BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

To add to his long list of ac­co­lades, Slinger “Mighty Spar­row” Fran­cis­co will now be im­mor­talised at the Caribbean Wax Mu­se­um in Nor­man Cen­tre, Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos.

The life-like de­pic­tion of the ‘Jean and Di­nah’ singer will be un­veiled to­mor­row on the premis­es of The Com­mer­cial Cred­it Di­vi­sion of Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fi­nance Co. Ltd, Bar­ba­dos.

The un­veil­ing is a merged ef­fort of the Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion of Bar­ba­dos, Cor­po­rate & Com­mer­cial Cred­it Di­vi­sion of Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fi­nance Co. Ltd and the Caribbean Wax Mu­se­um.

The Grena­di­an-born Fran­cis­co gained the ti­tle “Ca­lyp­so King” of the world through his mu­sic. Since 1956, he has re­mained the on­ly ca­lyp­son­ian to have won the T&T Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle more than any­one else—eight times. He al­so took the Road March ti­tle on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. Fran­sis­co al­so took his mu­sic to the US, Eu­rope and even Africa.

For his con­tri­bu­tion to the cul­tur­al and mu­si­cal land­scape of T&T and tak­ing the art form to the world, the 85-year-old was be­stowed sev­er­al ho­n­ours, in­clud­ing an hon­orary doc­tor­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in 1987, the ho­n­ourary ti­tle of Chief of the Yorubas, Cha­co­nia Gold Medal, Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of T&T and the Or­der of the British Em­pire (OBE).

Of this lat­est ho­n­our, Fran­cis­co yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia it was a very nice thing for the Caribbean Wax Mu­se­um to ho­n­our him in such a way. He said he was made aware of this five months ago and had no ob­jec­tion to it.

“I have been do­ing my thing for a very long time. It is good to see this…I wish I could be there to see it,” he said through laugh­ter via a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion from his US-based home.

Asked whether more need­ed to be done in T&T ho­n­our its cre­atives, Fran­cis­co an­swered, “I think we should con­tin­ue do­ing these things.”

Mean­while, Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­son­ian Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo “Broth­er” Re­sis­tance” Masim­ba la­belled the un­veil­ing as “time­ly.”

Masim­ba said giv­en that the ho­n­our has come dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month adds a cer­tain “qual­i­ty” to the cel­e­bra­tion and fit­ted in nice­ly with its theme—Ca­lyp­so Be­yond Bound­aries and Bor­ders. He said TU­CO was very pleased with the recog­ni­tion of one of the Caribbean’s great­est ca­lyp­so­ni­ans of all times.

In an email in­ter­view, di­rec­tors at the Caribbean Wax Mu­se­um said, “As with every­where else in the world where Caribbean peo­ple have set­tled, the Mighty Spar­row set the stan­dard against which all ca­lyp­so­ni­ans are judged. Bar­ba­dos’s Mighty Gab­by is in many ways a pro­tegee.”

The wax fig­ure of Fran­si­co will join oth­er re­gion­al artistes in the so­ca are­na like Bar­ba­dos’ Al­i­son Hinds and Lil Rick, Bar­ba­di­an-born US-based R&B singer Ri­han­na, as well as his­tor­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies like Che Guev­era and Fi­del Cas­tro.