SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

The el­dest of 17 sib­lings; from age sev­en years, the per­form­ing arts was the light bulb il­lu­mi­nat­ing the mind; start­ed bal­let and folk dance at age nine. This was lo­cal so­ca artiste Denise “Saucy Wow” Bel­fon. Dancer, foot­ball, gym­nas­tics, Howard Uni­ver­si­ty Foot­ball Schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ent, chef, moth­er, grand­moth­er, men­tor, pro-song­bird char­ac­terise, but as a teenag­er, try­ing to ra­tio­nalise how school ed­u­ca­tion was go­ing to ful­fil the mu­sic and per­form­ing dream, haunt­ed. Boys were on the mind a bit too; but who, be­sides the Cre­ator, tru­ly knows what’s in store for you.

Akin to T&T’s first Prime Min­is­ter, the late Dr Er­ic Eu­stace Williams’ last child, Er­i­ca Williams-Con­nell of her­self in com­menc­ing her 25:54-minute ora­tion on No­vem­ber 13, 2019, at the School of Ed­u­ca­tion, UWI, St Au­gus­tine, on Williams the Man, and the Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Col­lec­tion Re­search Li­brary, Archives and Mu­se­um (EWMC): “When I was about 14 years old, with­out a sin­gle pro­found thought in my head, oth­er than boys that is, I said: ‘dad­dy, when you die, all I want are your books and pa­pers.’ I failed mis­er­ably at his­to­ry in my re­bel­lious years, I re­fused to go to uni­ver­si­ty even if they would have me. Now the irony of all ironies is, I have be­come the founder and cu­ra­tor of the EWMC—a vast his­tor­i­cal archive and de­posit with the UWI, T&T…. In ret­ro­spect, I re­alise now, that I knew their (the books and pa­pers) in­trin­sic val­ue.”

The moral of the ex­cerpt is: all chil­dren iden­ti­fy with ‘great­ness’ from very young, and trans­port it with them though out life, and so, 51-year-old Bel­fon, from pre­teen, re­alised dance and per­for­mance had in­trin­sic val­ue —it’s a spir­it.

Bel­fon be­came mu­si­cal­ly-famed from 1991 with her first so­ca so­lo re­lease Ka Ka Lay Lay, giv­ing prais­es to­day, to Roy Cape and his All Stars band for ini­ti­at­ing her big—stage op­por­tu­ni­ties from 1990. Saucy, know­ing the pow­er of dance, adopt­ed every move in what she’s best faced for and moral­ly crit­i­cised—raunchy, spicy, tan­ta­lis­ing, provoca­tive so­ca per­for­mances.

Hav­ing hit tur­bu­lent pop­u­lar­i­ty wa­ters in T&T classed as “no longer rel­e­vant” de­spite pro­duc­ing oth­er mega so­ca hits as re­cent­ly as this year, 2020, like Williams-Con­nell, you nev­er know what “irony of ironies” will sur­face.

Re­fus­ing to be de­meaned or to psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly tus­sle up with lo­cal par­ty pro­mot­ers or ra­dio sta­tions to hire her or play her hits, Saucy took up res­i­dence in the US two and a half years ago, hit the ground run­ning tour­ing Amer­i­ca, which halt­ed the day the stay-home ad­vi­so­ry start­ed, but con­tin­ued lock­ing down ma­jor live vi­ral con­certs as re­cent­ly as May 9.

In the 1970s, tele­vi­sion lovers would re­mem­ber the Six Mil­lion Dol­lar Man and Won­der Woman. Well, in 2020, amidst the cur­rent glob­al pan­dem­ic lock­down, here ris­es a 60-plus-mil­lion-stream T&T so­ca artiste and a won­der woman with her home-de­liv­ery-ham­pers Covid-19 Put Yuh Back in It chal­lenge as pro­mot­ed by DJ Flex, pop­u­lar­is­ing the Tik Tok site.

Per­haps T&T thinks the artiste can on­ly evoke “the jamette” in you, but it has caused a flair of sur­feit chal­lengers glob­al­ly, young and old, in and out­doors, and en­dors­ing and em­brac­ing the song in var­ied health­ful con­texts, dance in­struc­tors have adopt­ed it as a keep-fit and chore­og­ra­phy tool, with tes­ti­monies re­alised.

“This was my last class be­fore I went on ma­ter­ni­ty break,” re­ports Lon­don-based African Afro-Vibes Class dance chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, pro-dancer and dance teacher, Olu­fu­milo­la “Fumy” Opaye­mi, sub­se­quent to en­gag­ing her class in the Put Yuh Back in It chal­lenge and work­out. “Fif­teen hours af­ter this class, my new love was born (nat­ur­al birth). Thank you every­one who came down on that day; it will for­ev­er be in my mem­o­ry.”

Flex­i­ble in reper­toire and char­ac­ter, Saucy trans­forms to so­phis­ti­ca­tion and diplo­ma­cy when nec­es­sary.

Ground-break­ing ac­com­plish­ments, most loved, ex­treme­ly pro­lif­ic, best Caribbean win­ing queen, a ma­jor hit, a glob­al fan, dex­ter­ous dancer, are some of the in­ter­na­tion­al de­scrip­tions can­vas­ing Bel­fon.

How could T&T not recog­nise this?

“My chil­dren and sib­lings have seen me go through blood, sweat, grief, tears; hit rock bot­tom; bounced back. They see my suc­cess as a great bless­ing; they sup­port me 100 per cent,” says Bel­fon.

Work­ing with St Lu­cian in­ter­na­tion­al mu­si­cal artist Ricky T (Ricky T Duni­gan), Ha­ha­ha—an­oth­er flavour­ful sauce—was re­leased last month; al­ready mak­ing waves.

There is a mar­ket and space for every genre of mu­sic, but strong back­bone is need­ed to thor­ough­ly re­spect T&T so­ca artistes.