If you want to see some­thing move in T&T cul­ture just tell Ken­ny Phillips it can­not be done. Pro­lif­ic, pi­o­neer­ing, de­fi­ant, leg­endary–the mu­sic pro­duc­er, busi­ness­man and stal­wart of T&T cul­ture for more than 40 years does not sub­scribe to the word “no”.

Six­ty-one years of life have ce­ment­ed his be­lief in be­ing self-suf­fi­cient and en­ter­pris­ing. For all of his rad­i­cal moves, he has most­ly land­ed on his feet.

As a vi­sion­ary arranger and pro­duc­er, the man be­hind KMP Mu­sic Lab has churned out hit af­ter hit with mu­sic icons across all gen­res in T&T and the re­gion. Dis­missed by broad­cast­ers in his bid to play more lo­cal con­tent on the ra­dio while he was the act­ing head of the Record­ing In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (RI­ATT), he an­swered with a march with lo­cal artistes in 2000 and the launch of his own ra­dio sta­tion, WACK Ra­dio 90.1FM, in 2004.

Host­ing live streams of fetes, ca­lyp­so trib­utes, Christ­mas shows and talk show events on an ever-in­creas­ing num­ber of so­cial me­dia plat­forms, Phillips has main­tained a win­dow in­to our lo­cal cul­ture for the Caribbean di­as­po­ra and the world at large.

His lat­est project is the Ka­lyp­so Kolis­se­um, the first vir­tu­al show­case of T&T's best ca­lyp­so tents un­der one roof. It is the cul­mi­na­tion of two years of some 220 vir­tu­al pro­duc­tions by Phillips sta­tion, the coun­try's fore­most pro­mot­er of all things lo­cal. Rather than a dis­play of artistes gear­ing up for tense com­pe­ti­tion, the fo­cus of the ini­tia­tive is en­ter­tain­ment.

With eight tents now card­ed to ap­pear, Ka­lyp­so Kolis­se­um kicked off with Kaiso Showkase on Jan­u­ary 14 and shows will con­tin­ue right up to March 1, Phillips said. Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, in­clud­ing Queen Vic­to­ria (Showkase), De­von Seale (Ca­lyp­so Re­vue) and Valenti­no (Kaiso House) will pull from their ar­se­nal of hard-hit­ting clas­sics and de­liv­er new of­fer­ings.

Like last year, live Panora­ma events are al­so ex­pect­ed to be live streamed.

Phillips' cham­pi­oning of lo­cal cul­ture and live stream­ing have seem­ing­ly come full cir­cle in the height of COVID's hard clamp on so­cial gath­er­ings and events. As many of the sta­tion's thou­sands of world­wide lis­ten­ers re­port, in a pun­ish­ing pan­dem­ic that has left a Car­ni­val drought in this coun­try, live-streamed events from the sta­tion's con­fer­ence room in San Fer­nan­do com­plete with stage, lights and screens, have been a wel­come re­prieve.

Though not every­one em­braces his ef­forts, no oth­er al­ter­na­tives were be­ing sug­gest­ed, Phillips shared in a re­cent in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian.

“I saw that noth­ing was hap­pen­ing and we were just sit­ting and wait­ing on the pow­ers that be. The pow­ers that be have oth­er things to study. The first thing they cut in a bud­get is cul­ture and that says a lot as to where we stand, so I am not wait­ing on any or­gan­i­sa­tion or in­sti­tu­tion,” he said. He said while pri­or­i­ties and cir­cum­stances of those in pow­er change, the needs of cul­ture do not. Cours­ing through the veins of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans is the need to cre­ate and pro­duce, he feels.

“The song­writ­ers have to write, the singers have to sing, pro­duc­ers have to pro­duce be­cause it is in our DNA. Some­times some­body would say: 'Me ain't writ­ing this year. I ain't tak­ing part,' and down to the last day, they have a song. That is how cre­atives op­er­ate. If you cre­ate some­thing, you have to put it out or else it will com­bust in­side you,” he said.

His events oc­cu­py a large spread on the FundMe TnT site by Blue Gu­rus Inc. He said his com­pa­ny re­mains trans­par­ent, so the pub­lic can see how much is made for each show.

Kenny Phillips, seated, shares a laugh with children, clockwise, Kasey, Kyle, Kaisha and granddaughter, Kai.

Re­cap­ping some of the ad­ven­tures of his youth, Phillips ad­mit­ted that he has al­ways had a re­bel­lious and in­domitable spir­it. The Na­pari­ma Col­lege alum­nus said he watched boys play in the school band and longed to be a part of the group.

“I used to just watch the band and not be able to be in the band. I used to say: one day, one day eh, I go be bad (great).”

The San Fer­nan­do na­tive said many boys would spend their days on the cor­ner dream­ing of start­ing a band, but with “no­body mak­ing a move to do noth­ing about it,” he de­cid­ed to take up gui­tar lessons. He was so com­mit­ted, he fin­ished the gui­tar lessons book the first day he had a class with the gui­tar teacher, Mr Gaskin. He and Gaskin of­ten end­ed up just do­ing jam ses­sions, he laughed.

Ex­pe­ri­enc­ing his first taste of band life with the Wal­ters School of Mu­sic band, he looked for­ward to many of their gigs on Har­ris Prom­e­nade and at oth­er events.

Be­ing “a rad­i­cal” from even then, when the leader de­cid­ed it was im­pos­si­ble for the band to per­form at a fete in Morne Di­a­blo and a Hilton Christ­mas par­ty record­ing for TTT on the same day, Phillips left and joined B Flat Ma­jors.

“I said if we're not do­ing this, this is not the place for me,” he re­called, ex­plain­ing that be­ing able to bal­ance dif­fer­ent gigs was his idea of what band life should be.

At B Flat Ma­jors, he was in­tro­duced to the icon­ic Le­ston Paul, whom he great­ly ad­mired, and his mu­sic ca­reer took off.

The first ca­lyp­son­ian he played for was Grab­bler. Though he had to be led in read­ing the mu­sic bars, his gui­tar skills saw him through and he quick­ly im­proved his craft.

“The first time in the stu­dio, I had no clue. I was hired be­cause I played with a kin­da vibe, but to read and play like that was an art you had to de­vel­op.”

For his next ses­sion, his blaz­ing gui­tar in­flec­tions would fea­ture heav­i­ly on the Lord Kitch­en­er's “The Symp­toms of Car­ni­val” (1983), a fast-paced vibesy tune, which he de­scribed as a sort of pre-cur­sor to so­ca. He would work with Kitch­en­er for the next nine years.

In the first record­ing he pro­duced at his home stu­dio, he in­no­vat­ed with a reg­gae rap in Iw­er George's “Time Hard, Hold Tight”, with the flip side, “Boom Boom Time” in 1987. “Boom Boom” was a strong con­tender for the Road March, but was tipped by the Mighty Duke's “Is Thun­der”.

In his sec­ond year, he dropped Mr Bisses­sar with Dru­patee, and con­tin­ued crank­ing out hit af­ter hit, in­clud­ing Rik­ki Jai's “Sum­intra”, Ras Shorty I's “Watch Out My Chil­dren” and a string of Christ­mas hits by Su­san Maicoo like “Tri­ni Christ­mas is the Best” and “Daisy Gone”, and Machel's “So­ca San­ta”.

Phillips was al­so re­spon­si­ble for “By All Means” (“Ma­ma Ding Ding”) when Machel of­fi­cial­ly crossed from ca­lyp­so to so­ca. He was al­so on hand to mix Bun­ji Gar­lin's de­but of­fer­ing, a pep­pery rag­ga so­ca called, “Send them Rhythm Crazy”, pro­duced by Dar­ryl Brax­ton.

He has worked across gen­res, do­ing gospel songs with Nicole Bal­los­ingh and Easlyn Orr. Col­lab­o­ra­tions in the Caribbean for var­i­ous So­ca Mon­archs and with Bee­nie Man too, form part of his ex­pan­sive port­fo­lio. In more re­cent times, he has re­turned to projects with ca­lyp­so­ni­ans.

In 2019, he threw his hat in­to the ca­lyp­so ring with the Kurt Allen com­po­si­tion, “Wack Dem”, pre­sent­ing him­self as a de­fend­er of lo­cal cul­ture. He re­ceived the nod of four ca­lyp­so tents.

Phillips is al­so leav­ing a lega­cy through his chil­dren, Kaisha, Kasey, Karyce and Kyle, who have sought to em­u­late him in their con­tri­bu­tions to the arts. Their pas­sion for cul­ture stems from hav­ing grown up watch­ing their fa­ther “do his thing” in the stu­dio...and from some­times join­ing in, even if by ac­ci­dent.

As a tod­dler, Kasey was re­spon­si­ble for the now-clas­sic stop in the mid­dle of Preach­er's “Jump and Wave” when he pulled the plug out of the record­ing equip­ment while his fa­ther was work­ing. Phillips made the chil­dren sing the cho­rus of the win­ning 1991 Song Fes­ti­val hit, “Am­bat­aila Woman” by the Unit­ed Sis­ters so much for him to loop it, that he even put them in the cred­its, he laughed. He is al­so proud of the lat­est ad­di­tion to the fam­i­ly, grand­son, Keane Noah Phillips–Kassey's two-year-old–who al­so en­joys be­ing in the stu­dio.

He ad­vis­es artistes, mu­si­cians and es­pe­cial­ly those af­fect­ed over the last two years to make their own space rather than wait for op­por­tu­ni­ties that may nev­er come.

Q&A with Ken­ny Phillips

You've stepped up time and time again to pull us out of a cul­tur­al slump when oth­ers said it was im­pos­si­ble, how are you able to do this?

It's a mix­ture of every­thing. It is love for the arts, love for ca­lyp­so, for so­ca, for mu­sic, for Trinidad and To­ba­go. I don't look at next week, I look at where we are go­ing in the next five years. The thing is that when you start to make the change, peo­ple look at you and go: 'he mad or what?'

I have been do­ing things dif­fer­ent to every­body for years. I have al­ways just had my own vi­sion.

Your love for the arts is root­ed in what ex­act­ly? Take me back to your ear­li­est mem­o­ries of ca­lyp­so, Car­ni­val.

I have ear­ly mem­o­ries of my grand­moth­er (Melv­ina O'Con­nell) car­ry­ing me to see mas, to see ca­lyp­so. My grand­moth­er was one of those peo­ple who used to line up by Skin­ner Park gate from the morn­ing when they were hav­ing Clash or (Ca­lyp­so) Fi­es­ta with she bas­ket of every­thing to make sure she had a good seat. These are the re­al Trinida­di­ans. She used to car­ry me by Grant (Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian) school to get a good spot to watch J'Ou­vert. I used to watch Fon­claire com­ing down with (Matthew) Roach on drums, one of the great­est drum­mers I've ever seen. He made me want to be­come a drum­mer. I used to wait every year to see that man. Fon­claire was the funki­est band in the world. Fon­claire is an in­sti­tu­tion.

My fa­ther (Ken­neth Phillips) had ca­lyp­so records be­fore I knew what ca­lyp­so was, and I used to play with the gram (record play­er). My moth­er (Anes­ta) was a singer, she used to sing at tea par­ties. My sis­ter was a singer. She went to Naps and did gui­tar lessons and I used to steal her gui­tar to play it.

You said rag­ga so­ca had roots in Lord Laro, and in the Iw­er “Time Hard, Hold Tight” you did. Tell me more about that.

I did one of Bun­ji's ear­li­est in­ter­views; it was for “Send them Rhythm Crazy” when he was called the first rag­ga so­ca artiste when he first came out, maybe we can start the first of­fi­cial Car­ni­val con­tro­ver­sy for this year right now. (Laugh­ter) We did a rag­ga rap in “Time Hard, Hold Tight” and that was an in­no­va­tion back then and hence they say that I in­vent­ed rag­ga so­ca. I mixed that first Bun­ji song. It was pro­duced by Brax­ton and I mixed. Iw­er was way be­fore that. Rag­ga so­ca had roots there. Iw­er made it pop­u­lar, but rag­ga so­ca had roots too in...re­mem­ber Lord Laro? He was a ca­lyp­son­ian who went to Ja­maica and stayed. He al­ways did a cross be­tween reg­gae and ca­lyp­so. It's an in­ter­est­ing dis­cus­sion.

Do you see your­self as a guardian or gate­keep­er of our cul­ture?

(Laugh­ter) I have seen how guardians and gate­keep­ers end up, so I don't want to call my­self that at all. I was a per­son­al friend of Spran­galang. He was on my board of di­rec­tors. He built all the com­put­ers in my or­gan­i­sa­tion when we start­ed. Peo­ple see you as one thing and don't re­alise your true worth and Spran­galang who was, as you say, a guardian, of knowl­edge–where we should have tapped in­to his brain and learn from him, the pow­ers that be not in­ter­est­ed in that. Our his­to­ry could be re-writ­ten at any time and no­body's there to doubt it.