DAVID CUFFY

Had an ap­plause me­ter been used to de­ter­mine the best ca­lyp­so pre­sent­ed at the open­ing of Kaiso Kar­a­van in the La Joya au­di­to­ri­um in St Joseph on Sat­ur­day night, Kid Kallaloo's (Julien Hunte) com­po­si­tion She Tell Me would have topped the scale.

The slim­ly-built, unas­sum­ing ca­lyp­son­ian had pa­trons in an up­roar and call­ing for more with the wit­ty word-play in a dou­ble en­ten­dre song that ca­lyp­so purists glee­ful­ly re­fer to as "pure, unadul­ter­at­ed ca­lyp­so." (A dou­ble en­ten­dre is a fig­ure of speech in which a spo­ken phrase is craft­ed to be un­der­stood in ei­ther of two ways, one of which is usu­al­ly risque.)

Kallaloo's clear dic­tion and body lan­guage brought added val­ue to the song's show­case. In a ca­lyp­so tent, a per­former hop­ing to avoid the in­dig­ni­ty of au­di­ence re­jec­tion must come up with lyrics that the peo­ple want to hear. Some of the Kar­a­van's cast mem­bers seemed aware of this, and con­tributed some en­ter­tain­ing mo­ments to the play­bill.

The Last Bad­john of Ca­lyp­so's (Kurt Allen) cre­ative use of the­atrics in de­liv­er­ing Po­lit­i­cal Sin-Pho­ny helped to ex­tract the sto­ry from the heav­i­ly-metaphored po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary. Dirty Cur­ty (Cur­tis Conyette) suc­cess­ful­ly used an age-old for­mu­la to con­struct a so­cial com­men­tary la­belled Ah Tired, and My­ron B (My­ron Bruce), the reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Tent Hu­mor­ous Monarch, showed why he was hold­er of the ti­tle with a fun­ny dit­ty ti­tled La­dy's Gen­tle­man.

Open­ing act and new­com­er to the tent Za­kiya McEach­nie made an im­pres­sive de­but, show­ing good stage skills in de­liv­er­ing No Kin­da Friend At All, Shel­don Nugget (Shel­don Bullen) dressed a beat­en top­ic in new clothes to come up with One Race, and La­dy Paula (Paula Sa­landy) re­mind­ed of the na­tion's state of In­de­pen­dence in her of­fer­ing of Still To­geth­er. But Bro Al­pha (Al­pha John) was a lit­tle off the mark in an at­tempt at word play in Mod­ern So­ci­ety.

This ear the Kar­a­van, in its trib­ute seg­ment, ho­n­oured 82-year-old Sur­pris­er (Clevin Romero). The still-ag­ile vet­er­an bard re­ceived the ap­pre­ci­a­tion award from Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters, who, to the ab­solute de­light of the au­di­ence, used his ex­tem­po skills to make the pre­sen­ta­tion. Sur­pris­er then en­ter­tained, do­ing a song ti­tled The World Cup Spray.

Mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment was pro­vid­ed by the Ruiz Broth­ers Or­ches­tra, and show host du­ties by God­frey Pierre.

Oth­er artistes ap­pear­ing in­clud­ed:

Singing Francine (Francine Ed­wards)–Mrs Ca­lyp­so

The Orig­i­nal De­Fos­to Him­self (Win­ston Scar­bor­ough)–Aloo Sing

The Stinger (Dex­ter Par­sons)–Tri­ni Style

Kare­ga Man­dela–Rap­so Joy

Car­di­nal (Elon Bag­goo)–We Pol­i­tics

Young Cre­ole (Wil­fred Bark­er)–Boo­gie Man

Black Czar (Ronald Cae­sar)–Lev­el

Prince Unique (Jef­frey Thomas)–Turn It Up

Er­ic James–Hear What

Asha Ka­machee–Mol­ly

Ken­ny J (Ken­rick Joseph)–Jam Up 2 Meh

Singing So­nia (So­nia Fran­cis)–Pro­tec­tion Or­der

and John­ny King (John­son King)–Gallery.