Glenville Ash­by

Her­ald­ed by a re­ver­ber­at­ing drum­ming dis­play, cour­tesy of The Sons and Daugh­ters of Thun­der, Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters , de­liv­ered an in­sight­ful and pas­sion­ate plea to the Trin­bag­on­ian Di­as­po­ra to pre­serve its art form. Still cel­e­brat­ed as an in­com­pa­ra­ble ca­lyp­son­ian and "king of ex­tem­po," Pe­ters chron­i­cled his tran­si­tion in­to po­lit­i­cal life, ex­tolling the ca­lyp­son­ian as a pur­vey­or of jus­tice and so­cial equa­nim­i­ty, even warn­ing against "des­e­crat­ing the art form with hate­ful com­men­tary."

Speak­ing to a packed room of jour­nal­ists, en­ter­tain­ers, and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers in New York last Sun­day morn­ing, the new "cul­ture min­is­ter" of T&T vowed to strength­en the cul­tur­al ties be­tween the home­land and Brook­lyn, New York.

"You walk around these parts and you will hear the same ex­pres­sions like back home," said Pe­ters, in­ject­ing some lev­i­ty as used some fa­mil­iar Trinidad col­lo­qui­al­ism... if on­ly for a mo­ment. Echo­ing the clar­i­on call of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing her in­au­gur­al New York vis­it, Pe­ters stat­ed, "Some­thing you can't change is where you were born. And for those of you who are suc­cess­ful, come back home...your tal­ents are need­ed." Pop­u­lar­ly re­ferred to by his so­bri­quet, Gyp­sy, Pe­ters has emerged as the face of the T&T gov­ern­ment in Brook­lyn. Last week he apol­o­gised for the PM's in­abil­i­ty to ho­n­our two sched­uled ap­point­ments at mas camps along Church Av­enue, be­cause of ill­ness. Dur­ing that time he ad­dressed sev­er­al ques­tions on the state of the twin is­land na­tion.

On this oc­ca­sion, he re­it­er­at­ed the promise of the PM to re­turn in Sep­tem­ber. Short­ly af­ter, he left lit­tle doubt as to his min­is­te­r­i­al stature, em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of cul­ture to a peo­ple, prais­ing the peren­ni­al ef­forts of D' Big Ap­ple Ca­lyp­so Re­vue–pledg­ing his sup­port for the re­cent­ly found­ed D' Big Ap­ple Re­vue Foun­da­tion Inc–and shar­ing his vi­sion for a ver­i­ta­ble cul­tur­al mu­se­um in T&T. "Cul­ture is in­fi­nite," he said. "No one re­al­ly knows how long oil and nat­ur­al gas are go­ing to last. There are all kinds of es­ti­mates out there. The end may not be in our life time, but it is not for­ev­er." And as if to ce­ment his place as a leg­end of the ex­tem­po­ra­ne­ous ca­lyp­so, he un­ex­pect­ed­ly show­cased his skills, spar­ring with Con­tender and La­dy Africa. To an an­i­mat­ed room Gyp­sy proved–with­out a doubt–that he's still king.

Ed note: Speak­ing to the T&T me­dia last week Thurs­day night, at the pre­mieres of Randy Glas­gow's Mas­ters of the Art pro­duc­tion, at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), the Min­is­ter said he would al­so for­mal­ly de­clare open. D' Big Ap­ple Ca­lyp­so Re­vue in New York last Sun­day evening.

Glenville Ash­by is a New York based cor­re­spon­dent for the

Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian, NY.

Main pho­to:

In­set: Pe­ters with Trinidad ca­lyp­so­ni­ans La­dy Africa and Con­tender. Pho­tos: Glenville Ash­by