Valdeen Shears-Nep­tune

He is now Dr David Michael Rud­der.

On Oc­to­ber 24, the ca­lyp­son­ian, whose "lyrics could make a politi­cian cringe and turn a woman's body in­to jel­ly," took the stage in a dif­fer­ent light.

Rud­der was ho­n­oured with the de­gree of Doc­tor of Let­ters (DLitt) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies for out­stand­ing cul­tur­al con­tri­bu­tions, along­side Dr Mar­jorie Thor­pe, for her ded­i­ca­tion and ser­vice to UWI, the coun­try and the re­gion.

The event marked the third day of the 2015 grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Held at UWI Spec, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, it saw over 3,500 grad­uands ho­n­oured for their years of hard work and ded­i­ca­tion. Rud­der stood tall and proud, as the ho­n­our was be­stowed on him by Chan­cel­lor Sir George Al­leyne and Vice-Chan­cel­lor Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les.

Mere min­utes lat­er his per­for­mance of the hit, Ca­lyp­so Mu­sic, cre­at­ed quite a stir and drew loud ap­plause and par­tic­i­pa­tion from the stu­dious-look­ing au­di­ence.

A hush, though, fell over the au­di­to­ri­um, when Rud­der per­formed The Ganges and the Nile. His pow­er­ful voice, ac­com­pa­nied by gui­tarist Wayne Bruno, re­ver­ber­at­ed around the halls of UWI Spec and elicit­ed rous­ing ap­plause on the last note.

Fol­low­ing the grad­u­a­tion, Rud­der, ac­com­pa­nied by wife, Chris­tine, daugh­ter Sarai and sons Isaac, Noah and Adam, said he was in­spired by the re­sponse from the younger mem­bers in the UWI au­di­ence.

It was a sign, he said, that his mu­sic was not "just float­ing in the wind."

In de­liv­er­ing the grad­u­a­tion ad­dress, Thor­pe not­ed the dom­i­nant ra­tio of fe­male grad­u­ates to their male coun­ter­parts.

"...the very pres­ence of so many young women at this cer­e­mo­ny demon­strates that like their male col­leagues, our women, too, now com­mand the tech­ni­cal skills, the knowl­edge, the an­a­lyt­i­cal com­pe­tence and the de­ter­mi­na­tion to be equal part­ners in the dri­ve to achieve de­vel­oped coun­try sta­tus," she stat­ed.

They are just two of this year's eight hon­orary grad­u­ates, who al­so in­clude Hol­lis R Charles, Jus­tice An­gela Per­manand, A. Nor­man Sab­ga, Ger­ard Besson, Jus­tice Ralph Nar­ine and Ra­jku­mar Per­sad.

Lily Kwok, who de­liv­ered the vale­dic­to­ri­an speech, hav­ing grad­u­at­ed with a Bach­e­lor of Arts, Lit­er­a­tures in Eng­lish and Lin­guis­tics (First Class Ho­n­ours), re­called the choice to cur­tail her pur­suit of law. She en­cour­aged the grad­uands to be true to them­selves, even if it meant over­look­ing the de­mands or ex­pec­ta­tions of fam­i­ly, friends and so­ci­ety.

Al­so among the grad­uands was one of the me­dia's own: TV4 pre­sen­ter Nikoli Ed­wards, Guild Sec­re­tary, was award­ed a bach­e­lor of arts de­gree in com­mu­ni­ca­tion stud­ies and the­atre Arts. Ed­wards was joined by his fel­low UWI stu­dent ex­ec­u­tives, Kyle Delzin and Make­si Pe­ters, who were cel­e­brat­ed for their achieve­ments.

Delzin was award­ed a bach­e­lor of sci­ence de­gree in me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing, while Pe­ters re­ceived a bach­e­lor of sci­ence de­gree in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions and psy­chol­o­gy.