Pe­ter Ray Blood

pe­ter.blood@guardian.co.tt

The late Rail­way Dou­glas, Jazzy Pan­tin, Syl Tay­lor and Son­ny Wood­ley must be turn­ing in their graves as ca­lyp­so tents con­tin­ue to be an en­dan­gered specie in the hurly burly ac­tiv­i­ty of car­ni­val. Hav­ing at­tend­ed the open­ing night of a few ca­lyp­so tents these past few days, it is painful­ly ob­vi­ous that the ca­lyp­so tent, at least in its tra­di­tion­al form, is dy­ing and be­com­ing ex­tinct.

I re­mem­ber days when there were long lines out­side ca­lyp­so tents with anx­ious pay­ing pa­trons queu­ing to gain en­trance. Open­ing night was a grand af­fair, with pa­trons dress­ing to the hilt to come and hear the new songs of the sea­son, and Ladies Night at­tract­ed ca­pac­i­ty-filled venues.

Last Sat­ur­day, 30 min­utes af­ter the sched­uled start of the pro­gramme at Ka­lyp­so Re­vue, the SWW­TU Hall venue was not even half-filled. Ob­serv­ing the ar­rivals, not a soli­tary at­tendee was be­neath the age of 40. This doesn’t au­gur well for the fu­ture of the ca­lyp­so art form as young peo­ple sim­ply don’t seem in­ter­est­ed in at­tend­ing a ca­lyp­so tent.

Like Klas­sic Ru­so and Back 2 Ba­sics tents, Ka­lyp­so Re­vue has a well bal­anced pro­gramme, al­though the first quar­ter of the pro­gramme needs strength­en­ing. The night’s first en­core was re­ceived by the fifth per­former, Bevon St Clair, singing a gut-wrench­ing so­cial com­men­tary, ti­tled Hu­man, a state­ment on the plight of the so­cial­ly dis­placed.

A peren­ni­al pow­er­house at the Re­vue, Mar­lon Ed­wards was one of the night’s strongest per­form­ers, with a good song and per­for­mance of Sil­ver Lin­ing, and get­ting a well de­served en­core.

Po­lice Band mu­si­cian Michelle Hen­ry be­gan the show’s sec­ond hour singing The Guest List, her take on re­quire­ments for guests in­vit­ed to Pres­i­dent House. She told me af­ter, that Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes likes her song.

In terms of orig­i­nal ma­te­r­i­al, Singing So­nia was spot on with Wel­come to Chi­na­town. En­cored for this hu­mor­ous dit­ty, she ques­tioned the con­tri­bu­tion by Chi­nese to Char­lotte Street and East Dry Riv­er, sug­gest­ing that the com­mu­ni­ty and street had more de­serv­ing dwellers, like the late Dr Rat (Win­ston Bruce).

La­dy Watch­man (Alana Sin­nette) was her usu­al se­ri­ous, mil­i­tant, “in-yo-face,” dy­nam­ic self with her thought-pro­vok­ing Snitch­es Get Stitch­es.

For­mer Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch De­von Seales was en­cored for Klep­to, a song that is guar­an­teed to ig­nite the crowd at Guaracara Park at the Feb­ru­ary 15 Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch se­mi-fi­nal.

An­oth­er for­mer na­tion­al monarch, Sug­ar Aloes, as well as vet­er­ans de Mighty Tri­ni, Skatie and Baron sang retro songs, with Aloes be­ing en­cored for his pro-PNM Man of the Mo­ment. Baron brought a clo­sure to the show’s first half singing Dance Floor, one of his gold­en oldies.

Pink Pan­ther, he too a past na­tion­al monarch, was the on­ly per­former to get a dou­ble en­core, get­ting it for his rib-tick­ling Quick, Quick, Quick.

Make­da Dar­ius, com­par­ing the late Sat Maraj to Mar­tin Luther King, was stout­ly en­cored for Not Mar­tin.

The wiz­ened Chalk­dust sang one of the bet­ter com­po­si­tions on the pro­gramme (Mur­der Fren­zy) and was just­ly en­cored.

The Re­vue show came to a cli­max around mid­night with de Mighty Tri­ni singing Sail­ing, and Re­vue Or­ches­tra band mem­ber Snag­gs do­ing a cov­er of Mighty Swal­low’s Fire.

Ka­lyp­so Re­vue has quite an en­ter­tain­ing pro­gramme, guid­ed by em­cee Mar­cus Bap­tiste. How­ev­er, at times the band’s sound over­whelmed some of the artistes with a few of them sig­nalling, be­hind their backs, to the per­cus­sion to ei­ther slow or in­crease the tem­po.

Based on the ma­te­r­i­al of­fered on open­ing night, the Re­vue could have a few of its artistes se­lect­ed to the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch se­mi-fi­nal af­ter the judges make their vis­it there on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 7.