In­nis Fran­cis

in­nis_fran­cis@ya­hoo.com

To com­mem­o­rate the 43rd an­niver­sary of the death of ca­lyp­so icon Ce­cil “Mae­stro” on Au­gust 31, 1977 and, to re­mem­ber his con­tri­bu­tion as one of the two artistes ac­cred­it­ed with be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the birth of so­ca mu­sic in T&T, mem­bers of the South Cen­tral Is­land Pro­duc­tion (SCIP) have re­con­struct­ed his tomb at Princes Town in his ho­n­our and mem­o­ry. If Hume was alive to­day he would have been 81-years-old.

Back in 1977, Hume’s Bion­ic Man was re­leased short­ly af­ter his un­time­ly death and to de­fy the ru­muors that his death was his pre­mo­ni­tion fel­low ca­lyp­son­ian and Chair­per­son of SCIP Carey “Kinte” Stephens dis­put­ed the ru­mour, and said the song was based on an­oth­er re­al­i­ty event.

In the open­ing lines of the song Mae­stro sang, “Ah car crash, Ah harsh lash, every­body say man done. Ah news flash, se­vere smash, one more ca­lyp­son­ian gone. Sci­en­tist from a for­eign coun­try sat and plan to turn me in­to ah bion­ic man. De doc­tor ask meh mud­da wah she cry­ing for, they brin­ing me back bet­ter than be­fore…”

Stephens said: “That said year, Mae­stro had a freak ac­ci­dent, col­lid­ing in­to a bridge in Port-of-Spain, and in the (ca­lyp­so) tent all thought it was a dan­ger­ous one. He hit a bridge on his way to the tent. With the ac­ci­dent, and Steve Austin be­ing pop­u­lar on TV, Mae­stro did the song on a movie. He did the song as him as the Bion­ic Man. Most of his songs was based on TV shows. The song was sup­posed to be re­leased af­ter he come back from New York; that al­bum was sup­posed to be a tem­plate for the so­ca mu­sic. It was a tem­plate of what so­ca was sup­posed to be. Be­cause of his death, they just rush ahead and re­leased the song on the al­bum.”

Hume, on Au­gust 31, suc­cumbed to his in­juries af­ter a ve­hi­cle struck him as he at­tempt­ed to help some­one he knew that stalled on the high­way on the night of Au­gust 30 that same year. Stephens who idolised Hume as a “broth­er,” hav­ing met the com­pos­er/ca­lyp­son­ian in 1969, said it was be­fit­ting to mod­i­fy the tomb at the ceme­tery of Holy Cross Ro­man Catholic Church, in Princess Town, “be­cause of his rich con­tri­bu­tion to cul­ture in T&T.”

Stephens said the tomb, mod­i­fied by fel­low ca­lyp­son­ian Ter­ry Mar­cel, was done in tiles and de­signed to ward-off peo­ple from oc­cu­py­ing the space for their own per­son­al us­es. Through fund-rais­ers and cake sales, and ca­lyp­so shows, the SCIP group man­aged to raise the mon­ey that con­clud­ed the $9,000 tomb restora­tion. He said this it’s works like this that SCIP liked to do for fall­en ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and some­day part­ner with the Tourism Min­istry to be treat­ed as na­tion­al land­marks.

He said Hume be­gan singing in the 1960s and churned out hits like Sav­age, Tantie, Knock Dem Down, Ram­page, Melee, and Gold. He said be­fore that, he re­mem­bered Hume would sit with Garfield (Ras Shorty I) Black­man and both would in­ter­change a gui­tar to syn­the­size melodies of which Black­man had mas­tered the East In­di­an rhythm and Hume for the so­ca as­pect with­out the “boom, boom base.”

Stephens said: “Mae­stro have no boom, boom so­ca. Most of Mae­stro so­ca have a dis­tinct bass line, sep­a­rate and apart from the boom, boom. And it has no So­ca Chut­ney by Mae­stro. So­ca was giv­en birth through Mae­stro and Shorty. That East In­di­an rhythm is Shorty thing be­cause he grew up in Lengua. At­trib­uted to Mae­stro is the so­ca as­pect with­out the boom, boom, and with the Amer­i­can style mu­sic.

When you lis­ten to Mae­stro so­ca, you hear­ing in­stru­ments that you hear in Amer­i­can songs, like Share and Over Yon­der, he have some reg­gae songs to, liuke Doh Call Them Names.”

Mae­stro’s smash hit sin­gle Gold, arranged by Pel­ham God­dard, how­ev­er, hoist­ed the red, white and black flag in trib­ute of Hase­ly Craw­ford win­ning the 100-me­ter race and se­cur­ing gold in the 1976 Mon­tre­al Olympics.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion of en­ter­tain­ers, in­clud­ing Du­ane O’Con­nor, Rik­ki Jai, Machel Mon­tano, and Karene As­che al­so cov­ered Gold in 2012, and mod­i­fied the lyrics to ho­n­our Keshorn Wal­cott for win­ning the javelin gold medal in the Lon­don Olympics.

The fol­low­ing year, steel­bands like Ex­o­dus, Buc­cooneers, Su­per­novas, Tamana Pi­o­neers, Tokyo and West Stars chose the re­worked Gold as their tune of choice for the 2013 Na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

Not un­like the late Lord Kitch­en­er, Mae­stro too had an in­deli­ble hand in the steel­band move­ment. His broth­er Kei­th Jones, 65, was in high praise of the restora­tion of his broth­er’s tomb, as he re­mem­bered be­ing “tapped be­hind his head,” when Hume found him un­su­per­vised at a pan yard. Jones said Hume would tap him for run­ning away to play pan but he would ap­plaud the ini­tia­tive with cher­ished the mem­o­ries of his broth­er.

Jones said his fa­vorite song by Mae­stro was Just Don’t Live and Die. He said the song is like an obit­u­ary to sum up the way the ca­lyp­son­ian lived. “I ap­pre­ci­ate this (restora­tion) very much,” said Jones. “All in all, for the ben­e­fit of our fam­i­ly and the man who he was; it is great­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed that some­thing like this was done. No one has tak­en the time to do any­thing like this. This is the first time and it will be cher­ished as long as I am around.

“Just Don’t Live and Die is one of my fa­vorite songs. Be­cause you lis­ten to the words, if you had en­counter the life of the in­di­vid­ual, he lived it; every­thing he said in the song is what he por­trayed in his life,” Jones said.

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It is ap­pro­pri­ate to re­mem­ber late ca­lyp­son­ian Mae­stro as World Steel­band Month ends to­day, as like many oth­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, he had a hand in the steel­band move­ment.

Mae­stro’s fa­ther lived at Ste Made­line, and his moth­er at Princes Town. When he left Ste Made­line for Princes Town, his in­volve­ment with the [steel­band] move­ment came to pass. In Princes Town, he formed the band Free­town; for which he was the tuner and arranger. Mae­stro arranged for Free French, one of the old­est bands in San Fer­nan­do, in 1960; and he was al­so as­so­ci­at­ed with True Tones of Princes Town.

At the Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val in 1968, Mae­stro arranged the tune Con­cert Hall for True Tones. They came sec­ond to Des­per­a­does; whose in­ter­pre­ta­tion was arranged by An­tho­ny Prospect. Con­cert Hall was Mae­stro’s first 45 [record]; and [on] the re­verse side, Great In­ven­tions was a trib­ute to Ivory and Steel.

Mae­stro him­self wrote the tune Tem­po in 1975; which was a trib­ute to the steel­band move­ment in which he com­ment­ed on the lack of tenor... [arrange­ments] in their Panora­ma [per­for­mances].

Pan and ca­lyp­so go hand in hand and Mae­stro sure­ly so­lid­i­fied this in his con­tri­bu­tion to both.