PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter more than a month in hos­pi­tal, so­ca artiste Dex­ter “Blaxx” Stew­art is back at home.

His man­ag­er, Giselle Gellineau-Pen­rose con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that D’All Stars lead vo­cal­ist was dis­charged yes­ter­day from the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Cen­tre where he un­der­went surgery a week and a half ago.

“He is rest­ing com­fort­ably at home,” said Gellineau-Pen­rose.

It was the sec­ond op­er­a­tion the singer had un­der­gone at the Mount Hope Hos­pi­tal in the past two months.

Stew­art had on­ly been dis­charged from hos­pi­tal last month, af­ter un­der­go­ing surgery in re­la­tion to kid­ney treat­ment.

This prompt­ed fel­low so­ca artiste and disc-jock­ey Dawg E Slaugh­ter to launch a char­i­ty dri­ve for the “Leh Go” and “Hulk” singer which be­came a Go­FundMe ac­count that raised over US$20,000 to date.

“We are in­deed grate­ful of all the fi­nan­cial help re­ceived from every­one,” said, Gellineau-Pen­rose.

“He wants to thank all his fel­low artistes—Fayann, Bun­ji, Machel, Iw­er, Kes, and all the oth­er artistes who showed their sup­port be it fi­nan­cial, through phone calls, mes­sages. The love shown was over­whelm­ing. Spe­cial thanks to La­dy Mon­tano as well.”

Days af­ter be­ing dis­charged from hos­pi­tal in Oc­to­ber, Blaxx was rushed to Med­ical As­so­ciates in St Joseph af­ter he com­plained about hav­ing trou­ble breath­ing.

He had been at the fa­cil­i­ty un­til be­ing trans­ferred to Mt Hope where the lat­est pro­ce­dure was un­der­tak­en.

Mean­while, there was more good news for the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try lo­cal­ly as ac­claimed steel­band arranger Len “Boogsie” Sharpe and di­alect po­et Paul Keens Dou­glas are among 14 peo­ple across the re­gion who will re­ceive hon­orary de­grees from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies at its 2020 grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies.

The cer­e­monies are sched­uled to take place from Jan­u­ary 11–16.

Sharpe is be­ing award­ed a Doc­tor of Let­ters (DLitt) for steel­pan arrange­ment, com­po­si­tion, and per­for­mance and Keens-Dou­glas for his work in cul­ture and the arts.

The UWI grad­u­a­tions will be in a mix of blend­ed, vir­tu­al for­mats in cel­e­bra­tion of grad­u­at­ing class of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,500 stu­dents across the re­gion.

The hon­orary doc­tor­ates are in keep­ing with a tra­di­tion of recog­nis­ing Caribbean ex­cel­lence in a wide va­ri­ety of fields such as mu­sic, the­atre, pub­lic ser­vice, med­i­cine, agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence and en­tre­pre­neur­ship among oth­ers. The awards were ap­proved by the Uni­ver­si­ty Coun­cil, which has sanc­tioned over 500 hon­orary de­grees since 1965.

—with re­port­ing by Suzanne Shep­pard