Aba A Luke

The Caribbean mourns the death of mu­si­cal vet­er­an, Ar­row. Yes­ter­day at the age of 55, the man whose so­ca an­them, Hot, Hot, Hot rang out across bor­ders and bridged mu­si­cal gaps, al­low­ing for many Caribbean so­ca and ca­lyp­so en­ter­tain­ers to be even­tu­al­ly heard, lost his bat­tle with brain can­cer at a hos­pi­tal in An­tigua. A na­tion­al of Montser­rat, Ar­row (re­al name Alphon­sus Ed­mund Cas­sel), shot to star­dom in 1982 with the in­fec­tious Hot, Hot, Hot cho­rus that has be­come syn­ony­mous, to most, if not all tourists with the words sun, sea, sand and the Caribbean is­lands.

Ar­row has been cred­it­ed with tak­ing so­ca mu­sic to the world, as pri­or to his hit, the genre had been un­known to peo­ple out­side the Caribbean ter­ri­to­ry. In his na­tive Montser­rat, he was coined a busi­ness­man and in­ter­na­tion­al so­ca star– ti­tles he'll for­ev­er be dec­o­rat­ed by among both his mu­si­cal peers and the peo­ple who knew him best.

A shock crazy re­sponds

In T&T, ca­lyp­so artistes re­act­ed in shock to the news that Ar­row had died. "Ar­row died?," ut­tered Ed­win "Crazy" Ay­oung. His dis­be­lief was present through­out his five-minute chat with the Guardian. "When Ar­row came to Trinidad, he was with me all the time. I was the on­ly man in Trinidad he used to ride with," he said. In 2009, Crazy per­formed along­side Ar­row in Montser­rat and ac­cord­ing to him, it was the last time Ar­row had per­formed on stage. "I knew he was sick, but re­cent­ly I saw him and he was look­ing well." Ay­oung said he would re­mem­ber Ar­row most for his song So­ca Rhum­ba to which he of­fered cho­rus vo­cals. "This is a shock­er to me. I will miss him," said Crazy.

Tu­co head pays re­spect

Lu­ta­lo "Broth­er Re­sis­tance" Masim­ba, in­ter­im pres­i­dent of Tu­co said: "Cer­tain­ly his pass­ing is a great loss for the mu­sic in­dus­try as a whole. I think that the suc­cess he had with Hot, Hot, Hot was a point of ref­er­ence for ca­lyp­so mu­sic as a whole in these mod­ern times.

"I al­ways ad­mired his work eth­ic and the way he went about the busi­ness of what he was do­ing and I would have learnt from that in terms of how I con­duct­ed my busi­ness." Masim­ba ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to Ar­row's fam­i­ly, friends and busi­ness as­so­ciates on be­half of the mem­bers of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Win­ches­ter analy­ses

Ar­row's mu­sic has even had a pos­i­tive ef­fect on young Trin­bag­on­ian en­ter­tain­ers, among them Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter. "It's a great loss," he said, adding that Ar­row's Hot Hot Hot was one of the biggest so­ca tracks ever record­ed. It's the song most used in ads that de­pict Caribbean so­ca flavour and mu­sic–world mu­sic." Shur­wayne high­light­ed that Ar­row's is­land an­them is al­so the song record­ed in the most lan­guages.

"For tourism, on the cruise ships and at re­sorts, tourists re­quest that song over any oth­er," he ad­mit­ted, fur­ther stat­ing that in one song, the vet­er­an artiste had giv­en gen­er­a­tions that fol­lowed, so much.

Win­ches­ter then pon­dered the state of our lo­cal in­dus­try, high­light­ing that while many young artistes were pro­duc­ing hits, the ques­tion re­mained as to whether this era's mu­sic would prove last­ing over time.

"On any cruise ship, any fete, any event, if you want to see 100 per cent im­pact, you must go with the foun­da­tion mu­sic. "Kitch­en­er, Mer­chant, Spar­row and Ar­row have giv­en us a lot to work with. The icons are pass­ing on and we have to won­der if we are up to their stan­dard. Do we have songs that will be re­mem­bered for years to come?"