Suzanne Shep­pard

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty is mourn­ing the loss of two of its vet­er­an en­ter­tain­ers with­in a week, fol­low­ing the death of cel­e­brat­ed cul­tur­al icon Bill Trot­man on Wednes­day evening at the age of 92.

Trot­man’s pass­ing comes just days af­ter the death of The Mighty Wan­der­er (Pe­ter Thyrill Her­bert), 85, who died last Sat­ur­day.

Both men built rep­u­ta­tions as far more than ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, with suc­cess­es in oth­er as­pects of the per­form­ing arts, lo­cal­ly and abroad, over their decades-long ca­reers.

Over more than six decades, Trot­man es­tab­lished him­self as a po­et, vi­su­al artist, sculp­tor, com­pos­er, co­me­di­an, mas­ter of cer­e­monies and cul­tur­al am­bas­sador whose work cel­e­brat­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s her­itage.

Born in Port-of-Spain, he spent part of his child­hood in Wood­brook be­fore mov­ing to Mor­vant at the age of 10. In­flu­enced from an ear­ly age by renowned cul­tur­al fig­ures, in­clud­ing Ge­of­frey Hold­er, he de­vel­oped a life­long pas­sion for the arts. His in­volve­ment in com­mu­ni­ty ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing help­ing to build the Mor­vant Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in 1945, laid the foun­da­tion for his en­dur­ing com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing lo­cal tra­di­tions.

Trot­man’s en­try in­to en­ter­tain­ment came dur­ing Car­ni­val 1954 when he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a mas­quer­ade per­for­mance and im­pressed au­di­ences with his lim­bo danc­ing. That ex­pe­ri­ence launched a re­mark­able artis­tic jour­ney that would see him be­come one of the coun­try’s most recog­nis­able cul­tur­al per­son­al­i­ties.

Through­out his ca­reer, Trot­man per­formed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and shared stages and ex­pe­ri­ences with glob­al stars in­clud­ing Mick Jag­ger, Nat King Cole, Rober­ta Flack and Bob Mar­ley.

Al­though he first per­formed un­der the so­bri­quet Lord Fly­ing Fish, he lat­er adopt­ed the stage name Trinidad Bill, em­brac­ing his role as an am­bas­sador for the na­tion’s cul­ture.

Be­yond the ca­lyp­so stage, Trot­man ex­pressed his cre­ativ­i­ty through lit­er­a­ture and the vi­su­al arts. He au­thored sev­er­al books, in­clud­ing The Search of Bill Trot­man, Eye Love My­self, pub­lished in 2005, and Look Me, Yuh Car­ni­val Man, a 2014 bi­og­ra­phy chron­i­cling his Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ences.

His paint­ings and sculp­tures were ex­hib­it­ed lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, with his lat­est ex­hi­bi­tion, I See My Cul­ture, cur­rent­ly on dis­play at the Art So­ci­ety un­til Sun­day. The ex­hi­bi­tion show­cas­es decades of artis­tic work re­flect­ing Trot­man’s deep love for Car­ni­val, ca­lyp­so and T&T iden­ti­ty.

Trot­man al­so con­tributed to the film in­dus­try, work­ing on pro­duc­tions in­clud­ing Half Moon Street (1986) and Ju­lia & Joyce: Two Sto­ries of Two Dance Pi­o­neers (2010).

A na­tion­al award re­cip­i­ent, he re­mained com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing the coun­try’s artis­tic lega­cy and had want­ed to es­tab­lish a Her­itage House and Art Gallery to show­case his ex­ten­sive col­lec­tion of art­work, cos­tumes and cul­tur­al mem­o­ra­bil­ia.

The Mighty Wan­der­er, whose ca­reer al­so spanned more than 60 years, was born in San Fer­nan­do in 1941.

Be­fore be­com­ing a house­hold name in ca­lyp­so, Wan­der­er worked as a re­porter-pho­tog­ra­ph­er with the T&T Guardian and lat­er the Ex­press dur­ing the 1960s. His jour­nal­ism ca­reer end­ed af­ter the Guardian South build­ing was de­stroyed by fire, prompt­ing him to de­vote him­self ful­ly to mu­sic.

Tent op­er­a­tor Charles Clarke en­cour­aged Wan­der­er to spe­cialise in hu­mor­ous ca­lyp­soes rather than po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary, ad­vice that shaped the di­rec­tion of his ca­reer.

Fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Clarke’s San Fer­nan­do tent, Wan­der­er es­tab­lished The Wan­der­er Rov­ing Brigade, a south Trinidad ca­lyp­so tent that was a launch­ing pad for sev­er­al per­form­ers, in­clud­ing Gyp­sy (Win­ston­Peters), La­dy Gyp­sy (Lynette Steele), Lord Com­panero, La­dy Jane, La­dy Tiny and Bernel C.

Fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties even­tu­al­ly forced the tent’s clo­sure, but Wan­der­er re­mained ded­i­cat­ed to de­vel­op­ing ca­lyp­so tal­ent in south­ern Trinidad.

His ca­reer took an un­usu­al turn when he toured 32 US states with an Amer­i­can cir­cus, an ex­pe­ri­ence he cred­it­ed with re­fin­ing the com­ic tim­ing and stage pres­ence that be­came hall­marks of his per­for­mances.

Af­ter re­turn­ing to Trinidad in 1970, Wan­der­er joined Mighty Spar­row’s Young Brigade Ca­lyp­so Tent un­der the men­tor­ship of the late Ras Shorty I. To­geth­er, they pro­duced sev­er­al suc­cess­ful songs, in­clud­ing the 1984 hit Pre­mat­tee, which gained pop­u­lar­i­ty through­out the Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Wan­der­er al­so ap­peared in lo­cal film pro­duc­tions, in­clud­ing Bac­cha­nal Time, in which he por­trayed the mem­o­rable char­ac­ter Chowl­in, and lat­er in the docu-com­e­dy Sweet Fuh So.

His fi­nal ca­lyp­so tent per­for­mance came in 2013 with Me Hair, while his last record­ing, Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, was re­leased in 2017.

Through­out his ca­reer, Wan­der­er con­sis­tent­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so, cham­pi­oning strong lyri­cism, melody, hu­mour and pol­ished stage­craft.

He re­ceived nu­mer­ous ho­n­ours, in­clud­ing recog­ni­tion from South Cen­tral TU­CO in 2004 and a na­tion­al TU­CO award in 2013 for his con­tri­bu­tions as man­ag­er of the Rov­ing Brigade Tent.