To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

For as long as most of us can re­mem­ber, the Mighty Spar­row has been an in­te­gral part of the so­cial and po­lit­i­cal fab­ric of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Through­out his five and a half decades as a much-her­ald­ed en­ter­tain­er, Spar­row has won the ac­claim and re­spect of ador­ing fans through­out the world, but more par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Caribbean and in the West In­di­an di­as­po­ras.

This news­pa­per, there­fore, not on­ly un­der­stands but al­so shares the ache and deep con­cern of many at the sight of Spar­row not be­ing as mo­bile and as dy­nam­ic as we have long grown to ap­pre­ci­ate and love him. His dis­tress­ing med­ical state of af­fairs has been at­trib­uted to a mys­tery ail­ment with which the cham­pi­on bard has been af­flict­ed. It is heart­en­ing that this coun­try's supreme en­ter­tain­er is con­tin­u­ing to ac­cess the best pos­si­ble health care, and we anx­ious­ly look for­ward to him quick­ly con­quer­ing this health set­back. We know we are bor­der­ing on re­dun­dan­cy when we urge col­lec­tive na­tion­al prayers for this tow­er­ing artis­tic hero, since many would al­ready have been whis­per­ing their qui­et en­treaties for im­prove­ment to his health.

The truth is that Slinger Fran­cis­co has been such an es­sen­tial as­pect of our na­tion­al con­scious­ness that he is con­sid­ered as Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian as our na­tive cui­sine, our pi­cong and our over­all way of life. He cap­tures and ex­udes the es­sen­tial lo­cal per­son­al­i­ty–full of flair, char­ac­ter and panache. Hav­ing moved to Trinidad from Grena­da when he was still a babe-in-arms, Spar­row's con­scious­ness and his skill as a per­former de­vel­oped in the caul­dron of the post-war pe­ri­od dur­ing which the oth­er icon of this coun­try cul­ture, the steel­pan, was de­vel­oped. He burst on­to the artis­tic world with brava­do, catchy lyrics and ap­peal­ing melodies.

His sem­i­nal Jean and Di­nah, com­posed and per­formed at the end of his teenaged years, in­di­cates the mea­sure of the tal­ent­ed and ef­fu­sive ca­lyp­son­ian.

In an un­stop­pable ca­reer, he has won vir­tu­al­ly every ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion avail­able to him, has been ser­e­nad­ed and ho­n­oured around the globe, in­clud­ing be­ing grant­ed an hon­orary doc­tor­ate by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Or­der of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty. In a sto­ried ca­reer, he has won Trinidad Car­ni­val's Road March com­pe­ti­tion eight times and has been named Ca­lyp­so Monarch 11 times. Spar­row has al­so been the sub­ject of rig­or­ous aca­d­e­m­ic and in­tel­lec­tu­al ex­am­i­na­tion by schol­ars who have probed the depth and scope of his lyrics, his easy fa­cil­i­ty with a wide ar­ray of is­sues and his en­dur­ing pas­sion for the re­gion.

In­deed, no oth­er Caribbean en­ter­tain­er boasts the ex­ten­sive reper­toire of Spar­row, as ev­i­denced to a new gen­er­a­tion of fans when he re-is­sued his works in more than 40 com­plete com­pact discs.

Since his ex­cit­ing en­try in­to the ca­lyp­so world, Birdie has helped Caribbean peo­ple to bet­ter un­rav­el and ap­pre­ci­ate their on­go­ing life sto­ry, their dif­fi­cult colo­nial past and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of their col­lec­tive fu­ture. He has done so with char­ac­ter­is­tic un­bound­ed self-con­fi­dence, some­times bor­der­ing on au­dac­i­ty. As the years rolled on, Spar­row mel­lowed in­to more than a ca­lyp­so sto­ry­teller, but al­so evolved in­to a Caribbean sage of sorts, no doubt the rich re­sult of decades of trot­ting the globe and rub­bing shoul­ders with in­ter­na­tion­al lu­mi­nar­ies.

There is no gain­say­ing that the Mighty Spar­row be­longs to the ilk of the re­gion's most ac­com­plished and re­spect­ed fig­ures of lit­er­a­ture, the arts and so­cial sci­ences–join­ing such fig­ures as Naipaul, Wal­cott, Mar­ley and Williams. In wish­ing him a speedy re­cov­ery, we ho­n­our him and thank him for en­ter­tain­ing us through the years, in the process in­spir­ing us to do like him and reach our fullest po­ten­tial. Thanks for the mu­sic, Birdie. And get bet­ter soon.