Joel Julien

In 1986, David Rud­der did some­thing that may nev­er be re­peat­ed.

With his songs “The Ham­mer” and “Bahia Girl,” Rud­der ce­ment­ed his place in ca­lyp­so his­to­ry af­ter he cap­tured the Young King, Ca­lyp­so Monarch, Road March ti­tle and wrote the win­ning Panora­ma tune that year.

And while his per­for­mances nowa­days may not be as en­er­getic as they were 37 years ago, they re­main a must-see for many.

How­ev­er, fans may be see­ing him for the last time in a ma­jor per­for­mance next month, as Rud­der, af­fec­tion­ate­ly known as “King David,” yes­ter­day re­vealed a re­cent med­ical di­ag­no­sis which is chang­ing the course of his fu­ture.

Rud­der went for a med­ical check-up fol­low­ing the death of sev­er­al loved ones, in­clud­ing his broth­er.

“The first thing I did was go do some tests and check my­self and I have been di­ag­nosed with Parkin­son’s dis­ease,” Rud­der re­vealed yes­ter­day.

Rud­der made the an­nounce­ment at the Kafe Blue (for­mer­ly Kaiso Blues Cafe) in Port-of-Spain, which is owned by his long-time friend Carl Ja­cobs.

“With that I said you know what, this con­cert may not be my last, I will keep play­ing and do­ing shows but no more marathon four-hour-long shows again. It brought me in­to a kind of space where I had to fo­cus on me for the first time,” Rud­der said.

“So, for Wayne, Bar­ry, this one is for you. For the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, this one’s for you and un­til I can’t do it any­more. Years to come, I could al­ways look back and say I’ve done what I have to do, and I’ll keep do­ing it but noth­ing is promised,” he added.

Bar­ry Howard was Rud­der’s long-time drum­mer and Wayne Bruno was his mu­si­cal di­rec­tor, writ­ing part­ner and friend.

Rud­der turns 70 on May 6.

And on that day, he will be mark­ing the oc­ca­sion with an event ti­tled “Come and Cel­e­brate” at Sound Forge in Wood­brook.

Rud­der in­vit­ed peo­ple to come out and en­joy the “liv­ing­ness of life.”

“This par­tic­u­lar show is more im­por­tant than any show that I have done. I would be around for years hope­ful­ly, but this May 6 is the most im­por­tant date in the cal­en­dar for me,” Rud­der said.

Even in the midst of deal­ing with his own health is­sues, Rud­der sought to re­as­sure his fans.

“Life is what it is. I am not go­ing to drop dead to­mor­row...knock on wood. But I will be around mak­ing mu­sic, it is just some­thing that hap­pens in life, and there is noth­ing you can do about it.

“When it reach­es the point where I can­not do it any­more, well that is it. But in the mean­time, every­thing I have in­side of me, I will seek to share with the peo­ple,” he said.

He, how­ev­er, ad­mit­ted that Parkin­son’s dis­ease has been tak­ing a toll on him.

“I feel like I have to slow down...the en­er­gy is still there but phys­i­cal­ly, I have to ac­tu­al­ly take it easy be­cause it is just the way you get af­fect­ed with this thing,” Rud­der said.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s press con­fer­ence, Rud­der spoke slow­ly, as his eyes wa­tered on some oc­ca­sions.

Apart from his mu­sic, Rud­der said he has al­so start­ed pen­ning his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, paint­ing and work­ing in cop­per, as he had pre­vi­ous­ly been trained to do.

He al­so has a song called “Ris­ing,” which he start­ed to write for Car­ni­val but has not com­plet­ed as yet.

It is his favourite song at this time, he said.

“I al­ways tell peo­ple when they ask what is my favourite song, it is the song I am writ­ing right now be­cause I put every­thing in­to that song. I did that vo­cal (for the Ris­ing) af­ter two years of si­lence, my voice sound­ed strained be­cause I hadn’t been singing. I didn’t write the lyrics, there are some songs where the lyrics write them­selves and that is one of them,” Rud­der said.

Rud­der said he felt sat­is­fied with his jour­ney.

“If I have to do it all over again, I want this same jour­ney,” he said.

Rud­der laud­ed his loved ones for their con­tin­ued sup­port.

When Rud­der was on­ly a year old, he was paral­ysed by po­lio. He still limps as a re­sult of the af­ter-ef­fects of po­lio.

Parkin­son’s dis­ease is a brain dis­or­der that caus­es un­in­tend­ed or un­con­trol­lable move­ments, such as shak­ing, stiff­ness and dif­fi­cul­ty with bal­ance and co­or­di­na­tion. Symp­toms usu­al­ly be­gin grad­u­al­ly and wors­en over time. As the dis­ease pro­gress­es, peo­ple may have dif­fi­cul­ty walk­ing and talk­ing.

When news of Rud­der’s di­ag­no­sis was re­vealed yes­ter­day, hun­dreds of cit­i­zens took to so­cial me­dia to of­fer their sup­port.

The Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) post­ed: “Let’s con­tin­ue to lift up our ca­lyp­so leg­end David Rud­der in prayer.”