Sean Nero

Fun­so Aiye­ji­na, Dean of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, has giv­en the com­mit­ment that his de­part­ment will pro­duce a doc­u­men­tary on the life of cel­e­brat­ed and Road March and In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch Austin Lyons, Su­perBlue. Speak­ing at last Mon­day's sixth edi­tion of the an­nu­al cul­tur­al show­case called Kaiso Di­a­logues, held at the UWI Staff and So­cial Club, St Au­gus­tine, Aiye­ji­na made the an­nounce­ment. Pre­sent­ed by the Cen­tre for Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts (CC­FA) at the UWI, this year's in­stal­ment of Kaiso Di­a­logues cel­e­brat­ed the work of Le­ston Paul, the late chut­ney en­ter­tain­er Sun­dar Popo and Su­perBlue.

Popo's wife Keyso, dur­ing her spot­light con­ver­sa­tion with Alvin Daniell, vivid­ly re­called the life and times of her hus­band.

Paul's in­ter­view ses­sion was con­duct­ed by Wayne Bruno. Aiye­ji­na's rev­e­la­tion came mere min­utes af­ter an in­ter­view with Su­perBlue fa­cil­i­tat­ed by ca­lyp­so his­to­ri­an Dr Louis Reg­is. Dur­ing that in­ter­view, Su­perBlue ex­pressed joy that he end­ed up in the Car­ni­val in­dus­try, but lament­ed that there were forces against his full re­turn to the stage. Clear­ly, moved by Su­per's sto­ry, and with the un­di­vid­ed at­ten­tion of the au­di­ence, Aiye­ji­na said: "I am giv­ing the com­mit­ment to do­ing a doc­u­men­tary on Su­perBlue. He's a fan­tas­tic sto­ry­teller and per­former. He's al­so a great metapho­rist.

LEFT: Pro­duc­er Nadel­la Ben­jamin, left, Jo-Anne Tull, head of Car­ni­val Stud­ies, UWI, cen­tre, and Er­i­ca Ash­ton.

RIGHT: Alvin Daniell, left, chair­man, En­ter­tain­ment Com­pa­ny of T&T, in con­ver­sa­tion with Dr Louis Reg­is.

"The fac­ul­ty would be do­ing the na­tion a dis­ser­vice by not do­ing this. I tell my stu­dents you are a po­et." Dur­ing his di­a­logue ses­sion with Dr Louis Reg­is, Su­perBlue, who orig­i­nal­ly want­ed to be a na­tion­al foot­baller, said he knew he could nev­er per­form ca­lyp­so like the Mighty Spar­row (Dr Slinger Fran­cis­co), so he opt­ed to fol­low in the foot­steps of the late Garfield Black­man (Ras Shorty I). "Thank God for Ca­lyp­so," he said. "Ca­lyp­so is the moth­er of all Caribbean mu­sic. I learned by trail and er­ror. I'm for­tu­nate that I'm in a coun­try where if I have a ca­lyp­so prob­lem, I can call on Le­ston Paul, Wayne Bruno and Alvin Daniell." Su­perBlue added: "Car­ni­val is the biggest love sto­ry in the world. Spe­cial things are tapped and show­cased. "We had thongs and biki­nis in Car­ni­val long be­fore any­body else; pas­sa pas­sa was a part of Car­ni­val al­ready."

He re­mind­ed the au­di­ence that while there are more than 300 T&T-styled Car­ni­vals across the world, the laws that gov­ern them make them pa­rades. "Noth­ing com­pares to the 48 hours of dance and rev­el­ry that fill the streets of T&T," Su­perBlue de­clared. Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba (Broth­er Re­sis­tance), gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­son­ian Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co), en­cour­aged the CC­FA to keep on push­ing for­ward with their mis­sion. "Since the pro­gramme start­ed, those who gath­ered recog­nise the qual­i­ties that it car­ries on a whole. Kept the fire burn­ing. This pro­gramme has a spir­it. This mu­sic is a mu­sic of the world," Masim­ba de­clared.