Keishel A Williams

In the height of the Car­ni­val sea­son, The T&T Guardian met with singer/song­writer Kurt Allen at his co­coa house on Mount El Tuche, away from the hus­tle and bus­tle of the city.

Allen in­tends to build his new home on the hill, near the co­coa house be­cause that en­vi­ron­ment al­lows him to be clos­er to na­ture and al­lows his cre­ativ­i­ty to blos­som. Un­til the ac­tu­al house is built, for now he spends most of his time in the serene con­fines of the co­coa house he con­struct­ed in ho­n­our of his Amerindi­an an­ces­tors.

We caught up with Allen as he en­tered the 2014 Car­ni­val sea­son with re­newed vigour and pur­pose, pro­fil­ing a vi­sion of uni­ty for two mu­sic gen­res in T&T–ca­lyp­so and so­ca.

It is on this hill Allen got the in­spi­ra­tion for his new song Moun­tain which he per­formed at the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch 2014 se­mi-fi­nals. This was the first time he en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion since his win in 1999 with Dus' Them (Bees in Town).

Time to fo­cus on some­thin­gother than pi­cong

Allen was a se­mi-fi­nal­ist in both the Pow­er and Groovy cat­e­go­ry with Moun­tain, a po­lit­i­cal­ly-tinged song with a so­ca vibe and Sweet Siz­zling Sum­mer (SSS), a groovy tune which takes a light-heart­ed look at so­cial is­sues.

In 1999, Allen's aim was to "feed the ego of Kurt Allen" by vy­ing for the So­ca Monarch ti­tle. How­ev­er, in 2014 he would like the true win­ner to be the mu­sic. Allen, who sings in the Kaiso Kar­a­van tent at La Joya, St Joseph, has won Tu­co's Po­lit­i­cal Com­men­tary ti­tle for the past two years. Last year, his song The Last Bad­john earned him the ti­tle.

How­ev­er, there is a ru­mour that Allen will make 2014 his last year for singing the kind of po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary he is known for. But it's false, he says, in that the po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary will al­ways be a part of his reper­toire, but the style will vary.

Allen de­cid­ed it was time to fo­cus on some­thing oth­er than the pi­cong and bash­ing of politi­cians in every song–that's been done.

The 44-year-old, who is the on­ly ca­lyp­son­ian to have won In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch, Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch and Young King, re­leased his po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary Last Psalm of King David, on Feb­ru­ary 3. Allen de­scribes the song "in­ter­ven­tion through in­tro­spec­tion," and it urges the pub­lic to spend time con­tribut­ing pos­i­tive­ly to the fab­ric of so­ci­ety when they are young and able.

This year, his pri­ma­ry fo­cus is not on win­ning a ti­tle, but in­stead on erad­i­cat­ing "mu­si­cal apartheid" in T&T, this is how he de­scribes the sep­a­ra­tion of so­ca and ca­lyp­so.

"The per­son who was the so­ca am­bas­sador for the world, Su­perBlue, nev­er called him­self a so­ca artiste, he was a ca­lyp­son­ian singing in the ca­lyp­so tent and he was still do­ing his job in the par­ties.

"Spar­row and David Rud­der were win­ning Road March ti­tles and al­so Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tles. There was no So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion at that time, but if there was, they ob­vi­ous­ly would have been win­ning," he said. "So to me there was nev­er a sep­a­ra­tion."

This year Allen in­tends to bridge the gap be­tween the two gen­res–so­ca and ca­lyp­so–which he feels are, in fact, one and the same.

As he sat in a low bam­boo chair at the co­coa house, Allen spoke fer­vent­ly about the event that start­ed the sep­a­ra­tion of so­ca from ca­lyp­so–The In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch (which was then the Trinidad So­ca Monarch). Ac­cord­ing to Allen, the com­pe­ti­tion was in­tro­duced in 1993 for ca­lyp­so­ni­ans like Su­perBlue and Tam­bu–who's mu­sic stood out due to their com­po­si­tion, har­mo­ny and in­fec­tious melodies that ex­celled fur­ther than that of Kaiso–to get "their recog­ni­tion as kings, as they are right­ful­ly so, and they were not be­ing ful­ly recog­nised in the Ca­lyp­so Monarch," Allen said. "From then things start­ed to drift apart quick­ly."

Allen said with this sep­a­ra­tion of the com­pe­ti­tions, the younger artistes did not "get the ca­lyp­so fac­tor," which echoes the sen­ti­ments of the leg­endary Su­perBlue who re­cent­ly stat­ed in a Metro Mag­a­zine in­ter­view:

"The young peo­ple come in with so­ca roots. I was from kaiso, the mind of the kaison­ian dif­fer­ent." They no longer want­ed to be part of the ca­lyp­so tents, but in­stead in the so­ca fetes and the mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tions cre­at­ed the idea that they were sep­a­rate.

"I fell vic­tim to that, be­cause peo­ple were try­ing to pi­geon-hole me as ei­ther a ca­lyp­son­ian or a so­ca artiste. They weren't get­ting the con­nec­tion that my dream was to be like a Mighty Spar­row, Mighty Duke, or the Lord Kitch­en­er," he said with a hint of frus­tra­tion. These artistes em­bod­ied the growth of ca­lyp­so mu­sic in­to so­ca mu­sic with­out qualms: "So­ca is the son or daugh­ter of ca­lyp­so," Allen in­sist­ed.

How­ev­er, the wide­spread in­ter­est so­ca gar­ners fre­quent­ly over­shad­ows ca­lyp­so, of­ten to the point where some young ca­lyp­so­ni­ans to turn strict­ly to per­form­ing so­ca due to its fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits. As the years pass by, even­tu­al­ly things be­gan to fall apart for ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. A ma­jor ob­sta­cle they face is fund­ing.

Artistes fund­ing their own ca­lyp­soes

Allen laments that artistes now have to fund their own ca­lyp­soes, where­as in the past they re­ceived fi­nan­cial back­ing from pro­duc­ers, who "fund­ed full-length al­bums, and ca­lyp­so­ni­ans ac­tu­al­ly made mon­ey." Many so­ca artistes–un­less they are with a la­bel–al­so fund their own mu­sic, how­ev­er of­ten make a suc­cess­ful liv­ing through en­dorse­ments as well as in­ter­na­tion­al tours and lo­cal per­for­mances dur­ing and af­ter the Car­ni­val sea­son which gives them the re­sources to put back in­to their mu­sic. Most ca­lyp­so­ni­ans are rarely booked to per­form af­ter the Car­ni­val sea­son.

Allen, on the oth­er hand, con­tin­ues to chal­lenge the norm by cre­at­ing av­enues for him­self to en­sure work nev­er ends. Af­ter win­ning the 2010 Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch, Allen used his suc­cess and win­nings to cre­ate vi­able av­enues for him to earn a liv­ing by tour­ing. In 2011 he did a suc­cess­ful tour of the mu­sic fes­ti­val mar­ket in the US with 75 per­for­mances. He was asked to re­turn the fol­low­ing year, but he re­ceived no gov­ern­ment fund­ing and was ground­ed that year.

How­ev­er, through­out that tour, Allen was able to tru­ly see what the in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic mar­ket was still look­ing for when it comes to ca­lyp­so.

"They as­so­ciate that type of mu­sic still with Har­ry Be­la­fonte," he said, laugh­ing. "Ca­lyp­so is a prod­uct that the mass­es buy in­to and the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket bought in­to the 'feel good' vibe of ca­lyp­so mu­sic that al­lows one to cre­ate a hap­py space, rep­re­sent­ing the non­cha­lant is­land lifestyle peo­ple out­side of the Caribbean yearn for." So, he ex­plains be­cause "ca­lyp­so has moved away from the feel good mu­sic of Rum and Co­ca-Co­la, writ­ten by Lord In­vad­er and Li­onel Be­las­co, to more rigid con­tents about the gov­ern­ment, it is dif­fi­cult for the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket to buy in­to it as a prod­uct."

It seems ca­lyp­so may not re­turn to its for­mer glo­ry un­til it is able to once again ap­peal to the in­ter­na­tion­al, and even lo­cal mar­ket in a big way. As so­ca con­tin­ues to grow, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the in­ter­na­tion­al cir­cuit with­in re­cent years, it seems the sep­a­ra­tion of these two gen­res is get­ting wider which means Allen has his work cut out for him if he in­tends to ed­u­cate the mass­es on the una­nim­i­ty of them both.