DAVID CUFFY

Yafeu "Roots­man" Os­ei, with his melod­ic voice and en­gag­ing per­son­al­i­ty, brought the house down at the Al­ter­na­tive Lo­cal Tues­days (ALT) show last Tues­day night at the Aquar­ios Bar and Lounge on East­ern Main Road, Tacarigua. The sea­soned ca­lyp­so and so­ca bard had pa­trons clap­ping, singing along and shak­ing a leg as he de­liv­ered melody af­ter sweet melody from his wide, cap­ti­vat­ing reper­toire of songs.

The gift­ed lyri­cist shared the night's stage with sev­er­al oth­er lo­cal artistes who de­liv­ered their con­tri­bu­tions to an en­thu­si­as­tic au­di­ence, pre­sent­ing au­then­tic work from a broad range of gen­res in­clu­sive of so­ca, pop, R&B, dra­mat­ic po­et­ry, and spo­ken word. Fu­elled by the ALT-cre­at­ed chant, "Long Live Lo­cal!," the per­form­ers on the event's play­bill had mem­bers of the au­di­ence en­rap­tured and pay­ing keen at­ten­tion to their ren­di­tions. The line­up in­clud­ed the young spo­ken word artiste Boom de­liv­er­ing Sto­ry­time, Run, and Rem­i­nisce; R&B vo­cal­ist Michael Foye singing Love, Stay Here, and She's A Bad Girl; Sta­cyann Par­ris (Phoenix Lyri­cis) per­form­ing Im­age and Silent; and the dy­nam­ic Chanz Davis of­fer­ing (Gaza) Strip, and Vanil­la Hot Sauce.

Set in the re­laxed pool­side at­mos­phere of the Aquar­ios court­yard, ALT has been help­ing to rekin­dle a love for lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment forms and a re­vived re­spect for the lo­cal artiste, since its in­cep­tion in April 2012. De­vel­oped and host­ed by uni­ver­si­ty teacher and tal­ent­ed per­form­ing artiste Janique Den­nis, the show works to re­vive the love for home-grown cre­ativ­i­ty in the mu­si­cal and per­form­ing are­nas. New and sea­soned tal­ent find an equal place on the stage of ALT, as the pro­gramme cre­ates a much-de­sired open-mic space for emerg­ing artistes to share their work and hone their pre­sen­ta­tion and au­di­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. ALT is on every Tues­day from 8 pm.