Aba A. Luke

God has to be a Tri­ni. Af­ter all, the mu­sic of this small twin-is­land state has reached and im­pact­ed peo­ple of eth­nic back- grounds you would nev­er have guessed it would. In 2010, a 21-year-old Japan­ese chut­ney singer will be tak­ing part in the first World Chut­ney Monarch com­pe­ti­tion. What's even more ad­mirable is that this chut­ney singer is al­ready work­ing the cir­cuit and gain­ing favour among lo­cals.

Who is she?

She's Bar­bie Japan–a for­mer mod­el-turned-chut­ney artiste, and from the look of things, she's quite fa­mil­iar with the lo­cal Car­ni­val scene and the dy­nam­ics of the com­pe­ti­tions. The Na­tion­al Chut­ney Foun­da­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, which is presided over by Dr Vi­jay Ram­lal-Rai, has ex­tend­ed in­vi­ta­tions for par­tic­i­pa­tion, to coun­tries around the world, in­clud­ing Japan, Hol­land, Suri­name, Ja­maica and Eng­land, among oth­ers. They have been asked to se­lect a max­i­mum of two en­trants who will go through pre­lim­i­nary and semi­fi­nal rounds be­fore the Car­ni­val-time com­pe­ti­tion. Japan has tak­en the lead, though, with their sin­gle en­trant be­ing Bar­bie Japan. With her tiny yet at­trac­tive phys­i­cal struc­ture, her per­son­able smile and sul­try vo­cals to match, it's clear that Japan has se­ri­ous am­bi­tion to make it to the fi­nals.

Love for T&T

Her vis­it to Trinidad will in­clude the pro­duc­tion of her 2010 chut­ney of­fer­ing and a video to boot. Ear­li­er, Japan teamed up with pro­duc­er Big Rich and worked with lo­cal chut­ney artiste Hit­man, on a track called Kain­pai, which ac­cord­ing to Bar­bie, means "cheers" in Japan­ese. The song is said to be a hit in Japan, as it of­fers the "drink lover" some­thing to re­late to. Hav­ing played mas with both Lega­cy and Evo­lu­tion, Bar­bie is no stranger to T&T. She says she loves the food–par­tic­u­lar­ly callaloo and roti, and lis­tens to so­ca mu­sic in Japan. In fact, it was while lis­ten­ing to so­ca on the ra­dio that she dis­cov­ered the chut­ney genre that she's come to em­brace. Now, al­though her pre­vi­ous chut­ney track was sung in Japan­ese, Bar­bie told the Guardian that next year she will strive to sing in Eng­lish for the com­pe­ti­tion.

A plus for spon­sors

The World Chut­ney Monarch has pre­sent­ed this com­pe­ti­tion as a win-win sit­u­a­tion for spon­sors wish­ing to get in­volved, as it is a world­wide com­pe­ti­tion that will af­ford tremen­dous ex­po­sure. Ram­lal-Rai ex­plained that dur­ing talks with Cul­ture Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mac­Don­ald, she rec­om­mend­ed that spon­sors be ap­proached for fi­nanc­ing. The na­tion­al leg of the com­pe­ti­tion takes place in No­vem­ber and those wish­ing to be a part of it can con­tact:

�2 624-1024

�2 chut­ney­foun­da­tion@ya­hoo.com