The death of ‘Mas­ter Artist’ LeRoy Clarke has fur­ther wound­ed the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go(ES­CTT), said its ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Uzoma-Wada­da, ex­plained Clarke’s death was now piled on top of the sev­er­al deaths of cre­atives the or­gan­i­sa­tion suf­fered since the start of 2021

She dis­closed, such peo­ple who were af­fil­i­at­ed with the ES­CTT in­clud­ed San­dra “Singing San­dra” DesVi­gnes-Milling­ton, drum­mer Lar­ry Hay­wood of the North-West Laven­tille Cul­tur­al Move­ment, Lu­ta­lo “Broth­er Re­sis­tance” Masim­ba, and one of ES­CTT’s long-stand­ing di­rec­tors, Ifo­ma Soyin­ka.

Re­mem­ber­ing Clarke, Uzoma-Wada­da said, “LeRoy has left an amaz­ing lega­cy of art that once you look in­to it, I think it was de­signed for us to al­so see our­selves for the hope and mag­ic of what life is. We al­so re­mem­ber his voice. He used it to share his wis­dom, to en­cour­age us, to shake us out of our ig­no­rance and slum­ber. He re­al­ly cared about his peo­ple and out of his hum­ble be­gin­nings, he al­so showed us how with de­ter­mi­na­tion you can evolve, and you can reach the stan­dards of ex­cel­lence which he was able to por­tray through his art.”

She called on so­ci­ety to al­ways ac­knowl­edge the great men and women from T&T who walked amongst civil­i­sa­tion.

Stat­ing that Clarke com­plet­ed his pur­pose on earth, she wished the ‘Chief’, a peace­ful tran­si­tion in­to the arms of the Or­isha.

Re­porter: Bo­bie-Lee Dixon