Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell says ap­proval has been giv­en for the fu­ner­al of Ca­lyp­so Queen Denyse Plum­mer to take place at Queen’s Hall, Port-of-Spain.

“A rep­re­sen­ta­tive has reached out for the use of Queen’s Hall and that has, of course, been ap­proved. Gov­ern­ment has not reached out to the fam­i­ly about fu­ner­al arrange­ments. Those mat­ters ought to prop­er­ly be left to the fam­i­ly as they grieve and make arrange­ments for their fi­nal good­byes,” Mitchell said yes­ter­day.

But a date and whether the cer­e­mo­ny will be pub­lic or pri­vate are yet to be con­firmed, he said.

“Thanks for your con­do­lences. In­fo about the fu­ner­al will be re­leased soon,” her son Jesse Boocock said in re­sponse to a Guardian Me­dia mes­sage on Face­book.

Plum­mer, 69, lost her bat­tle with can­cer on Sun­day af­ter ail­ing for sev­er­al months.

And as more trib­utes flowed yes­ter­day, her friend and mentee, Tri­cia Lee Kelshall, shared one of the last times she was able to per­form for Plum­mer.

“So, at the ben­e­fit con­cert we just did, Denyse was just about to start her chemo, not at her strongest, no spir­it wise, you could see that it had start­ed to take its toll and I went on stage to do my piece, my sound check and she was sit­ting in the au­di­ence all wrapped up in a blan­ket, she was sit­ting next to Wendy Shep­pard and I al­ways loved per­form­ing Wind Be­neath My Wings and I can hear her shout­ing in the au­di­ence, raise the roof girl, raise the roof,” Kelshall said.

She said af­ter the icon text mes­saged her, af­ter that she did the song jus­tice.

Mo­ti­va­tion­al words meant the world to Kelshall, es­pe­cial­ly since she at­trib­ut­es a lot of her suc­cess to Plum­mer.

“Her stage is the very first stage I ever sang on. She called me up and said, ‘Do you want to come sing? I was 17 think­ing I was all that, went up, couldn’t re­mem­ber the words, shamed up my­self and she said, ‘You know what, let’s try again. I can see that we’re deal­ing with some nerves’,” she re­called.

Kelshall said it was that per­for­mance where she was dis­cov­ered and got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be part of Third Bass.

Al­though Plum­mer was ill, Kelshall said her death is still hard to ac­cept be­cause her re­silience was what kept those close to her go­ing.

She re­called Plum­mer’s 1986 Skin­ner Park per­for­mance, where she re­ceived a hos­tile re­cep­tion from a jeer­ing, toi­let-pa­per wield­ing au­di­ence.

“She has sat and talked about what those mo­ments felt like and that she will be on the stage and see the things com­ing and fly­ing pass her, and the fact is what you learn from Denyse, which is why her pass­ing, for some of us be­lieved she will pull through be­cause her spir­it was that, her spir­it was one that you could not crush ... she shift­ed when she had to shift, she moved to­wards God, Denyse was not one to just stay flat she would piv­ot and find her way and just con­tin­ue to be this leg­end,” she said.

Ado­ra­tion that was felt not on­ly lo­cal­ly but across the re­gion.

Ba­jan so­ca singer Al­i­son Hinds said when she joined the in­dus­try, it was Plum­mer and San­dra “Singing San­dra” Des Vi­gnes-Milling­ton who wel­comed her.

“She was one of the peo­ple that was in­stru­men­tal in giv­ing me so much sup­port,” Hinds said.

But Hinds said she was mo­ti­vat­ed by Plum­mer’s re­silience and de­ter­mi­na­tion to be a ca­lyp­son­ian amid the op­po­si­tion.

“She had every claim to her cul­ture as any­one else, or any Trinida­di­an of colour, she had to fight that to earn it, she worked for the re­spect that she did get. She just wasn’t go­ing and give up and when I saw that as a young woman com­ing up in the busi­ness, that was in­spi­ra­tion in it­self, just to see the way she was fight down at every step un­til it got to the point where it was like we can­not de­ny this woman, she is class, she is a gem and all of that I saw and I know oth­er young women saw and were in­spired by that,” she said.

Hinds said Plum­mer’s de­ter­mi­na­tion and pas­sion for her cul­ture and mu­sic set her apart and is what young Caribbean mu­si­cians should take from her lega­cy.