Pe­ter Ray Blood

Like Dr Gor­don Rohlehr and Louis Reg­is, Rudy Ot­t­ley has ded­i­cat­ed his skills to writ­ing books on Trinidad and To­ba­go cul­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly on ca­lyp­so. The Re­vue at 50 is Ot­t­ley's sixth pub­li­ca­tion and is a "must have" book. The 76-page book com­pre­hen­sive­ly doc­u­ments the birth and life span of the Ca­lyp­so Re­vue tent, from its gen­e­sis in 1963 to cur­rent time.

The Re­vue at 50 is a thing of beau­ty-from its first pho­tographs (Re­vue man­ag­er Carl "Jazzy"?Pan­tin and Lord Kitch­en­er) to its fi­nal 13 pages (com­pi­la­tion of news­pa­per clip­pings, dat­ing back to the '70s).

The book's open­ing pages com­prise glow­ing tes­ti­mo­ni­als by a num­ber of lu­mi­nar­ies, in­clu­sive of Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Roodal Mooni­lal, Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co) pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba (Bro Re­sis­tance) and cur­rent Re­vue man­ag­er Michael Os­una (Sug­ar Aloes), and a pref­ace by Dr Hol­lis Liv­er­pool (Mighty Chalk­dust), pro­fes­sor of Ca­lyp­so Arts, at the Acad­e­my of Arts, Let­ters, Cul­ture and Pub­lic Af­fairs at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT).

Trinidad Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny is fea­tured pre­dom­i­nant­ly in the book, with its de­funct Evening News pub­li­ca­tion be­ing a prime source of archival in­for­ma­tion for the au­thor. Chap­ter one deals with the birth of the Re­vue in 1963 as was doc­u­ment­ed by the March 8, 1963 edi­tion of the Evening News. It cites Leslie Sama­roo's an­nounce­ment of his in­ten­tion to open a new ca­lyp­so tent (Ca­lyp­so Re­view) for the Car­ni­val of 1964.

The news­pa­per re­port named Lord Melody, Nap Hep­burn, Lord Blakie, King Fight­er, Lord Su­pe­ri­or, Mighty Bomber and Lord Short­ie (sic) amongst the tent's first singers.

Cir­ca 1964-1969 of the tent's his­to­ry is ti­tled "The Ini­tial Chal­lenges and Is­sues" (of the Re­vue). Spread over ten pages, it in­cludes some sig­nif­i­cant mo­ments of the Re­view like Sama­roo ask­ing the Car­ni­val De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee (CDC) for com­pen­sa­tion for the tent for the non-avail­abil­i­ty of Re­view singers-Lord Kitch­en­er, Lord Blakie, Mighty Bomber and Nap Hep­burn-cho­sen for the Di­manche Gras Ca­lyp­so King fi­nal.

The Guardian news­pa­per of Feb­ru­ary 5, 1964 re­port­ed that CDC?head Sen­a­tor (Ron­nie) Williams re­fused to "buy out" the Re­view and Sama­roo re­tort­ed that the Re­view would hold its own Ca­lyp­so King con­test on Car­ni­val Sun­day night, with the win­ner re­ceiv­ing a mo­tor car. Kitch­en­er open­ly de­fied the pro­posed Sama­roo boy­cott and is quot­ed in the Evening News as say­ing, "we are tak­ing part in the com­pe­ti­tion no mat­ter what hap­pens."

Sama­roo sub­se­quent­ly with­drew his re­quest of 'his' ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and the records will show that the Re­view's Mighty Bomber was crowned the 1964 Ca­lyp­so King.

'Kitch­en­er de­clared so­ca is ca­lyp­so'

It was on­ly in 1969, six years af­ter its in­cep­tion, that the ca­lyp­so tent changed its name from Re­view to The Ca­lyp­so RE­VUE Tent. The first icon to be ho­n­oured at this tent was pan in­no­va­tor/icon An­tho­ny Williams, leader of Pan Am North Stars, Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on of 1963 and 1964.

"The Pul­sat­ing Sev­en­ties...Ca­lyp­so ver­sus So­ca" is the ti­tle for the 1970-1979 decade. Lo­cat­ed at the NUGFW?Hall at 150 Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain. In 1971, the top priced tick­et for ad­mis­sion-to hear the likes of Lord Kitch­en­er, Mighty Stal­in, Lord Re­la­tor, Bro Valenti­no, Bri­go, Mae­stro, Ex­plain­er, All Rounder, Pos­er and oth­ers-was four dol­lars.

Sev­en years lat­er, 1978, the tent was pitched at the Princess Build­ing Grounds and its pro­gramme was in mem­o­ry of Mae­stro, trag­i­cal­ly killed in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent the pre­ced­ing In­de­pen­dence Day. The stars that year in­clud­ed Lord Kitch­en­er, Duke, Scrunter, Short Pants, Pos­er, Mer­chant, Mighty Ter­ror, Ca­lyp­so Princess, Or­gan­is­er and An­tigua's Swal­low.

In 1978, with the furore over the new so­ca genre of ca­lyp­so reach­ing boil­ing point, Lord Kitch­en­er cre­at­ed what many con­sid­ered to be 'the hottest so­ca song of the sea­son,' the im­mor­tal Sug­ar Bum Bum. On Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 4, 1978, on the front page of the Evening News, Lord Kitch­en­er, in an in­ter­view with Pe­ter Harp­er, de­clared:?"So­ca is ca­lyp­so."

The pe­ri­od 1980-1989 is head­lined "The Re-en­gi­neer­ing Eight­ies." It is a short but com­pre­hen­sive four-page stew­ard­ship of the Re­vue un­der the as­tute lead­er­ship of Lord Kitch­en­er. With the Princess Build­ing de­stroyed by fire the pre­ced­ing year, for Car­ni­val 1980 the Re­vue went house-hunt­ing once more, set­tling in at Teach­ers' Train­ing Col­lege.

Its cast that year in­clud­ed Duke, Melody, Pos­er, Singing San­dra, Scrunter, Cre­ole, Mu­da­da, Saga, Prince, Princess and many oth­ers. With Count Robin as the tent's em­cee, mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment was by the much revered Clive Bradley and his Ca­lyp­so Band Mak­ers.

The fol­low­ing year, the Re­vue moved again, this time to the Port Ser­vices Club on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.

Re­vue goes to Ari­ma

The sea­son opened in bac­cha­nal af­ter a falling out with Ca­lyp­so Spek­taku­la boss­es, the Mar­tineau broth­ers.?Not on­ly did Kitch­en­er with­draw his singers from the much looked for­ward to clash of the tents, but de­cid­ed to open the tent's ca­lyp­so sea­son in Ari­ma.

The dozen pages that tell of 1990-2000, head­ed "The Grand Mas­ter's Last Stand," are per­haps one of the most poignant chap­ters of the book. Thir­teen pages in length, it opens with the 1990 Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nal re­sults which de­mot­ed Sug­ar Aloes from third place to fifth.

This chap­ter al­so tells of Lord Kitch­en­er mak­ing ap­pear­ances at many of the "so­ca fetes" in 1994, not in his tra­di­tion­al for­mal suits but in 'so­ca cloth­ing,' a wardrobe ad­just­ment which "dis­gust­ed" vet­er­an scribe Lennox Grant who penned on Sun­day, Janau­ry 30, 1994, "Grand­mas­ter as pap­pyshow."

The Ca­lyp­so Re­vue cel­e­brat­ed its 30th an­niver­sary in 1998 in style, with a smidgen of con­tro­ver­sy. Lord Kitch­en­er ve­he­ment­ly protest­ed the list of semi­fi­nal­ists cho­sen for that year's na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion be­cause of the omis­sion of Cro Cro and Pink Pan­ther. He al­so asked for the re­turn of the con­trol of the com­pe­ti­tion to the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), in­stead of un­der Tu­co's man­age­ment.

A main crit­ic to Kitch­en­er's wish­es that year was ca­lyp­son­ian Gyp­sy. Cro Cro, fi­nal­ly in­clud­ed among the semi­fi­nal­ists, is quot­ed in the news­pa­per of Feb­ru­ary 16, 1998, as say­ing:?"Thank God twice and thank Kitch­en­er once."

The 1990-2000 chap­ter ends on a sad note as in 1999 Lord Kitch­en­er fell ill, to the point of not be­ing able to at­tend the tent's au­di­tions. The tent was plunged in­to ab­ject gloom and sad­ness when, on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 11, 2000, at 10.45 am Lord Kitch­en­er died at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, at the age of 78.

"The Re­vue in the 21st Cen­tu­ry," cov­er­ing 2001-2011, marks the cli­max of Ot­t­ley's Re­vue saga. The book's fi­nal two chap­ters pay trib­ute to the tent's man­age­ment, its mu­si­cians and cho­rus singers.

Who is ot­t­ley?

Rudolph Ot­t­ley is the man­ag­er and events co-or­di­na­tor of the Di­vas Ca­lyp­so Cabaret In­ter­na­tion­al, an or­gan­i­sa­tion he start­ed in 2004 and which is home to the on­ly all-fe­male ca­lyp­so tent in the land. Ot­t­ley was the mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of Tu­co from 1998-2002, and as­sis­tant man­ag­er of Kaiso House ca­lyp­so tent.

Whilst at Tu­co, he pro­duced and co-or­di­nat­ed many events, in­clud­ing Tu­co's Top 50 Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans of the 20th Cen­tu­ry Awards Cer­e­mo­ny, held at Hilton Trinidad in Jan­u­ary 2000, and the ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion-"Youth and Aids"-in the Caribbean, the first ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion of its kind where­by the ca­lyp­so art form was used as a change agent util­is­ing ca­lyp­so mu­sic as the ve­hi­cle to in­form the youths of the re­gion about the scourge of Aids.