In­nis Fran­cis

in­nis_fran­cis@ya­hoo.com

Robert “Mighty Tri­ni” Elias has re­vealed that he con­tract­ed the COVID-19 virus and made a full re­cov­ery last No­vem­ber in­to De­cem­ber.

On­ly re­cent­ly an­oth­er artiste Ken­ny J con­tract­ed COVID-19 and died. Tri­ni said he shared good chem­istry with Ken­ny J and he was sad­dened by his death.

But af­ter per­form­ing the re­vised ver­sion of Cur­ry Ta­ban­ca, Tri­ni said: “I am ready to go and leave this be­hind. For­give me if I cry, I get emo­tion­al.”

The Mighty Tri­ni said he did over Sail­ing and Cur­ry Ta­ban­ca to meet the stan­dards of to­day’s style.

“The melody in them was too laid back and, I had to meet up with the par­ty mu­sic play­ing, es­pe­cial­ly Cur­ry Ta­ban­ca…TU­CO is not do­ing what they ought to do and the gov­ern­ment doesn’t re­spect artists. What Ter­ri Lyons says there tonight, ‘give me a let­ter’ is true, I agree with her. Let me know when I come to the air­port they won’t put me in a cor­ner for four hours. We artiste are con­tribut­ing to the T&T cul­ture fi­nan­cial­ly and oth­er­wise… give us the re­spect, and she called for that tonight.”

He said be­cause of the in­con­sis­ten­cy and the un­cer­tain­ty brought on by COVID-19 he did not do new songs for 2022, how­ev­er, he said: “I have a bomb­shell to come.”

The Mighty Tri­ni made his dis­clo­sures dur­ing his live vir­tu­al per­for­mance with the Ca­lyp­so Re­vue at the on­go­ing vir­tu­al Ka­lyp­so Kolis­siom se­ries on Sat­ur­day (Jan­u­ary 22).

The en­ter­tain­er en­tered the stage singing one of Ald­wyn (Lord Kitch­en­er) Roberts 1969 ca­lyp­so - The Bull; he com­plet­ed his set and tran­si­tioned in­to an acapel­la of ear­ly ca­lyp­sos like Dougla and Rein­car­na­tion.

He per­formed a re­worked ver­sion of Cur­ry Ta­ban­ca with the in­clu­sion of Le­ston Paul, Ken­ny Phillips, Dru­patee Ram­goon­ai, and Mun­gal Patasar.

Tri­ni’s tent mem­bers Skatie and Chalk­dust were ab­sent from the show for health rea­sons, but ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Di­a­mond and Wen­dell Goodridge com­pelled the shar­ing hands of the WACK 90.1 FM stu­dio, vir­tu­al ca­lyp­so show through­out the night pro­ceed­ings.

Two times reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch Lyons made a guest ap­pear­ance and send the tent’s vir­tu­al rat­ings to more than 51 per cent. How­ev­er, she sound­ed an ap­peal on be­half of all ca­lyp­so­ni­ans.

She said: “We are call­ing on the pow­ers that be, three months be­fore (plan­ning Car­ni­val) is not enough to put to­geth­er a show. I don’t want to sing in some shows by my­self. Some artists down since 2020, some of them, their salaries have been cut and every­thing raised ex­cept salaries. If it is to be Feb­ru­ary 28 and March 1 how can we pre­pare and put forth a good show? Some­thing as sim­ple as a let­ter to go to the Em­bassy to go and work and come back we can’t get. We are a brand and I am all for what they want to do, but this should have been an­nounced since last year.”

Prompt­ing fo­cus for or­gan­is­ers to adopt good cul­tur­al ideas, Lyons said: “Mi­a­mi own (Car­ni­val) was good and the safe zone they had in place, but not what we want to do here. A lot of artists can­not get ready in time.”

She called on artists not to be de­spon­dent and to keep mar­ket­ing them­selves.