Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

?It was a plea­sure to be in the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um on Sat­ur­day gone to watch one of the nicest shows I see in a long while. R3–a "right­eous, re­gen­er­at­ing rev­o­lu­tion," ac­cord­ing to the pro­duc­ers–take my breath away with love.

I don't have to tell you that love in short sup­ply these days. Look at the head­lines: al­ways cor­rup­tion, mur­der, crime. Who not thief­ing, schem­ing. Who not schem­ing, dy­ing. Is a hell of a place we liv­ing in and pos­i­tiv­i­ty in too short sup­ply. Ac­cord­ing to the book The Se­cret, what you call is what you at­tract: by that rule we in T&T at­tract­ing more and more crime and hor­rors be­cause we on­ly fo­cus­ing on it, fo­cus­ing on it and ig­nor­ing every­thing else. Pe­tit Careme come and gone, poui bloom twice in one year, and we there with we cor­rup­tion, fail­ing in­quiries, prime min­is­te­r­i­al im­peach­ments. (Oh, sor­ry, that one didn't hap­pen. Yet.) To get back on track, every man­jack must make a ef­fort to be pos­i­tive. I not say­ing for­get the wor­ries, but the wor­ries go be there whether we mind them or not; we might as well spend we en­er­gy on some­thing a lit­tle more pro­duc­tive than cussing Calder Hart. Okay, just this week I not go­ing to both­er, for a change.) And that is how I come to write this sto­ry about this show. I al­ways talk­ing with my friends about mu­sic, dance­hall es­pe­cial­ly, and what this mu­sic do­ing to chil­dren head. Gang­ster busi­ness, sex talk and gen­er­al worth­less­ness is about all them want to sing about, and we lit­tle chil­dren in maxi and par­ty singing right along. That is why it was re­fresh­ing and nice to hear the pos­i­tive lyrics from the three singers in R3 on Sat­ur­day night.

All of them name start with R: Ruth Os­man-Rose, Rus­sel Leonce and Shane "Ri­zon" Gib­son. All of them does sing re­al good, and all of them writ­ing their own orig­i­nal ma­te­r­i­al. It had one cov­er tune in the whole show, Ruth ver­sion of Na­ture Boy (you prob­a­bly know the ver­sion by Nat King Cole). Oth­er than that was orig­i­nals right through. Ruth does sing jazz with a gospel and soul flavour, and some spo­ken word mix up in it. She have a husky, smoky voice and po­et­ic lyrics, and she does play flute to boot. A pret­ty girl, if you see she in she dress and pantsuit from The Cloth on the night. Re­al pret­ty, with a Mo­hawk hair­style to keep the look edgy. She sing some love­ly songs, one or two straight gospel in she own style, but most­ly love songs. My favourite one was When You're Near, which is about how trou­bles does pass when you with the per­son you love. Talk­ing about trou­bles, Rus­sel Leonce big hit is Trou­bles Won't Last, a gospel song in he neo-soul style. "Trou­ble won't last through the night, God will see you through the evening," is the tag line he sing in he sharp sharp Mill­house suit.

Hear nah, by the time he done sing that in the sec­ond half, he was cry­ing long tears. Is a sweet song, for truth, and for a spir­i­tu­al per­son it is a great com­fort to re­mem­ber that God love you and want what best for you. God love was the theme of the night, and I was won­der­ing if it had any athe­ists in the house, be­cause them would of be re­al an­noyed, I think. The pub­lic­i­ty ma­te­ri­als for the show didn't come out and say it was a Chris­t­ian show, even though Ri­zon and Rus­sel is Chris­t­ian acts and Ruth, as I say, have gospel songs in she set. The ads say is a pos­i­tive show, which it was, but pos­i­tive don't nec­es­sar­i­ly mean Chris­t­ian; so in fu­ture I think the pro­duc­ers should be a lit­tle more open about their agen­da and not sell cat in bag. (I wasn't vex, see­ing as how I is a Chris­t­ian my­self, but I put my­self in the shoes of some­one who like orig­i­nal mu­sic and a live band, which the show had too, and say well is a good thing I Chris­t­ian, yes.) All the per­form­ers in the show was good, but I think if you ask my lit­tle daugh­ter, The La­dy, who steal the show, she would say Ri­zon. He is a pow­er­house, boy. A re­al strong per­former, do­ing hip hop, reg­gae and R&B style fu­sion mu­sic with plen­ty Chris­t­ian lyrics and some sec­u­lar but con­scious lyrics too. With his per­mis­sion I go­ing and re­pro­duce here some of the lyrics for the song I like the best from he set, Mir­a­cle. I think it have plen­ty to teach we, Chris­t­ian or non-Chris­t­ian, athe­ist or ag­nos­tic. Is about how life is a mir­a­cle and we all is mir­a­cles, ir­re­gard­less of what bag­gage we have.

I'm a punk, I'm a drunk, I'm a thief

I am you, and ah feel what you feel, cuz ah weak

When ah hun­gry, need to eat

When ah sleepy, need to sleep

And if tings was lick­le dif­fer­ent,

Woul­da be me out in de street

I could nev­er con­demn

And say dat I'm not like dem

Cuz un­der dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances... well

Cud ah be me up in de cell

Cud ah be me liv­ing through hell

Lis­ten close ah have some sto­ries to tell �

Cho­rus

See now I'm mov­ing on

To where I be­long cuz I know

I am a mir­a­cle just like you

Yeah yeah

I am a mir­a­cle just like you

And yes I've done some wrong

Still I won't stay down cuz I know

I am a mir­a­cle just like you

Yeah yeah

I am a mir­a­cle just like you

(Ruth, Rus­sell and Ri­zon all have CDs for sale. Call 468- 0063 for in­for­ma­tion.)