti­no." Af­ter more than 40 years in the busi­ness, Valenti­no earned his first of­fi­cial ti­tle in 2005 when he was crowned Vet­er­ans Ca­lyp­so Monarch at the Na­tion­al Women's Ac­tion Com­mitte's (NWAC) in­au­gur­al com­pe­ti­tion held at City Hall, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain.

Mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment was pro­vid­ed by The South­ern Ex­pe­ri­ence.