Pe­ter Ray Blood

Some ca­lyp­so his­to­ry will be made to­mor­row when, for the first time, the North Zone of Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co) goes to South Trinidad to stage a ma­jor show. The oth­er bit of his­to­ry to be made is that this event is be­ing held in ho­n­our of vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Bro Su­pe­ri­or (An­drew Mar­cano) who is cel­e­brat­ing his 60th an­niver­sary in the ca­lyp­so busi­ness.

In the con­tin­u­ing cel­e­bra­tion of Ca­lyp­so Month, the Zone will stage Ex­tem­po­ra­ma 2014 at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (Sapa), lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Todd Street and Rien­zi-Kir­ton High­way, San Fer­nan­do. This event is tra­di­tion­al­ly held at the SWW­TU Hall in Port-of-Spain.

A con­stel­la­tion of ca­lyp­so stars will be com­pet­ing in this ex­tem­pore war, rep­re­sent­ing Tu­co's North, South and East zones. Billed are reign­ing Na­tion­al Ex­tem­pore Monarch Bri­an Lon­don and past mon­archs La­dy Africa, Lin­go, Black Sage and Gyp­sy (Win­ston Pe­ters), Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment. Al­so in the fray are Con­tender, Wen­dell Eti­enne, David Brown, Gary Ranks (North); My­ron B, Dion Di­az (East); and, Short Pants, Abebele, Hezeki­ah Joseph (South). Guest artistes on the bill in­clude past na­tion­al ca­lyp­so monarch Re­la­tor and ju­nior ex­tem­pore artistes Aaron Dun­can, Jeromy Ro­driguez and Ke­van Cal­liste.

Show­time is 8 pm and ad­mis­sion is just $150.

Tu­co re­gions crossed bor­ders last Wednes­day night as well when the South Zone host­ed its trib­ute to Su­pe­ri­or at De Nu Pub.

On the cast were reign­ing Na­tion­al Ex­tem­pore Monarch Bri­an Lon­don, La­dy Adan­na, Bro Mu­da­da, Bro J, Abebele, La­dy Gyp­sy and Ron­dell Don­awa.

Tagged for Christ­mas

It's said that 21 is the age of ma­jor­i­ty. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some peo­ple don't live that long; far less for an or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Yet still, Trin­i­ty All Gen­er­a­tions Steel­band (Tags) is 21 and con­tin­ues its com­mu­ni­ty min­istry to pro­mote the na­tion­al in­stru­ment and de­vel­op lit­er­ate mu­si­cians.

Stu­dents of the in­sti­tu­tion can now be spot­ted in most pro­fes­sion­al mu­si­cal cir­cles, and stu­dent achieve­ment con­tin­ues to soar in both the­o­ry and prac­ti­cal ex­am­i­na­tions.

Tags now has on the mar­ket its first CD–Tagged for Christ­mas–and the first DVD of its gala 20th an­niver­sary con­cert–Da Capo...to­wards ex­cel­lence. Both show­case the vast tal­ent and ded­i­ca­tion of its stu­dents and staff since all of the se­lec­tions are arranged and per­formed by cur­rent or past stu­dents.

Dr Phae­dra Pierre, one of the founders of the pro­gramme, said: "We were so proud when Aki­ni Gill re­turned home.

"He was the first of our stu­dents to com­plete his Mas­ter of Arts in Mu­sic at New York Uni­ver­si­ty. His ex­am­in­ers said that his the­sis was one of the most out­stand­ing pa­pers they'd every read.

"Now, Akua Lei­th has just be­gun his Mas­ter's at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty and we're so ex­cit­ed for him and look­ing for­ward to his re­turn as well."

Tags teach­es mu­sic the­o­ry and prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tions main­ly on pan. "Since all of our teach­ers op­er­ate on a vol­un­tary ba­sis, when­ev­er we can get peo­ple to agree to in­struct on oth­er in­stru­ments, we do those too. We've had gui­tar, pi­ano, drum and dance class­es, as well as pro­duced a con­ven­tion­al band named Vizion in the past," Pierre said.

Tags start­ed of­fer­ing class­es on Oc­to­ber 22, 1994, at the Cathe­dral of the Holy Trin­i­ty. Tags be­gan its an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion last Sat­ur­day with a church ser­vice, held at the Cathe­dral.

Canon Richard Ja­cob, Rec­tor of St Thomas' Parish, Ch­agua­nas, was the chief cel­e­brant and preach­er. Part of the pro­ceeds from the Gala Ju­ly Con­cert will go to one of its foun­da­tion fam­i­lies whose house was razed by fire last Feb­ru­ary.

As usu­al, this time of year her­alds prepa­ra­tions for Tags' an­nu­al Sun­day Morn­ing Brunch, sched­uled for No­vem­ber 16, at Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral car park (Queen Street en­trance), Port-of-Spain, from 11 am to 3 pm.

The pub­lic is be­ing urged to sup­port this wor­thy ef­fort by the spon­sor­ship of tick­ets ($35 each) for chil­dren from homes, or­gan­i­sa­tions and "at risk" com­mu­ni­ties.

Tags is invit­ing al­most 500 chil­dren from homes, schools, or­gan­i­sa­tions and mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties from as far west as the Christ Child Con­va­les­cent Home in Diego Mar­tin to the Mar­garet Kistow Home in Mal­abar.

This year the in­vi­ta­tion has even been ex­tend­ed to the Moth­ers' Union Home in San Fer­nan­do. In the past, these chil­dren and oth­er pa­trons were en­ter­tained by past and present Tags stu­dents like Jef­fery "Pe­ter­Levels" Bid­deau who is pur­su­ing a de­gree in voice at UWI, St Au­gus­tine and reign­ing Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Rod­er­ick "Chucky" Gor­don, as well as oth­er guests like the In­cred­i­ble My­ron B, Shel­don Reid and the Trea­sury Singers.

Tick­ets are avail­able from Tags mem­bers.

For more in­fo: call 620-4717.

Vin­tage Ca­lyp­so in To­ba­go

The ten fi­nal­ists at the 2014 Vin­tage Ca­lyp­so Com­pe­ti­tion gave the au­di­ence a show to re­mem­ber on Oc­to­ber 17.

The ca­lyp­so­ni­ans were re­quired to sing a vin­tage ca­lyp­so for which the cut off year was 1985. Dur­ing the com­pe­ti­tion, they could not change, add, or sub­tract from the lyrics of the orig­i­nal songs. Com­peti­tors could on­ly per­form the same ca­lyp­so that he or she au­di­tioned with.

Jef­frey Thomas (Prince Unique) placed first with John­ny King's Ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Can­dice Robin­son took sec­ond berth singing Ca­lyp­so Rose's Fire Fire and Mau­reen De­noon (Sis­ter Nan­cy) placed third with Bri­go's Voodoo Man.

The first place win­ner's prize was $20,000, with $15,000 go­ing to the sec­ond place, and $10,000 to third. Oth­er par­tic­i­pants will re­ceive a $3,000 con­so­la­tion prize.

Oc­to­ber al­so marks Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month, which has been cel­e­brat­ed for the past ten years in To­ba­go. The Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Cul­ture and Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans' Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Tu­co) col­lab­o­rat­ed on the event, which was held at the Pem­broke Her­itage Park.

Tal­ent Ex­pres­sion goes in­to semi­fi­nal

Twen­ty five con­tes­tants per­formed at the pre­lim­i­nary round of the 14th edi­tion of the Tal­ent Ex­pres­sion com­pe­ti­tion, or­gan­ised by the South­ern Marines Steel­band Foun­da­tion.

It was held Oc­to­ber 19 at the South­ern Marines Pan Palais, Mara­bel­la.

Eigh­teen con­tes­tants have qual­i­fied for the semi­fi­nal on Sun­day, at the same venue at 7 pm. Twelve of them will move on to the No­vem­ber 16 fi­nals.

The grace­ful, yet strong young dancer Aaliyah Lewis, topped the pre­lim­i­nary round close­ly fol­lowed by vo­cal­ists Dile­na Flem­ings and Wen­del McBurnie. Con­tes­tants are ex­pect­ed to raise their lev­el as the com­pe­ti­tion gets tougher

Every one of the 18 se­mi-fi­nal­ists is ca­pa­ble of run­ning away with the first place, more so when skilled artistes like Jer­relle Hur­dle, Bernard Br­ere­ton, Khadi­ja Je­re­mi­ah and Deryck Hinds, among oth­ers, are in the mix.

Most ex­cit­ing this year is the num­ber of pro­fi­cient young pan­nists who will ap­pear in the semis: Ter­rique Granger, Ty­ee­sha Alexan­der, Akeem Cyrus, and Rachel Diefen­thaller, all young teenagers and pre-teens. New to Tal­ent Ex­pres­sion is Ker­ron Ford who showed off his abil­i­ty to en­ter­tain with his foot­ball up­keep skills to the sound of mu­sic.

The draw for po­si­tions for the se­mi-fi­nal took place yes­ter­day at the Pan Palais.

Tal­ent Ex­pres­sion is open to per­for­mance artistes and has more than $36,000 in prize mon­ey at stake with a first prize of $5,000.

For more in­fo con­tact Car­olyn Cal­len­der at 371-3041 or Ger­ry Kan­galee 785-7637.

Tal­ent Ex­pres­sion­se­mi-fi­nal­ists are:

Aaliyah Lewis, Dile­na Flem­ings, Wen­del McBurnie, Jer­relle Hur­dle, Bernard Br­ere­ton, Deryck Hinds, Ker­ron Ford, Ter­rique Granger, Akeem Cyrus, Rachel Diefen­thaller, Ter­rique Granger/Ty­ee­sha Alexan­der, Joanne Quam­i­na, Ba­by Blue, Khadi­ja Je­re­mi­ah, Caleb Hinds, Joshua Hinds and Bernard Br­ere­ton.

Play­boyz search­ing for a home

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Carib Wood­brook Play­boyz has to va­cate its premis­es by De­cem­ber 31.

The pop­u­lar sin­gle pan steel­band has oc­cu­pied the space on Tra­garete Road, New­town, for more than 14 years, se­cur­ing spon­sor­ship from Carib for the Car­ni­val of 2011 hav­ing be­ing spon­sored by An­gos­tu­ra for five pre­ced­ing years.

This week, band di­rec­tor Pe­ter Scoon con­firmed, "the yard has been sold and Play­boyz is look­ing for a home.

"We have to va­cate by the end of this year. We are look­ing for place in the Wood­brook area and have asked the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion to se­cure a premis­es for us."

Own­er of the land, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung is out of coun­try for med­ical treat­ment and could not be con­tact­ed for com­ment.

Play­ing Len "Boogsie" Sharpe's arrange­ment of Su­perBlue's Fan­tas­tic Fri­day, Play­boyz placed 13th in this year's Na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

The band won the ti­tle in 2003 play­ing Mu­sic in we Blood, al­so arranged by Sharpe.