Pe­ter Ray Blood

Look Who? is a new month­ly fea­ture that tells the sto­ries of cul­tur­al pi­o­neers who have been off the scene for a while. These fea­tures try to an­swer the ques­tion, "What ever hap­pened to...?" This month's in­stal­ment fea­tures one of the re­gion's most tal­ent­ed gui­tarists, Gene Lawrence.

Gene Lawrence, 75, is hailed as one of the Caribbean's most ver­sa­tile and ac­com­plished mu­si­cians, and every mu­si­cal thread he has wo­ven through­out his il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer has turned in­to gold.

Born in St Vin­cent, he has the unique plea­sure of be­ing a cit­i­zen of T&T, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent. Lawrence, who has been mar­ried to Kather­ine Buxo for 51 years, is the fa­ther of Bar­ry Lawrence and Jo­di Phillips.

Lawrence has fond mem­o­ries of his child­hood in St Vin­cent and in Trinidad, an ex­pe­ri­ence which en­dears him to both coun­tries. "I left St Vin­cent at the age of nine," said Lawrence this week. "My fam­i­ly owned Brighton & Con­nery es­tates up in the coun­try in George­town, but we lived in Kingstown. I lived close to a place named Vic­to­ria Park where all the ma­jor sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties on the is­land took place, like foot­ball and crick­et so, as a child I en­joyed the things all boys en­joy. When the fam­i­ly mi­grat­ed to Grena­da I at­tend­ed Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege where I wrote GCE.

"Most of my hol­i­days were spent in Trinidad but I came to live in Trinidad around the age of 16. A lot of guys re­mem­ber me from school hol­i­days and think that I was Trinida­di­an. I grew up with guys like John Hen­der­son, Syl Dop­son, Willy West and John 'Bud­dy' Williams, all good mu­si­cians. The steel­band and gui­tar were my big en­try in­to mu­sic." Lawrence re­called play­ing pan in St Vin­cent and sub­se­quent­ly adopt­ed the gui­tar as his in­stru­ment of choice.

He said: "When my fa­ther went away to fight in World War II, un­known to us, he left be­hind a gui­tar which was giv­en to me at the age of ten. At that stage I couldn't play a gui­tar but I had a good ear for mu­sic. I used to tune bot­tles, filled with dif­fer­ent amounts of wa­ter, and played mu­sic on them. My mu­si­cal col­leagues and I did a record–Kaiso 1–which was re­leased in Trinidad in 1958. Of the guys that played on that record I am prob­a­bly the on­ly one alive. It was a su­per record­ing and was done up­stairs a res­i­dence in Wood­brook. The record had on­ly tra­di­tion­al Trinidad ca­lyp­soes on it.

A fin­ger-style acoustic gui­tarist, Lawrence is versed in clas­si­cal, folk, pop­u­lar mu­sic, ca­lyp­so and jazz. An orig­i­nal mem­ber of Sil­ver Strings Com­bo, one this coun­try's fore­most mu­si­cal ag­gre­ga­tions, a com­pos­er and arranger, Lawrence has al­so played with the Trou­ba­dours and was a pan play­er in the ear­ly days of Sil­ver Stars steel or­ches­tra.

He was al­so a gui­tarist in Olive Walke's La Pe­tite Mu­si­cale folk choir for many years.

He re­called: "I was very much in­volved in Olive Walke's choir. We made songs like Man­goes and Zin­gay Tal­lala which be­came very pop­u­lar. Denyse Plum­mer's fa­ther, Buntin, and my­self were the gui­tarists of Walke's La Pe­tite Mu­si­cale. We did a tremen­dous num­ber of shows be­fore I went to Eng­land to study."

Lawrence said idle­ness and the rest­less­ness of youth caused him to even­tu­al­ly go to Britain. He dis­closed: "I was on a fast track in Trinidad, par­ty­ing every night. I worked then at T Ged­des Grant and used to find my­self falling asleep on the job every day as al­most every night I'd be out some­where lim­ing 'til morn­ing. I re­alised I was wast­ing time so de­cid­ed to go to Lon­don. I didn't have mon­ey then and bought my pas­sage to Eng­land by sell­ing my car. I did Build­ing Con­struc­tion at Ham­mer­smith School of Build­ing and Arts in Shep­herd's Bush, Lon­don."

The late 50s were heady times for Lawrence as he played mu­sic in per­haps then the coun­try's top com­bo. "Be­fore 1960 we start­ed the very first com­bo with elec­tric gui­tars and called it Sil­ver Strings," re­called Lawrence. "The group's leader was Ken­neth Pin­heiro and the band al­so had Stan­ley Pin­heiro and Den­nis Gar­cia, known as the Elvis Pres­ley of Trinidad. Den­nis, who was from Bel­mont, combed his hair like Elvis, and danced like Elvis. Sil­ver Strings be­came ex­treme­ly pop­u­lar.

"Be­fore the elec­tric gui­tar and am­pli­fi­ca­tion of in­stru­ments, which came in­to fo­cus af­ter the sec­ond world war, horn in­stru­ments held the spot­light. The elec­tric gui­tar be­came some­thing of a new in­stru­ment, tak­ing over the lead in a band and push­ing horns in the back­ground. Com­ing fast and fu­ri­ous there­after were com­bos like Cas­sanovas, Group So­lo and Es­quires. The com­bos had a new sound and new ap­proach to mu­sic. It caused a mar­riage be­tween com­bos and the big band sound. A re­al rev­o­lu­tion took place in the mu­sic in the late 50s. The big bands had very lit­tle vo­cal­ists but the com­bos made vo­cal­ists very pop­u­lar in fetes."

Sat­ur­day Night Sun­day Morn­ing, record­ed at Semp Stu­dios, was Lawrence's first so­lo LP. This disc in­clud­ed a unique ver­sion of Rio Mansanare. Lawrence has since done four more LPs, name­ly Sun­set to Sun­rise, Spe­cial De­liv­ery, To­geth­er and Spir­it of the Caribbean. There are sev­er­al orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions on each al­bum.

Through the years Lawrence has worked with artis­tic lu­mi­nar­ies like Aubrey Adams, Beryl McBernie, He­len Camps, Pe­ter Min­shall.

He has done it all, team­ing up with Group So­lo leader Robert Bai­ley to pro­duce sev­er­al shows, in­clud­ing a spe­cial per­for­mance with opera singer Mon­i­ca Or­tiz Ruck at Queens Hall; opened for the Span­ish duo of com­pos­er Jose Gre­co and fla­men­co dancer Nana Lor­ca; and toured with Paul Keens Dou­glas on var­i­ous oc­ca­sions. He was the orig­i­nal "singing em­cee" for Keens-Dou­glas an­nu­al Talk Tent The­atre for three years, and was a spe­cial guest at the 25th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions of the Talk Tent in 2008.

Hav­ing done fea­ture per­for­mances at the Queens Park Oval in 2003 and 2004, Lawrence has ac­com­pa­nied sev­er­al pop­u­lar ca­lyp­so­ni­ans in­clud­ing Mighty Spar­row, Re­la­tor, Ter­ror, Gyp­sy and Bill Trot­man.

Over­seas, Lawrence formed the Trini­ana Quin­tet in Eng­land, a pop­u­lar Caribbean group in Lon­don in the 60s. In Eng­land, he per­formed at the West In­di­an Stu­dents' Cen­tre, Ox­ford and Cam­bridge May balls, town halls, and oth­er venues. He al­so played and en­ter­tained the tour­ing West In­dies crick­et team at the pres­ti­gious Wal­dorf Ho­tel. Lawrence has ap­peared on British tele­vi­sion, and com­posed and per­formed a spe­cial ca­lyp­so for a show called This is Your Life, host­ed by Ea­monn An­drews, for the late Sir Learie Con­stan­tine.

Lawrence's mu­si­cal ca­reer is one that has to be the en­vy of many, one rarely ac­com­plished by most. He has toured many Caribbean is­lands, and per­formed live and on ra­dio and TV in Bar­ba­dos, St Vin­cent, Grena­da, St Lu­cia, St Croix, Mar­tinique and T&T. He al­so per­formed for the first and third edi­tions of the Sto­ry Telling Fes­ti­val of the Caribbean, held in Bar­ba­dos.

While res­i­dent in St Lu­cia, Lawrence has per­formed at the St Lu­cia Cul­tur­al Cen­tre and oth­er venues for that is­land's Folk Re­search Cen­tre, Can­cer So­ci­ety, Sick­le Cell As­so­ci­a­tion, Drug Re­hab Cen­tre, the gov­ern­ment and nu­mer­ous ho­tel venues.

Lawrence has the ho­n­our of com­pos­ing and ar­rang­ing mu­sic and lyrics for St Lu­cian mu­si­cal The Hewanor­ra Sto­ry which opened at Pi­geon Is­land Amp­ithe­atre, and was sub­se­quent­ly per­formed through the year at lo­cal the­atres. Ex­cerpts of this work were used for the open­ing of the 1998 St Lu­cia Jazz Fes­ti­val. Lawrence said he has done many com­po­si­tions and arrange­ments of the­atri­cal works in St Lu­cia. He said: "I com­posed and arranged mu­sic and lyrics for the plays La Chun­ga and Mary Could Dance, per­for­mance at Ea­gles Inn through the month of Oc­to­ber 2000 and again at Bay Gar­dens Ho­tel, St Lu­cia. I was al­so pre­sent­ed and was fea­tured in A Man for all Sea­sons, staged at St Lu­cia's Tent The­atre in De­cem­ber 2002. This work was a two-hour long per­for­mance of main­ly my own com­po­si­tions. For this work I re­ceived the M&C Fine Arts Award for Best Per­for­mance 2004."

In more re­cent years Lawrence has con­tin­ued to cre­ate and pro­duce ex­cel­lent mu­sic, col­lab­o­rat­ing with the best in the re­gion. He re­called: "I worked with Derek Wal­cott in the very ear­ly days of the Lit­tle Carib The­atre in Trinidad, and more re­cent­ly in ar­rang­ing and pre­sent­ing the mu­sic for his play Steel as its mu­si­cal di­rec­tor; as well as com­pos­ing and ar­rang­ing the mu­sic for Wal­cott's play Odyssey which was per­formed in Italy and Spain.

"At the Trinidad Jazz Fes­ti­val in March 2010, I was the fea­tured per­former at Jazz on the Greens, along with greats like Ray Hol­man, Dou­glas Re­don and Michael 'Ming' Low Chew Tung. Three years lat­er, I per­formed for the in­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val (Word Alive) at Samaans Park, St Lu­cia. Al­so in 2013, I was the sole mu­si­cian in the stage per­for­mance of Wal­cott's Star­ry Star­ry Night, staged at Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um, Port-of-Spain, in No­vem­ber, to sold out au­di­ences."

Lawrence re­ceived the pres­ti­gious mu­sic award as Ho­n­oured Com­pos­er in 2013 from St Lu­cia's Cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion. His most re­cent work is the CD Meleme­lanj, re­leased last month. This disc con­sists of sev­er­al orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions us­ing au­then­tic in­dige­nous Caribbean rhythms.

Mus­ing on the evo­lu­tion of Caribbean mu­sic, Lawrence said: "The mu­sic has changed and has be­come much more tech­ni­cal­ly sound. A lot of the young fel­las now have tak­en the trou­ble to learn, to read and score the mu­sic. They have come to learn the im­por­tance of mu­si­cal no­ta­tion and putting prop­er arrange­ments to­geth­er.

"To­day's mu­si­cians, like Dougie Re­don, are much (more) pro­fi­cient in mu­sic than we were back in the old days. This has al­so hap­pened with the steel­band and has made a sig­nif­i­cant im­pres­sion on my own mu­sic. When you lis­ten some of the in­tri­cate arrange­ments in Panora­ma are com­pa­ra­ble to any clas­si­cal piece of mu­sic you will hear."

?

Gene and copy­right as­so­ci­a­tions

Apart from play­ing on stage, Lawrence has notched many oth­er ac­com­plish­ments. He was a di­rec­tor of the Copy­right Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (Cott) for three years, and is cur­rent­ly the PRS rep­re­sen­ta­tive and di­rec­tor of the Hewan­nor­ra Mu­sic So­ci­ety, St Lu­cia's copy­right or­gan­i­sa­tion. A founder/mem­ber of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Mu­si­cians and En­ter­tain­ers (NAME) in Trinidad he holds the same post in the St Lu­cia Jazz So­ci­ety. Lawrence has been chair­man of the St Lu­cia Jazz Fes­ti­val Com­mit­tee from its in­cep­tion in 1992 to 1994, and was the first chair­man of EC­CO, the copy­right or­gan­i­sa­tion of the East­ern Caribbean, un­til his re­tire­ment in 2010.