Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Ca­lyp­so icon Ed­win Ay­oung, known as "Crazy," is con­tin­u­ing to spread his wings in the mu­sic world. He is now singing "Tri­ni-style reg­gae" and even at­tempt­ing to look like a Rasta­far­i­an. Crazy re­turned from Swe­den last Tues­day af­ter per­form­ing at Musikens Hus (The Mu­sic House) in Gothen­burg for eight days. Ay­oung is no stranger there, hav­ing vis­it­ed in 1992, 2003 and 2005.

The band So­ca Rebels, based in Swe­den, cel­e­brat­ed its 20th an­niver­sary and Ay­oung re­leased his Tri­ni-reg­gae ver­sion of The Ea­gles' 1977 hit Ho­tel Cal­i­for­nia. His oth­er song is My Re­deemer Lives, he said was "a fun song." So­ca Rebels has been around since 1990, play­ing so­ca and ca­lyp­so and pro­mot­ing the cul­ture of T&T.

Ay­oung said the Swedes are "fa­mil­iar" with him and his mu­sic, es­pe­cial­ly his 1989 hit Nan­ny Wine. Wear­ing a black T-shirt with gold print say­ing "Rasta­fari" and pic­ture of Haile Se­lassie I, the 69-year-old ca­lyp­so vet­er­an shared his thoughts about be­ing "a com­plete artiste."

His ex­pla­na­tion for singing reg­gae is that it was de­rived from ca­lyp­so. "Ca­lyp­so is the moth­er of reg­gae. The man who car­ried reg­gae to Ja­maica is a man by the name of Near­lin Taitt. "He is a Trinida­di­an who start­ed reg­gae in Ja­maica." Ay­oung's ex­per­i­men­ta­tion with dif­fer­ent gen­res of mu­sic has ben­e­fit­ed him as he has been able to get jobs be­yond the Car­ni­val sea­son.

"Most of the peo­ple who get work out­side are so­ca artistes like Machel Mon­tano, but for ca­lyp­so artistes oth­er than my­self it is dif­fi­cult," he said. Ay­oung boast­ed of be­ing an all-rounder. "I could sing a par­ty song...I could sing a chut­ney. I am ver­sa­tile. "I am the on­ly em­ployed ca­lyp­son­ian right now."

Ay­oung's cal­en­dar is al­ready booked for the next few months. He will soon be off to Bar­ba­dos, Wash­ing­ton DC, Cal­gary, Ed­mon­ton and Toron­to to per­form. There's no stop­ping him from earn­ing his liveli­hood-ca­lyp­so. He said oth­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans should fol­low in his foot­steps be­cause he is paving a way for them to earn an in­come out of Car­ni­val. He said: "The ca­lyp­so­ni­ans have noth­ing at all un­til next year Jan­u­ary.

"It is a sea­son­al thing, so what I am do­ing for them is open­ing their eyes and let­ting them see that we could do my style which is the reg­gae so they could get jobs, be­cause ca­lyp­so­ni­ans don't get work at all." Proud that he "opened the av­enue" for parang so­ca in 1977, Ay­oung said af­ter Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val, which is usu­al­ly held in Oc­to­ber, ca­lyp­so­ni­ans have em­ploy­ment from Oc­to­ber to De­cem­ber.

Oth­er ca­lyp­so vet­er­ans like Baron and Scrunter al­so sang parang so­ca. Ay­oung said: "I am not pre­pared to sit and do noth­ing un­til next year Car­ni­val." He has his own stu­dio, The Fa­cil­i­ty, and has pro­duced hits for La­dy Gyp­sy, All Rounder, De­lamo, Lu­ta and Pink Pan­ther, among oth­ers. For the rest of the year he plans to work on some new ma­te­r­i­al sur­round­ing the re­cent Cheryl Miller in­ci­dent at St Ann's Hos­pi­tal, but in the mean­time he in­tends to keep his liveli­hood alive.