Aba A Luke

"A peo­ple with­out a cul­ture, is a peo­ple with­out a soul." So said ca­lyp­son­ian and so­ca artiste, Wayne "Im­pulse" Mod­este. Mu­sic and cul­ture have been el­e­ments of his every­day ex­is­tence, and even when the go­ing got tough, Im­pulse pushed for­ward with his craft, ex­er­cis­ing his cre­ative abil­i­ty and high­light­ing the ills of the in­dus­try where nec­es­sary. Al­ways one to be out­spo­ken on mat­ters af­fect­ing the art forms and cul­ture, Mod­este, who re­cent­ly re­leased a track called Want To Have Fun along­side his fi­ancee and fel­low en­ter­tain­er, Sil­ver, ex­plained that there's some­thing even big­ger on the hori­zon-some­thing that promis­es to leave the un­pre­pared, speech­less.

King Stu­pid

These days, Im­pulse is busy en­sur­ing that his on­go­ing project, T&T Idol, which fo­cus­es on lo­cat­ing and then groom­ing young en­ter­tain­ers, is man­aged well and is suc­cess­ful. He re­vealed that T&T Idol con­tin­ues to of­fer young en­ter­tain­ers who need a plat­form, the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case just what they have, to the peo­ple who can guide them. Amid that, Im­pulse who has been per­form­ing for the past 24 years has found the time to cre­ate a kaiso sin­gle with a dou­ble en­ten­dre that fo­cus­es on the state of emer­gency, drug lords and the au­thor­i­ties.

The track en­ti­tled, King Stu­pid, has al­ready been mak­ing the rounds at ra­dio sta­tions as Im­pulse said he has been prepar­ing Dj's and per­son­al­i­ties for its im­mi­nent re­lease. "Iw­er said he not ban­ning no song and at Pow­er 102 they start­ed to laugh one time," at­test­ed the en­ter­tain­er. He at­tempt­ed to ex­plain the con­cept be­hind the sin­gle, stat­ing, "In Trinidad we don't call no drug lord, King Pin-we call them King Stu­pid cause they do­ing stu­pid­ness, and in the song, I call out all the dif­fer­ent drug lords from all over the world like Dudus Coke, Pablo Es­co­bar and the oth­ers, and I say we call our drug lords, King Stu­pid so the gov­ern­ment lock down the whole coun­try... and who they look­ing for? They look­ing for King Stu­pid."

State of emer­gency

The Mara­bel­la res­i­dent said the lyrics of the song would re­veal all, and high­light­ed that along with the Dad­dy Chi­nee band, his group, The Im­pulse Con­nec­tion, would per­form this track and oth­ers in the sea­son ahead. Un­fazed by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the track be­ing banned, Im­pulse said he plans on mak­ing an unedit­ed ver­sion and will de­liv­er both ver­sions to ra­dio sta­tions. He not­ed that this past Car­ni­val, Madzart's The King Road, which al­so served lis­ten­ers with a dou­ble en­ten­dre, re­ceived unan­i­mous air­play. On the top­ic of the on­go­ing state of emer­gency in T&T, Im­pulse said, "I don't see this be­ing ben­e­fi­cial at all, at all, at all. A state of emer­gency is your last re­sort and this has af­fect­ed every­body."

The artiste not­ed that his stu­dio time has been af­fect­ed as well as the cater­ing busi­ness he man­ages. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he lament­ed that three shows that he'd been booked to per­form at, were can­celled as a re­sult of the im­ple­ment­ed cur­few. "On the ground, peo­ple frus­trat­ed. The gov­ern­ment has not been straight about what they say the cur­few is about. Every time we lis­ten to the news is some­thing dif­fer­ent," he said, adding that he felt the sit­u­a­tion was work­ing on­ly to the ben­e­fit of the gov­ern­ment and not nec­es­sar­i­ly the peo­ple. "It is good be­cause it keeps down crime for that par­tic­u­lar time but you must lift it some­time."

He ar­gued that mur­der was not the on­ly crime, adding that crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty would present it­self in var­i­ous ways. Im­pulse said that with peo­ple los­ing their jobs as a re­sult of the cur­few, frus­trat­ed peo­ple would pos­si­bly seek il­le­gal av­enues to take care of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. On the is­sue of cul­ture and its preser­va­tion, Mod­este high­light­ed that much like what he is do­ing via the Im­pulse Con­nec­tion, he too ben­e­fit­ed from Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans like Bri­go and The Mighty Shad­ow's in­volve­ment in his ca­reer. He said the art forms' preser­va­tion rest­ed sole­ly on the mar­ket­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties of each artiste when they per­formed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

"On WLIB in New York, I once heard an artiste give an ex­pla­na­tion of what ca­lyp­so was and it made no sense. I lat­er re­quest­ed to give the de­f­i­n­i­tion of ca­lyp­so on the show and I told them, a ca­lyp­so is rhythm and rhyme with a con­struc­tive sto­ry line-some­thing said but not said and the on­ly beat is a heart beat," he re­called. Im­pulse not­ed that the show re­ceived a num­ber of calls from for­eign­ers who im­me­di­ate­ly be­came in­ter­est­ed and even re­quest­ed CD's for pur­chase. "That's what we need to do. We need to mar­ket the coun­try and the cul­ture rather than mar­ket­ing our­selves in­di­vid­u­al­ly." Al­ways one to pro­vide hu­mour and en­light­en­ment, Im­pulse told us, "once my cul­ture lives, I live-we live," and for that rea­son, he promis­es to con­tin­ue no mat­ter how hard he must fight.