“Shad­ow will go to Heav­en for sure be­cause he was in hell al­ready,” ca­lyp­son­ian Crazy (Ed­win Ay­oung) de­clared yes­ter­day as the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s (TU­CO) South/Cen­tral branch paid trib­ute to the late icon at the Win­der­mere Pri­vate School in San Fer­nan­do.

It was part of TU­CO’s Ca­lyp­so Ap­pre­ci­a­tion Month as TU­CO takes ca­lyp­so to schools across the coun­try to keep youths in­ter­est­ed in the art form.

Crazy, ac­com­pa­nied by Ab­by Black­man and Ato Os­ei, sang sev­er­al of Shad­ow’s songs, in­clud­ing Din­go­lay, dur­ing the ses­sion. Ay­oung told the pupils why he was called Crazy.

“I am crazy, yes. I am crazy about end­ing crime and I am crazy about im­prov­ing life for every­one,” he said to loud ap­plause.

He al­so said at the time Shad­ow was singing his hit tune Bass­man, he (Crazy) had a tune called Sa­tan is Com­ing.

“I had a fork that I would use and Shad­ow was the King of Hell. He sang about hell be­cause he want­ed to high­light the wicked peo­ple that ex­ist­ed in the world. He knew what was hell,” Crazy said.

The stu­dents al­so gave the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans a taste of their own ca­lyp­so and rap­so.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo said he was im­pressed by the cadre of young ca­lyp­so­ni­ans at the school.

“It seems the fu­ture of ca­lyp­so is se­cure in the hands of the youths,” he added.

Prais­ing Shad­ow as a ca­lyp­son­ian ex­tra­or­di­naire, Re­grel­lo said Shad­ow’s child­hood in the folk vil­lage of Les Coteaux, To­ba­go, helped to shape his per­spec­tive on life. Say­ing he shared a room with Shad­ow in 1997, Re­grel­lo said he was amazed at the way Shad­ow saw the world.

“He saw the world through a dif­fer­ent lens. His thought process­es were pos­i­tive about chang­ing the world and mak­ing life bet­ter,” Re­grel­lo said.

He said Shad­ow’s Pover­ty is Hell was a mas­ter­piece and he was thank­ful that the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies had doc­u­ment­ed Shad­ow’s mu­sic.

“I would hope that his mu­sic is cir­cu­lat­ed through­out the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem as a ref­er­ence point to what is hap­pen­ing now. Shad­ow was able to take neg­a­tives and make a pos­i­tive,” Re­grel­lo added.

Pas­cal said there was no dis­pute that Shad­ow was a lyri­cal mas­ter and a po­et ex­tra­or­di­naire.

He said a spe­cial func­tion will be held for Shad­ow at his Mount Hope home ahead of his fu­ner­al at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Tues­day.

Win­der­mere prin­ci­pal Lau­reen De­bance-Misir said the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans were mak­ing learn­ing re­al for the pupils.

“The stu­dents en­joyed hav­ing Crazy and Ab­by Black­man. I be­lieve that the art form must be en­cour­aged. Hav­ing the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans here made learn­ing re­al for the pupils,” De­bance-Misir said.