Deb­bie Ja­cob

The same goes for Wot­less sung by Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller. It is a brava­do, and an an­them for in­de­pen­dence, in the tra­di­tion­al sense of the word. In a world where we are all ex­pect­ed to act and look a cer­tain way, Kees gave every­one per­mis­sion to play them­selves. That is an im­por­tant mes­sage imbed­ded in Car­ni­val.

In the past I have been high­ly crit­i­cal of Machel Mon­tano, but I am pleased about how he is grow­ing as an en­ter­tain­er. He has his mu­si­cal fin­gers on the pulse of this coun­try. His per­for­mances, though some­times pure fren­zy, do man­age to tran­scend the mun­dane and in­ject en­er­gy in­to the Car­ni­val in a glo­ri­ous­ly spir­it­ed way. He put a voice to two of the most im­por­tant so­cas for Car­ni­val: Il­le­gal and Ad­van­tage.

Here we must, of course, men­tion Ker­nel Roberts, the son of the late Lord Kitch­en­er. Ker­nel is en­dowed with an ex­tra­or­di­nary mu­si­cal gift. Shad­ow had been telling me about Ker­nel's tal­ent as a mas­ter of rhythm for years be­fore Ker­nel came on the scene. Ker­nel needs to stick to his orig­i­nal roots and not stray from his own cre­ativ­i­ty. He is an im­por­tant bridge be­tween the past and fu­ture. Il­le­gal is a very im­por­tant so­ca be­cause it re­minds us of the tra­di­tion of win­ing in Car­ni­val and the state­ment win­ing makes as a form of protest against so­ci­ety. In colo­nial Trinidad, win­ing sym­bol­ised a strug­gle for in­de­pen­dence-in­di­vid­u­al­ly and cul­tur­al­ly speak­ing-and in this day of neo-colo­nial­ism, the mes­sage is equal­ly im­por­tant. There are so many clever, em­pow­er­ing lines in Il­le­gal.

Ad­van­tage is a chron­i­cle of an im­por­tant cul­tur­al event: the peo­ple com­ing back to the stage in the Sa­van­nah. I thought Ad­van­tage was over­looked for its pos­si­ble dou­ble en­ten­dre. Tak­ing ad­van­tage and be­ing ad­van­ta­geous pro­vides a pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion for the word. In any case, Ad­van­tage pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have fun and tram­ple on all our frus­tra­tions, which is re­al­ly what Car­ni­val is about. There were so many im­pres­sive J'Ou­vert songs that cap­tured the deep, dark mood of J'Ou­vert and the riv­et­ing rhythms that de­fine it, and I loved the hu­mour and satire of All­rounder's Wine.

I've run out of room to go on about this year's bumper crop of songs, but let me say this: So­ca artistes are step­ping up to the plate: They're cre­at­ing sim­ple, mean­ing­ful songs with last­ing lyrics that re­flect Trinidad so­ci­ety, and they're cre­at­ing mem­o­rable mu­sic. Mean­while, ca­lyp­so is lan­guish­ing with many mun­dane songs that are of­ten too di­dac­tic and void of any­thing vague­ly rem­i­nis­cent of a melody.

Next week: More on ca­lyp­so mu­sic in a let­ter to my nephew, one of the biggest stars of this Car­ni­val.