Yvonne Webb

Chair­man of the South/Cen­tral re­gion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co), Ras Kom­man­da, said no one can pay him to sing some­thing he does not mean. He said his craft was not about the almighty dol­lar, but he re­spect­ed oth­ers who went down that path. Kom­man­da (Steve Pas­call) was re­fer­ring to the ap­pear­ance of Ca­lyp­son­ian Crazy (Ed­win Ay­oung) on a UNC plat­form on Mon­day night in Mara­bel­la. Crazy per­formed a song ti­tled Patrick Has to Go, which he said was penned by UNC's chair­man Jack Warn­er.

How­ev­er, in at­tempt­ing to qual­i­fy his ap­pear­ance on the po­lit­i­cal stage, Crazy ex­plained that he did it for the mon­ey. He said he was not a sup­port­er of the UNC, but he would work for any­body who had the mon­ey to pay him. Kom­man­da said: "I would have said it dif­fer­ent­ly." The Tu­co chair­man, who ten years ago sang a ca­lyp­so ad­vo­cat­ing for a woman Prime Min­is­ter for Trinidad and To­ba­go, said he too had been ap­proached to per­form that song on a UNC plat­form, but he de­clined. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC is vy­ing to be­come this coun­try's first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter. Kom­man­da said: "Peo­ple in this coun­try are too thin-skinned. If Kom­man­da sing some­thing, Kom­man­da has to mean it. It is not about a dol­lar.

"As an artiste, no­body can pay me to say some­thing I didn't mean. My agen­da must be for me to watch over the na­tion, not to be cor­nered or par­ti­tioned by any oth­er group. That is why I have no po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion." He added: "When we sing po­lit­i­cal and so­cial com­men­tary we are singing for the peo­ple. That is my role as a ca­lyp­son­ian, but I re­spect oth­er peo­ple's right to do so (sing for mon­ey). I am glad for them." In re­sponse to the se­lec­tion of Tu­co's pres­i­dent Er­ic Tay­lor (Pink Pan­ther) to con­test the To­co/San­gre Grande seat on a PNM tick­et in the up­com­ing elec­tions, Kom­man­da wished him well.

"I wish him well in his en­deav­our and trust that once he is se­lect­ed his ap­point­ment will au­gur well for the ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty as well as his con­stituen­cy at large." If Tay­lor is elect­ed, he will be fol­low­ing on the heels of ca­lyp­son­ian Win­ston Pe­ters (Gyp­sy), the UNC elect­ed mem­ber for Ma­yaro. Kom­man­da point­ed out that ca­lyp­so­ni­ans have al­ways been in­volved in the pol­i­tics of T&T. He said those with as­pi­ra­tions to sit in the Par­lia­ment were mere­ly tak­ing it to an­oth­er lev­el. At­ti­la the Hun (Ray­mond Que­va­do) served in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil in the 1950s. In re­cent times Rawle Ti­tus (Axe Back) al­so served as a Sen­a­tor and at times deputised in the ab­sence of the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent.