KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The un­ful­filled promis­es made by politi­cians, the preva­lence of drugs and the mur­der­ous ways on young Trinida­di­an men that ca­lyp­so icon David Rud­der pas­sion­ate­ly sang about in Mad­man’s Rant over two decades ago, still ex­ist to­day.

Rud­der, whose life’s work has al­ways been an ad­vo­cate for bet­ter­ment against the many tri­als and tribu­la­tions faced by Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans, said so­ci­ety has not changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly since 1996 when he sang the song.

Rud­der, who al­so ac­tive­ly speaks out on na­tion­al is­sues on so­cial me­dia, sat down for an in­ter­view at the San Fer­nan­do City Hall on Wednes­day af­ter be­ing award­ed a com­mem­o­ra­tive plaque, de­clar­ing him an hon­orary cit­i­zen of San Fer­nan­do. He al­so re­ceived a to­ken of a stone tak­en from the his­toric Na­pari­ma Hill (San Fer­nan­do Hill).

“Mad­man’s Rant, the song, is al­most 30 years old but peo­ple are lis­ten­ing to it and say­ing ‘that is what’s go­ing on.’ It means that even to­day, it is rel­e­vant. It al­so means that in some way, we haven’t moved on be­cause if we are still re­lat­ing to a song like that. We have to dou­ble-down on our work. These prob­lems still ex­ist to­day,” Rud­der said.

An­oth­er one of his song, Mad­ness, he said was be­lieved to be a par­ty tune, but it was a pre­dic­tion of T&T’s fu­ture where the fete was a con­no­ta­tion for T&T’s so­ci­ety. Even this too pre­vails to­day, he said.

He said that even though T&T will cel­e­brate 184 years of the abo­li­tion of slav­ery, Afro-Trinida­di­an men and women still have not achieved eman­ci­pa­tion.

Trinida­di­ans, he said, tend to bow to oth­er forces and when out­siders look at the coun­try as a leader, it tends to fall in­to the back­ground. He said that for the coun­try to be pro­gres­sive, it needs to set trends and stan­dards for oth­ers to fol­low.

Even though the Eman­ci­pa­tion Act came in­to ef­fect on Au­gust 1, 1834, giv­ing slaves free­dom from British planters, Rud­der said that on­ly some mem­bers of the young Afro-Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty are mak­ing pro­gres­sive con­tri­bu­tions to so­ci­ety.

Rud­der, who is card­ed for a two-hour con­cert per­for­mance at Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do to­mor­row has over 250 record­ed songs. He plans to rein­tro­duce songs, some 20 and 30 years old, which he be­lieves are still rel­e­vant to to­day’s life.

San Fer­nan­do may­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo said the con­cert was a re­sponse to the need for high-qual­i­ty en­ter­tain­ment in the City.

Tick­ets for the au­di­to­ri­um are sold out, how­ev­er, $100 tick­ets for the am­phithe­atre are still avail­able.

Re­grel­lo said ta­bles, chairs and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture will be put in place to cre­ate a par­ty at­mos­phere for the out­side au­di­ence. Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Statu­to­ry meet­ing, co­me­di­an Tom­my Joseph was al­so pre­sent­ed with a to­ken for his con­tri­bu­tion as an en­ter­tain­er.