AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter weeks of in­ter­nal rifts and dis­con­tent, some mem­bers of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) placed their dif­fer­ences aside on Wednes­day, gath­er­ing for the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s Thanks­giv­ing Ser­vice to kick off Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month.

At the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, the sounds of cel­e­bra­tion and uni­ty res­onat­ed from the VIP Lounge, as ca­lyp­so greats such as Ny­ol Man­swell, Black Sage, Con­tender, All Rounder and Su­per Blue turned out for the event.

This year’s theme is Bound­less Har­monies, a mes­sage echoed by TU­CO pres­i­dent Ains­ley King, even as he and the ex­ec­u­tive face al­le­ga­tions and mount­ing crit­i­cism of fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment from with­in the mem­ber­ship.

“We are here to serve each oth­er, and we are here to help each oth­er and to make the life around each oth­er a bet­ter liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for each oth­er,” King said.

He as­sured mem­bers that “life will be easy for every­body. There will be suc­cess for every­body; there will be hap­pi­ness for every­body.”

Al­so speak­ing at the event, Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin said she in­tend­ed to meet with the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) to dis­cuss the up­com­ing Car­ni­val sea­son. But with Car­ni­val 2026 just months away, she urged TU­CO to stay unit­ed.

“As the min­is­ter of cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, I wish to com­mend TU­CO. I know you said show love, and in each or­gan­i­sa­tion, there is al­ways some in­ter­nal pol­i­tics, some fight­ing. But you have not let that dawn on your rep­re­sen­ta­tion of fly­ing the flag high. I am ask­ing TU­CO to re­mem­ber the sec­ond word, uni­fied, and stand unit­ed,” Ben­jamin said.

Ben­jamin made no fur­ther com­ment on rifts with­in TU­CO, or on out­stand­ing sub­ven­tions owed to ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. But in true ca­lyp­so fash­ion, no top­ic was left un­touched dur­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive ex­tem­po per­for­mance by Man­swell, Black Sage (Phillip Mur­ray) and Con­tender (Mark John).

“I have to say it is al­so my plea­sure; I want to show re­spect to the min­is­ter. And to the front row, I have to de­clare; NCC peo­ple, thank you all for be­ing here. But I don’t want all yuh be amazed; I know why the Con­tender giv­ing the min­is­ter praise. Why he is prais­ing up the love­ly woman? Con­tender can’t wait for he sub­ven­tion,” Black Sage sang.

Prompt­ing Con­tender’s re­sponse, “Well, Sage boy, I like that kind of lan­guage; thank you for that priv­i­lege. And look, I want you to know; I big­ging up the (NCC) CEO al­so. Look, I want you agree; that they should deal nice with we. So I’m look­ing for­ward, un­der­stand; Min­is­ter and CEO, we want ah big sub­ven­tion.”