Geisha Kow­lessar

Roger Mo­hammed, bet­ter known in the ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty as "Body­guard", has shot back at Michael "Sug­ar Aloes" Os­ouna, say­ing he (Os­ouna) has no moral au­thor­i­ty to talk about racism.Mo­hammed's com­ment come in the wake of Os­ouna's de­ci­sion to re­ject him and his song False Pa­pers for the Ka­lyp­so Re­vue tent this sea­son.

Os­ouna, the man­ag­er of the Re­vue tent and a vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian known for his con­tro­ver­sial ca­lyp­soes, has re­ject­ed the song be­cause he says it is of­fen­sive, racist, un­fair­ly at­tacked mem­bers of the In­do-Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty and would serve to di­vide Afro-Trinida­di­ans and In­do-Trinida­di­ans.But in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed charged that Os­ouna was al­so re­spon­si­ble for "al­most sin­gle-hand­ed­ly run­ning the ma­jor­i­ty of "East In­di­ans" out of ca­lyp­so tents.

De­fend­ing his song, Mo­hammed said it was sim­ply a re­flec­tion of what has been re­port­ed in the me­dia."The song talks about the peo­ple who were caught with false pa­pers and these peo­ple hap­pen to be East In­di­ans."From Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine to oth­ers. I can­not talk about the Syr­i­ans or Chi­nese be­cause they have not been caught do­ing this. I am just do­ing my job as a ca­lyp­son­ian," Mo­hammed said.

Ram­nar­ine, a for­mer head of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), re­signed in Jan­u­ary, 2011, af­ter it was re­vealed she lied about her aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions.A po­lice cor­po­ral as­signed to the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB), Mo­hammed said the gen­e­sis of the song came from the state­ments at­trib­uted to gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, Sat Ma­haraj, who ob­ject­ed to the idea of the steel­pan in schools when it was sug­gest­ed as part of the cur­ricu­lum.

"Ba­si­cal­ly, what Mr Ma­haraj was say­ing is that while East In­di­an chil­dren would be beat­ing books, the African chil­dren would be beat­ing pan... my song was born out of this state­ment many years ago."I am to­tal­ly in dis­agree­ment with Sug­ar Aloes. He is prac­tis­ing a very high lev­el of hypocrisy. He has no moral au­thor­i­ty to tell me any­thing about my song," Mo­hammed said.

Ac­cus­ing Os­ouna of al­so dis­play­ing dou­ble stan­dards, Mo­hammed re­called Os­ouna's song about Oma Pan­day, wife of for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, while Pan­day was in of­fice."Sug­ar Aloes al­so sang about a for­mer fe­male gov­ern­ment min­is­ter years ago and this was very of­fen­sive," he said.In­sist­ing Os­ouna had no right to crit­i­cise his se­lec­tion, Mo­hammed said he be­lieved Os­ouna re­ject­ed his song be­cause of fi­nan­cial rea­sons.

"I be­lieve Sug­ar Aloes does not want to of­fend the present regime so as not to get fi­nance for the tent," he said."Some peo­ple are of the view that from the time you say African or In­di­an you are racist. It is in the con­text which you use it."He said be­cause of his mixed her­itage he could not be ac­cused of be­ing racist, as he has "In­di­an blood" run­ning through his veins but looked pre­dom­i­nant­ly African.

Asked if the song would be per­formed in oth­er tents, Mo­hammed said the cut-off date for au­di­tions and se­lect­ing a cast were al­ready gone. He said by the time Os­ouna had re­fused him, the oth­er tents had al­ready se­lect­ed their casts, which was late last month.He at­trib­uted his tar­di­ness in get­ting to oth­er au­di­tions be­fore to his job which he de­scribed as "very de­mand­ing."

"My time was al­so clash­ing on a reg­u­lar ba­sis with Le­ston Paul who is al­so very busy. But right af­ter the stu­dio I took the CD and went to Sug­ar Aloes' res­i­dence and it was re­ject­ed."By the time I went to the oth­er tents it was sim­ply too late. So the song is now un­at­tached and I will have to per­form it as such."

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, sev­er­al se­nior ca­lyp­so­ni­ans lent their sup­port to Mo­hammed, de­scrib­ing the song as "very good." They added, how­ev­er, that since Os­ouna was the man­ag­er of the tent he had the fi­nal say.

Se­lect­ed ex­cerpts from False Pa­pers

First verse

It easy to say Sat will be Sat

And try to ig­nore peo­ple like dat

But Sat Ma­haraj con­trols a large group in so­ci­ety

So when he makes a de­fin­i­tive de­c­la­ra­tion

It car­ries a lot of clout

We feel he know what he talkin bout

But time has a way

Of re­cy­cling the tings we say

And hold­ing them up against log­ic and rea­son

So when Sat say 'In­di­an chil­dren beat­ing book

'While black chil­dren beat­ing pan'

No cousin! Is bet­ter yuh didn't say nut­tin

Cho­rus

Cause re­cent­ly, one set­ta In­di­an peo­ple get caught

Wid false pa­pers, false pa­pers

I'm yet to see, one sin­gle African in the lot

And not one of them fraud­sters ever face a court

So yuh the­o­ry have more holes than a wa­ter can

Like is bet­ter some ah dem In­di­an did beat a pan

When yuh feel dey was beat­ing more book than the African

Dey was fab­ri­cat­ing de­grees, de­fraud­ing the land

Fourth verse

Doh both­er to say dat I on race

Such red her­rings are well out of place

I'm sim­ply putting Sat's state­ment on the al­tar of truth

For too long so-called lead­ers in this coun­try

Have abused me­dia ac­cess

Caus­ing di­vi­sive­ness and un­rest

If Cud­joe or Kham­bon should rage

And say some­thing that's off the page

You will jump up to de­fend your race and re­li­gion

So yuh poi­son pen ah cyar con­done

Stop push­ing that racist un­der­tone and lies

The ev­i­dence says oth­er­wise

Cho­rus

So you tell me, how so much In­di­an peo­ple get caught?

Wid false pa­pers, false pa­pers

While con­verse­ly, not one African in the lot

Plen­ty black peo­ple study and work hard for what they got

A good de­gree could stand scruti­ny for decades af­ter

But the false ones dis­ap­pear like nougat sweet­ie pa­per

And like they try to put ah African in­side dey can­car

But dey bounce dey head be­cause W..... M..... is a dougla.