David Cuffy

When we say some­thing is se­ri­ous­ly fun­ny, we are talk­ing lev­i­ty, not grav­i­ty. It's noth­ing se­ri­ous, just some­thing that's su­perla­tive­ly clever.

The au­di­ence gath­ered in the Li­on's Civic Cen­tre in Wood­brook, last Fri­day night for the con­cert Se­ri­ous­ly Fun­ny: Hu­mour in Ca­lyp­so, was there to cel­e­brate the work of vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Mas­ter Fun­ny (Don­ric William�son), a gift­ed song­writer whose cre­ativ­i­ty has en­abled him to con­sis­tent­ly pro­duce su­perla­tive­ly clever songs for the past 50 years.

Host­ed by the Spar­row: A Spe­cial Some­one Com­mit­tee, the pro­gramme fea­tured per­for­mances of Fun­ny's songs, and hu­mor­ous ca­lyp­soes of oth­er bards, by David Bereaux, Swa­mi (Ran­dolph Galt), Tem­ples (Nigel Galt), Kid Kallaloo (Julien Hunte), Black Sage (Phillip Mur­ray), The G Man (Gra­ham Gel­lizeau), Tuffy (Roger Mur­ray), Rod­er­ick Chuck Gor­don (Rod­er­ick Gor­don), and Trinidad Rio (Daniel Browne).

Bereaux opened the play­bill do­ing Fun­ny's Check Up (1970) and the late Cypher's (Dil­lary Scott) fun­ny, but com­plex, com­po­si­tion ti­tled Pa­pers.

Swa­mi was up next to ren­der two of Fun­ny's com­po­si­tions–the amaz­ing Time Re­al­ly Flies with the clas­sic cho­rus: "Day be­fore yes­ter­day was yes­ter­day, yes­ter­day. Yes­ter­day was to­day, yes­ter­day. To­day was to­mor­row yes­ter­day. To­mor­row to­day go be yes­ter­day. Day af­ter to­mor­row, to­mor­row, will be yes­ter­day."

The oth­er was Ac­ci­dent Pol­i­cy com­posed in 1976.

Tem­ples opt­ed for Bomber's (Clifton Ryan) Proverbs, and was well-ap­pre­ci­at­ed for be­ing able to recre­ate the sev­er­al ex­tem­po en­core vers­es Bomber de­liv­ered when he pre­miered the work in 2001. Kid Kallal­loo of­fered his wit­ty com­po­si­tion She Tell Meh, which he sang at the Kaiso Kar­a­van in 2013, and was loud­ly cheered for the clever word-play con­tained with­in.

Black Sage en­hanced Fun­ny's A Soul Man, up­dat­ing the song with some new crowd-pleas­ing vers­es of his own.The G Man of­fered the un­record­ed Bang It, and Tuffy show­cased Bam See from 1975.

Two-time na­tion­al ca­lyp­so monarch Chuck Gor­don went for non-Fun­ny se­lec­tions. His hu­mor­ous choic­es were for­mer road march win­ner and ca­lyp­so monarch the late Pen­guin's (Seadley Joseph) cre­ative com­po­si­tion The Slip­per, and Zan­dolie's (Sylvester An­tho­ny) high­ly pop­u­lar Man Fam­i­ly.

Trinidad Rio sang two of his out­stand­ing com­po­si­tions–Back to Ba­sic and For Cup–win­ning sol­id au­di­ence ap­proval for the mas­ter­ful use of lan­guage with which the se­lec­tions are craft­ed.

Fun­ny ap­peared af­ter the in­ter­val, and es­tab­lished ear­ly rap­port with au­di­ence mem­bers. He chat­ted, gave jokes, shared some life ex­pe­ri­ences as a per­form­ing artiste, and de­liv­ered a de­light­ful, unique-styled reper­toire, that in­clud­ed Fun­ny Win, Screw­coo Cheek, Time Trav­el, Bac­cha­nal in Hell, Hokey Pokey, Farmer Brown and, with the en­tire cast sup­port­ing him on stage, closed with the mem­o­rable, pa­tri­ot­ic, Sweet Sweet Trinidad, the first ca­lyp­so he sang in a tent as a cast mem­ber of the CDC Ca­lyp­so The­atre in 1966.

Pro­vid­ing har­mo­nious cho­rus work through­out were Sasha George, Car­la Say­ers and Ren­nee Guer­ra.

Mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment was pro­vid­ed by the David Bereaux and Friends Vin­tage Kaiso En­sem­ble com­pris­ing Steve Neaves (gui­tar), Patrick John­son (key­boards), Rus­sell Du­ri­ty (bass), Syl­van Sylvester (sax­o­phone), Alan Nel­son (trum­pet), Earl Ed­wards (per­cus­sion), and Richard Joseph (drums).

Bereaux per­formed du­ties of show host.

More in­fo

The Spar­row: A Spe­cial Some­one Com­mit­tee was es­tab­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2014 to pay trib­ute to the leg­ends of ca­lyp­so.

The com­mit­tee has al­ready ho­n­oured Spar­row (Slinger Fran­cis­co), Mighty Bomber (Clifton Ryan) and Wins­ford "Jok­er" Devine.