With her thought­ful ca­lyp­so, The You in You Al­li­son Bernard (War­rior Em­press) who sings at the Re­vue ca­lyp­so tent, placed 3rd at the 2019 NWAC Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Queens com­pe­ti­tion. One per­son who was at Queen's Hall called her com­po­si­tion “a dis­ser­ta­tion”. This ca­lyp­so de­serves a com­ment or cri­tique that goes be­yond what was writ­ten by re­porters who cov­ered the event.

Two years ago I wrote about me­dia and its cri­tique of mu­sic “Crit­ics are a ma­jor re­source in the cre­ative arts, whether we are deal­ing with fash­ion shows, culi­nary arts, award cer­e­monies, art ex­hi­bi­tions, dra­ma, dance or po­et­ry. Where ca­lyp­so, pan and In­di­an mu­sic are con­cerned in Trinidad & To­ba­go there are is­sues that need ven­ti­la­tion...”

“At one point there were use­ful cri­tiques of ca­lyp­so and ca­lyp­so tents from Derek Wal­cott in the Trinidad Guardian, Kei­th Smith in the Ex­press and there were al­so Mark Lyn­der­say, Ter­ry Joseph and Deb­bie Ja­cobs.”

I want to con­grat­u­late War­rior Em­press for her con­cern about the low self-es­teem as­so­ci­at­ed with de­pres­sion and oth­er forms of men­tal ill­ness. This year on­ly one oth­er ca­lyp­son­ian, Joanne Row­ley (Ti­gress) has giv­en some thought to deal­ing with de­pres­sion. I think that the na­tion should pay at­ten­tion to Ti­gress' Who feels it knows it.

T&T owes a debt of grat­i­tude to both women for lead­ing the way as we strug­gle with crises which seem un­sur­mount­able. War­rior Em­press in her song de­scribes sit­u­a­tions and at once of­fers en­cour­age­ment about how the prob­lems may be ap­proached. She does so from the first verse to the end of the ca­lyp­so.

In the sec­ond verse, she sang ap­par­ent­ly about a re­cent trag­ic sit­u­a­tion.

“Fear de­ceit and lies

Form the pil­lars and foun­da­tions of our lives

Afraid of what they would say

Once our true char­ac­ter gets dis­played

So we run to Face­book In­sta­gram and Twit­ter

De­pict­ing our lives so per­fect com­plete with glit­ter

This guy was so nice and jol­ly

He was the life of the par­ty

Next day he was a sui­cide sto­ry

Leav­ing be­hind a trail of agony”

The cho­rus an­swers with her en­cour­age­ment

“Know the You in You my broth­er

Val­ue your­self

Sista why should you want to be like some­one else

You per­fect­ly done with all your im­per­fec­tions

No one has au­thor­i­ty to say who you should be

Next time you feel un­wor­thy in­se­cure and down

Shake off that vibe put on a smile and re­mem­ber

A mas­ter­piece has no repli­ca”

But a prob­lem about ca­lyp­so re­mains. War­rior Em­press' per­cep­tive ca­lyp­so is not like­ly to be giv­en the ro­ta­tion com­pa­ra­ble to what a se­lect group of so­ca artistes is now get­ting on the ma­jor­i­ty of the ra­dio sta­tions.

That is un­less the me­dia helps to in­form au­di­ences about per­ti­nent as­pects con­cern­ing ca­lyp­so com­po­si­tions that are writ­ten, per­formed and record­ed year af­ter year. There­by lis­ten­ers will pos­si­bly make their col­lec­tive voic­es heard and thus es­tab­lish a bal­ance in the qual­i­ty of the songs that are now broad­cast.

Aiye­goro Ome

Mt Lam­bert