Melis­sa Doughty

Shel­don John, 2011 Ex­tem­po Ca­lyp­so King has passed away ap­prox­i­mate­ly one month shy of his 39th birth­day, ac­cord­ing to Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' As­so­ci­a­tion's (TU­CO's) Wel­fare Of­fi­cer Carl­ston Kerr on Mon­day. He died of kid­ney fail­ure at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5.30 pm on Sun­day at the Er­ic Will­liams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope. John, who lived at Mt D'Or, Champs Fleurs, and had St Vin­cent roots, won the Na­tion­al Ex­tem­po Monarch ti­tle six times from 2001 to 2003; 2005 and 2006; yet again in 2011. Many re­call John as be­ing a jovial per­son who be­came ex­cep­tion­al­ly pro­fi­cient at his craft through hard-work and per­sis­tence.

In an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion to the top ca­lyp­son­ian's pass­ing, Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters, him­self a se­nior mas­ter crafts­man in the par­tic­u­lar ca­lyp­so genre, re­mem­bers John as a friend and col­league.

"We had many du­els to­geth­er. He took the art­form very se­ri­ous­ly. We had a re­al good re­la­tion­ship. I went to hos­pi­tal and vis­it­ed him last Wednes­day. The whole fra­ter­ni­ty is sad­dened. It is a great loss for Ex­tem­po," Pe­ters said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian. "I re­mem­ber he start­ed with Over The Hill Boys some­where in the 1990s. He was a very brave young man and very promis­ing ex­po­nent of the art," he said. "We are go­ing to miss him dear­ly. We have lost Big 'B' and now Shel­don. We are go­ing to keep the art­form go­ing in their names," Min­is­ter Pe­ters promised. Sher­ma Orr, as­sis­tant Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of TU­CO shared sim­i­lar fond mem­o­ries of John. "He was al­ways a fun per­son. We worked to­geth­er for Car­ni­val in St Vin­cent and Trinidad. That was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 years ago. He was a mag­nif­i­cent per­former and a great MC. He al­ways want­ed to fight every­one's cause and he would put in his five cents to help any­one," Orr said.

This just con­clud­ed Car­ni­val sea­son, John shared MC chores at Kaiso House ca­lyp­so tent, at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, with Tom­my Joseph.

Carl­ston Kerr, TU­CO's Wel­fare Of­fi­cer, said John was al­ways very ap­proach­able. "He was will­ing to go the ex­tra mile for Ca­lyp­so. I al­ways en­cour­aged him and I saw him im­prove a lot over time. He served the art well," Kerr said. He said Ex­tem­po has be­come poor­er with John's pass­ing. "Shel­don ac­knowl­edged the skill of Gyp­sy and recog­nised him as the one to beat. Shel­don al­ways stuck to the trade," Kerr re­mem­bered. "He would tell the au­di­ence to pick a top­ic and what­ev­er they came up with he would ex­tem­po on. He chal­lenged him­self to ex­tem­po on glob­al, re­gion­al and even in­ter­na­tion­al top­ics. He was very good at his craft, just like Bri­an Lara." John was al­so a co-own­er of a bou­tique in the San­gre Grande Mall with his wife and of­ten trav­elled over­seas spread­ing the craft of Ex­tem­po. Kerr said John's fu­ner­al is sched­uled for Thurs­day.