Yeh, Yung Bred­da, we share your dream, you touched our hearts, you voiced the peo­ple’s wish to rise from the dark­ness of crime, to stop “chas­ing shad­ows that take the soul,” to rise from the sta­tus quo and “fly to the skies like plane.”

I had to get the lyrics of Yung Bred­da’s ca­lyp­so—a mem­o­rable kaiso that evoked re­flec­tions of the re­al­i­ties of our lives. The Bred­da sang, “for the com­mon man times re­al hard/Crime and mur­ders dri­ving we mad/And the youth cyah find no work/Cause the sys­tem take them for joke/Let the pos­i­tive fight con­trol/We must not lose sight of our goal/In spite of the stress and strain/Let us build our coun­try again.”

He didn’t preach about the fail­ures of the “sys­tem” and Gov­ern­ment, but in­stead, he in­fec­tious­ly de­liv­ered a rel­e­vant, so­cial­ly con­scious ca­lyp­so pas­sion­ate­ly and com­pelling­ly, and the au­di­ence’s ap­pre­ci­a­tion erupt­ed thun­der­ous­ly.

Yung Bred­da’s per­for­mance, the lyrics, sweet mu­sic and tem­po of We Rise linger in our minds, con­jur­ing up im­ages of Rud­der, Spar­row, Kitch­en­er, Shad­ow, and oth­er greats.

He sang, “I’m sure we can rise from the shad­ows as we shine/Through the pain and sor­row leave de dark­ness be­hind/For the youths and we fu­ture, let the heal­ing be­gin/In the rhythm of we is­land let love pull us in/So come from the dusk till dawn/As we rise up every morn/We’ll fly to the skies like plane/Our peo­ple will rise again/Hand in hand is how we’ll start/Every­one can play their part/Man woman and child come in/Let the cleans­ing be­gin ...”

Bred­da demon­strat­ed what “to rise” means. “From the ghet­to I born and grow/I learn to make joy from sor­row/Though my sto­ry was hard­ship and pain/I see the bless­ings falling like rain/And every time the set­backs would come/I keep the faith and weath­ered the storm/With every step I toil and strive/Just to keep my dream alive.”

What an in­spi­ra­tion, es­pe­cial­ly for so many of our young peo­ple. Every day we wit­ness youth gone astray and their chal­leng­ing lives in Sea Lots and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. Like Rud­der, the bard of sweet “Ca­lyp­so Mu­sic,” Yung Bred­da vi­bra­tions make you “shake like a Shango.”

We Rise, and will Di­manche Gras rise to our ex­pec­ta­tions for an ef­fi­cient and short­er pro­duc­tion? It is the piv­otal event lead­ing in­to J’Ou­vert and the street pa­rade and should be a spec­tac­u­lar cel­e­bra­tion of the crème de la crème of de mas. But af­ter eight decades, you won­dered whether the poor stage light­ing and muf­fled mi­cro­phone sounds were nat­ur­al symp­toms of your age­ing un­til the peo­ple and friends around you said, “Gawd, de light­ing and sound sys­tem bad,” hav­ing ex­pect­ed that af­ter all these years the show would have been a pro­fes­sion­al, out­stand­ing pro­duc­tion of three to four de­light­ful hours. It had all the po­ten­tial.

The open­ing per­for­mance was Year 3095 when a Tri­ni Ibis space­ship re­turned home from its odyssey. Danc­ing as­tro­nauts dis­em­barked, scar­let ibis­es flew across the sky, beau­ti­ful but­ter­flies flut­tered, and an ar­ray of char­ac­ters crammed the stage to the amaz­ing singing of Tiana Chan­dler. Tru­ly an imag­i­na­tive dis­play. But every­thing was lit up pink, some­times flash­ing blue. Maybe some­body was try­ing to fo­cus the lights. The won­der­ful cos­tumes be­came ab­stract art. The sound and light­ing glitch­es and the un­even pro­duc­tion flow un­der­mined in­no­va­tion and the artistes’ splen­did per­for­mances.

If Di­manche Gras is in­tend­ed to show­case the best of ca­lyp­so, kings and queens de­pic­tions, Panora­ma and oth­er com­pe­ti­tion win­ners, why not a pro­duc­tion fea­tur­ing just that? Why 12 kings and 12 queens fi­nal­ists? Why not have the guest en­ter­tain­ers af­ter the com­ple­tion of the com­pe­ti­tions, so pa­trons who want to “pardy” as a tra­di­tion­al pre­quel to J’Ou­vert can do so, while oth­ers can go home ear­ly?

At 11 pm, pa­trons be­gan leav­ing be­fore the Kings and Queens com­pe­ti­tion. Peo­ple love their so­ca and ca­lyp­so and would like­ly stay af­ter the com­pe­ti­tions to hear them. Why not a smooth flow of per­for­mances with­out MCs hav­ing to fill time? Is there a night-time re­hearsal to re­fine stage pro­duc­tion, light­ing and sound, es­pe­cial­ly as viewed from the stands?

Yeh, Yung Bred­da, we can rise with the will and courage you have shown us. Di­manche Gras can rise. Af­ter all, “the rhythm of hope is strong.”

(We Rise lyrics writ­ten by Leean­na Williams, Kester Stoute, and Ato Williams.)