It was not long af­ter Ali­cia Jag­gasar first ap­peared on the parang cir­cuit back in 1987 that her el­e­gance and poise, en­er­gised by her pas­sion and tal­ent be­gan to set her apart as parang roy­al­ty. Many re­gard­ed her as rem­i­nis­cent of the late great Daisy Voisin. Over the years, these qual­i­ties com­bined with a deep sense of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty have al­ways got­ten her by. And as Jag­gasar shared with Sun­day Guardian last Tues­day, these qual­i­ties will con­tin­ue to get her by as she steps out of the band Los Alum­nos de San Juan on her own as a so­lo artiste.

Next Sun­day at Queen’s Hall, the ac­com­plished parang writer, com­pos­er, arranger and pi­o­neer of a unique “Latin Fu­sion” mu­sic will present “Dare to be Me” a mu­si­cal ex­pres­sion of who she is, fea­tur­ing a trea­sury of her thoughts and emo­tions span­ning her 35-year mu­si­cal ca­reer. “Dare to be Me” will mark Jag­gasar’s de­but as a so­lo en­ter­tain­er and she steps out with the af­fir­ma­tion that she has a lot more to say, a lot more to give be­yond the parang sea­son.

Set to get un­der­way at 5 pm, the show will be pre­sent­ed in two parts. Nine­ty min­utes of orig­i­nal Latin Fu­sion com­po­si­tions with Jag­gasar ac­com­pa­nied by gift­ed mu­si­cians in the au­di­to­ri­um will flow in­to mu­sic and dance un­der a “Christ­mas in Ju­ly” theme com­plete with re­fresh­ments in the Gar­den The­atre’s vi­brant out­door set­ting.

A groovy sal­sa “Dime Mi Amor” ded­i­cat­ed to her late hus­band, Wayne Jagdeo ask­ing: how will I live with­out you?, a parang crossover en­ti­tled “Mu­sic”, “the World In Front of Me” which talks about the world as her stage and a few pieces pro­mot­ing world peace will form part of her self-writ­ten set. Jag­gasar will be joined by oth­er pop­u­lar artistes in­clud­ing Baron, as well as Neval Chate­lal who will help her launch their Bol­ly­wood parang fu­sion col­lab­o­ra­tion “Tukur Tukur”. She will al­so ap­pear as part of the quar­tet “No­body Lives Here” with Maria Bho­la, Mar­cia Mi­ran­da and Vaugh­nette Big­ford.

Alicia Jaggasar and Neval Chatelal will officially launch their Bollywood parang fusion at “Dare to be Me”.

Though Jag­gasar has done so­lo ap­pear­ances in the past, over the years, show­cas­ing her dy­nam­ic band Los Alum­nos de San Juan re­mained her pri­or­i­ty and she most­ly ap­peared with them. The pan­dem­ic’s eco­nom­ic squeeze on artistes and cre­atives, com­pound­ed by the pass­ing of Jag­gasar’s hus­band, the love of her life for some 30 years, to lung can­cer last year prompt­ed her new ca­reer di­rec­tion.

Beloved as a tal­ent­ed pan­nist and parang com­pos­er and arranger, Jagdeo had been a found­ing mem­ber of Los Alum­nos. His di­ag­no­sis af­ter a pos­i­tive COVID test re­sults in No­vem­ber 2020 came as a shock, as was his pass­ing just over a month lat­er on Jan­u­ary 5, 2021, at age 69. A re­tired Maths, Physics and Chem­istry teacher, Jagdeo did not like vis­it­ing doc­tors, Jag­gasar said.

“Some­times if there were a few lit­tle things, I would say: why don’t you go check this. He would say: nah, I’m al­right. So, it re­al­ly did take me by sur­prise and it hap­pened so fast. When the doc­tors spoke to me and told me about do­ing pal­lia­tive care, at no point in time did I think he was go­ing to die. I guess, as a be­liev­er you have faith and you pray. But it was so peace­ful tak­ing care of him. At no point did I feel bur­dened or like he was go­ing to die, so it was hard when he did pass,” she re­called.

As her hus­band had been the main bread­win­ner, the im­pact on Jag­gasar and their two chil­dren was es­pe­cial­ly harsh amid the pan­dem­ic.

“I was left with my son and my daugh­ter both look­ing at uni­ver­si­ty in front of them and I had to make a de­ci­sion as to what I was go­ing to do. Af­ter spend­ing your en­tire life build­ing an art, be­ing in­to mu­sic, it was: what are you go­ing to do now? As we know, parang is a very sea­son­al art form. So I had to make a de­ci­sion, and look for oth­er av­enues.

“That is the main rea­son that I have de­cid­ed to go so­lo and that in no way is it tak­ing away from my 35 years of build­ing Los Alum­nos de San Juan with Wayne. I am al­ways here to be with Los Alum­nos de San Juan. We’re still go­ing to parang,” she said.

As to what be­ing a so­lo artiste will look like for her, Jag­gasar who plays the cu­a­tro, mara­cas and box bass said she plans to have her own pro­duc­tions and make ap­pear­ances at lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al events year-round. She has al­ways seen her­self as a mul­ti-faceted artiste, work­ing across var­i­ous gen­res and hav­ing pep­pered ca­lyp­so, so­ca, chut­ney, folk and parang with a Latin flavour to come up with a “Latin Fu­sion” mu­sic.

Tak­ing Puer­to Ri­can singer Luis Fon­si’s “De­spaci­to,” for in­stance, she lyri­cal­ly in­fused a Trin­bag­on­ian flair. She has al­so trans­lat­ed hits like Ex­plain­er’s “Lor­raine” and Scrunter’s “Woman on D Bass” at times with help from Span­ish pro­fes­sors and pre­sent­ed them in sal­sa or merengue styles. Her re­cent­ly penned “Dime Mi Amor” is al­so an ex­am­ple of her “Latin Fu­sion,” but in an orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion, she ex­plained. She hopes her style and flavour will bring a unique el­e­ment to the typ­i­cal line­up at ma­jor lo­cal events, and cre­ate an av­enue for oth­er parang and Latin-style artistes.

Alicia Jaggasar’s children, Michael and Maria.

Jag­gasar presents her mixed mu­sic port­fo­lio un­der her brand La Casa de Fu­sion (House of Fu­sion) which al­so of­fers train­ing ser­vices, con­certs, event pro­duc­tions, mer­chan­dis­ing, char­i­ty, and more re­cent­ly, her food busi­ness “The Kitchen.”

Hav­ing ex­pressed her­self through singing since the age of five, Jag­gasar’s singing ca­reer is root­ed in ca­lyp­so, which she start­ed singing at Mount Hope Ju­nior Sec­ondary and then at San Juan Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive. Through ca­lyp­so, she sharp­ened what would be­come her sig­na­ture dic­tion, pre­sen­ta­tion and show­man­ship skills at school con­tests and com­pe­ti­tions like NY­AC’s (The Na­tion­al Youth Ac­tion Com­mit­tee) Stars of To­mor­row and NWAC’s (Na­tion­al Women’s Ac­tion Com­mit­tee’s) Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Queen. Back then her con­tem­po­raries were artistes such as De­von Seale, Kurt Allen, Shel­don Reid. As Los Alum­nos which she had joined be­gan to ex­pe­ri­ence rapid growth si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the de­mands of jug­gling both ca­lyp­so and parang be­came too great and the lat­ter be­came her first love. She ap­plied the skills learnt in ca­lyp­so to her parang per­for­mances.

“All these things I had to do to be­come a ca­lyp­son­ian...I just took these things that were my foun­da­tion and eas­i­ly came across to the parang,” Jag­gasar re­called.

The 11-time parang queen has led her band to the Na­tion­al Parang Band vic­to­ry nine times. A Ro­man Catholic, Jag­gasar’s deep spir­i­tu­al­i­ty drove her pas­sion for the art form, she shared.

“And it was about pro­mot­ing the life of Je­sus Christ; that is what I fell in love with. You have to do the Anun­cia­cion (which speaks about the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the An­gel Gabriel and the Vir­gin Mary when he ap­peared to an­nounce that she would give birth to Je­sus) and Nacimien­tos (songs about the birth of Christ).

As a par­ran­dera, you would go house to house spread­ing the mes­sage of the birth of Je­sus Christ. You would go to homes for the aged, Princess Eliz­a­beth, the or­phan­ages, that’s how we start­ed and I re­al­ly en­joyed do­ing that. “Grow­ing up, every­body has a sto­ry and in my sto­ry, the Lord has been such a strength. In all my tri­als and tribu­la­tions, He has al­ways been there.”

Her faith is help­ing her cope with the loss of her hus­band who was al­ways at her side, help­ing her to or­gan­ise and par­tic­i­pate in ac­tiv­i­ties from the sim­plest to ma­jor events.

She takes com­fort that he has left a rich lega­cy through the band and his chil­dren.

“I think ‘Dare to Be Me’ is al­so a trib­ute to him and all that he would have done be­cause as some­body said: he is not gone, a lot of him still lives on.”

In the same way she stood with her hus­band tak­ing care of him round the clock un­til his fi­nal mo­ments, in the height of her prepa­ra­tions for the con­cert,

Jag­gasar has al­so tak­en the time to nurse her 84-year-old fa­ther back to health as he test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID at the be­gin­ning of this month.

She feels blessed that she was around to save him from a fall and that he re­cent­ly re­ceived a neg­a­tive re­sult de­spite his un­der­ly­ing health is­sues.

Now back on track in her prepa­ra­tions for her con­cert, Jag­gasar is aid­ed by her niece Chris­tine Clement to whom part of the pro­ceeds will go. Clement who had ex­pect­ed to earn a schol­ar­ship to study med­i­cine is on a quest to go to Keele Uni­ver­si­ty.

Giv­ing has al­ways come nat­u­ral­ly to Jag­gasar and as a no­tably char­i­ta­ble per­son who has been gen­er­ous to oth­ers on a per­son­al lev­el and through Los Alum­nos, she ad­mit­ted that she was a bit dis­ap­point­ed that dur­ing the pan­dem­ic very lit­tle as­sis­tance was forth­com­ing for cre­atives like her­self. The try­ing time helped her strength­en her re­la­tion­ship with God and she learned the val­ue of self-care and ap­pre­ci­a­tion, and fam­i­ly. Re­ly­ing on her faith, she al­so found her­self learn­ing lessons in hu­mil­i­ty.

“What slapped me hard was hu­mil­i­ty. I feel as if I was stripped and it was to teach me that there are peo­ple around that you have to de­pend on. Now it’s your time that you have to be open to re­ceiv­ing. Like re­ceiv­ing a ham­per for me was like what? I would be giv­ing ham­pers, mon­ey to help peo­ple pay bills and here I was hav­ing to say yes to a ham­per and oth­er things I would not nor­mal­ly have had to.”

Through it all, her daugh­ter, Maria Jagdeo, 22, has been her rock. The NPATT as­sis­tant sec­re­tary and a lead singer of the band BB Ser­e­naders, she is com­plet­ing her fi­nal year at UWI in Bank­ing and Fi­nance and has tak­en con­trol of the fam­i­ly bud­get in the last two years, her moth­er re­vealed.

Jag­gasar’s 19-year-old son, Michael, who al­so start­ed a de­gree at UWI in Bank­ing and Fi­nance with Mu­sic took a year off to take on a job and help with fam­i­ly ex­pens­es. His moth­er said that he, too, is pas­sion­ate about mu­sic, was a found­ing mem­ber of a band at his al­ma mater CIC, is mu­si­cal di­rec­tor and plays the per­cus­sion with Los Alum­nos and per­forms with cul­tur­al groups like Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ing Com­pa­ny and Wasafoli T&T.

But she has warned him about the fi­nan­cial risk of be­com­ing an artiste. Jag­gasar was adamant that she would do all in her pow­er to en­sure that her chil­dren com­plete their fa­ther’s dream that they fin­ish uni­ver­si­ty.

The parang stal­wart and pas­sion­ate ed­u­ca­tor, who has passed on the art form through pro­grammes to stu­dents at nu­mer­ous schools in the coun­try would al­so like to raise aware­ness about de­pres­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly among young peo­ple as a re­sult of her re­cent ex­pe­ri­ences. She has in­tro­duced the top­ic via her Mon­day night se­ries “My Cu­a­tro and I” on her Face­book page. She is al­so con­sid­er­ing start­ing an in­spi­ra­tional blog.

The vi­sion­ary founder of this coun­try’s first Na­tion­al Parang or­ches­tra al­so hopes to have a Latin Fes­ti­val un­der the Parang As­so­ci­a­tion and is in talks with the Span­ish em­bassy and var­i­ous Latin Amer­i­can em­bassies. She con­tin­ues to cher­ish her per­son­al dream of shar­ing the stage with cel­e­brat­ed Latin Amer­i­can singer and com­pos­er Juan Luis Guer­ra one day.

For now, Jag­gasar looks for­ward to be­ing on the cast of a host of “Christ­mas in Ju­ly” shows and a Dar­ren Shep­pard con­cert in Au­gust. Step­ping out on her own kin­dles a mix­ture of ex­cite­ment and cu­rios­i­ty to see how her cre­ativ­i­ty will be chal­lenged, she said.