Lo­cal singing di­va El­la An­dall walked away with top ho­n­ours at the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly's Voic­es of Free­dom con­cert at the To­ba­go Her­itage Park on No­vem­ber 26.An­dall's per­for­mance kept the au­di­ence on their feet and ask­ing for more af­ter her 25 min­utes on stage came to an end.The show's "star" per­former, Bab­ba Maal from Sene­gal, nev­er got the au­di­ence go­ing when he came on short­ly be­fore mid­night.

A com­bi­na­tion of bad au­dio (bad kar­ma?) and the lengthy show meant that by the time Bab­ba Maal end­ed his hour plus reper­toire, the Her­itage Park was al­most emp­ty.Win­ston "Bai­ley" Shad­ow and Leroy "Black Stal­in" Cal­liste held up the heads of lo­cal per­form­ers with their rou­tines that were well re­ceived by the small au­di­ence when one con­sid­erd it was a free con­cert.The Sig­nal Hill Alum­ni choir was the best of the To­ba­go crop of per­form­ers and their folk ren­di­tion of Ben­jai's Tri­ni was great.

The To­ba­go Her­itage per­form­ers had a se­ries of good per­for­mances in be­tween acts, and even Bab­ba Maal ac­knowl­edged the drum­mers' prowess as he called them on stage to per­form along­side him.Maybe it was his style of not singing too much and al­low­ing the drums of his lead man Masim­ba to "talk" that turned the au­di­ence off but Bab­ba Maal would do well to un­der­stand that not all in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences ap­pre­ci­ate his style.

(Al­va Viar­ru­el)