When David Rud­der first start­ed in mu­sic, he did not feel it would go very far.

“I just want­ed to make mu­sic be­cause I loved that. But then to have peo­ple say this is be­yond nor­mal and nat­ur­al and we recog­nise it and salute you for that, it means so much,” Rud­der told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Rud­der was one of four peo­ple se­lect­ed to be con­ferred with the Or­der of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (OCC) this year.

Rud­der said this means his peers cor­rect­ed his work and found he made the pass­ing grade. As such, he said he was ho­n­oured to be con­sid­ered for the award.

“Some­times you do work and you don’t know if peo­ple are lis­ten­ing to it, or if it is just pass­ing them by, or what have you but then you kind of re­alise that peo­ple know and it makes you feel like you can just keep go­ing on pro­duc­ing and do­ing what you can to keep serv­ing the re­gion and the na­tion as the case may be,” Rud­der said.

The three oth­er OCC awardees this year were for­mer Cari­com Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, Am­bas­sador Ir­win LaRocque, crick­et leg­end Sir Vi­vian Richards and for­mer deputy Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs of Bar­ba­dos, Dame Bil­lie Miller.

Rud­der said it was a priv­i­lege to be named among them.

LaRocque, Richards and Miller all re­ceived their awards on Sun­day dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 43rd Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in Para­mari­bo, Suri­name.

They each re­ceived an 18-carat gold medal­lion with a spe­cial­ly de­signed rib­bon to be worn around the neck and a small­er ver­sion of the in­signia in the form of a lapel pin, and a scroll de­tail­ing their out­stand­ing achieve­ments.

Rud­der, how­ev­er, was not able to col­lect his award be­cause he had a pri­or en­gage­ment in New York. He per­formed at Na­dia Bat­son’s con­cert in Brook­lyn on Mon­day. Aaron ‘Voice’ St Louis and Ter­ri Lyons al­so per­formed at the event.

“Some­times they in­vite their un­cle to come along,” Rud­der said in jest.

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne said he took a pro­pos­al to Cab­i­net for Rud­der to be pre­sent­ed with the OCC in the near fu­ture pend­ing his avail­abil­i­ty, which was ap­proved and sub­se­quent­ly ac­cept­ed by Cari­com.

Browne said he is plan­ning for the pre­sen­ta­tion to take place in T&T.

“We will work it out to have a mu­tu­al time and place so every­body will know about it,” Rud­der said.

The OCC is an award giv­en to “Caribbean na­tion­als whose lega­cy in the eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and cul­tur­al meta­mor­phoses of Caribbean so­ci­ety is phe­nom­e­nal.”

It was ini­ti­at­ed at the Eighth Con­fer­ence of Heads of State and Gov­ern­ments of Cari­com in 1987 and be­gan be­stow­al in 1992.

The last time it was be­stowed was in 2012.

“I just want to say thanks for all the sup­port over the years and all of the love that is be­ing shown right now, my Face­book page is go­ing crazy and peo­ple are call­ing and it makes them feel good so that makes me feel good,” Rud­der said.

One thing that may come to mind when you think of Rud­der and the Caribbean is the an­them for the re­gion­al crick­et team, “Ral­ly Round the West In­dies.”

Rud­der said he was “cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic” about the re­gion­al team’s per­for­mance of late.

West In­dies re­cent­ly de­feat­ed Bangladesh 2-0 in a Test se­ries.

“Every time we win, I feel great. Every­body knows, they laugh at me on Face­book, but at the end of the day, I am cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic. I think they are mak­ing some sense and the ap­proach to the game is much dif­fer­ent than be­fore,” Rud­der said.

“Right now, I am just watch­ing and feel­ing good so far, but we some­times feel good but then we take two steps back­wards. I don’t feel it is go­ing to be one of those sit­u­a­tions, but you still have to be kind of mind­ful and be cau­tious about these things but what I am see­ing right now is look­ing good.”

Asked what fans can look for­ward to in the fu­ture, Rud­der cryp­ti­cal­ly re­spond­ed: “There will be a ris­ing at Green Cor­ner.”