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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Emotional Chalkdust
honoured by UTT

by

353 days ago
20240308
Dr Hollis Liverpool, left, receives a plaque from Prof Clement Imbert, ORTT, at the Master of Arts in Carnival Studies Founders Day programme at NAPA, Port-of-Spain, on Wednesday.

Dr Hollis Liverpool, left, receives a plaque from Prof Clement Imbert, ORTT, at the Master of Arts in Carnival Studies Founders Day programme at NAPA, Port-of-Spain, on Wednesday.

VASHTI SNGH

Se­nior Re­porter

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

An emo­tion­al Dr Hol­lis Liv­er­pool choked back tears as he was ho­n­oured dur­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T’s (UTT) in­au­gur­al Mas­ter of Arts in Car­ni­val Stud­ies Founders Day event on Wednes­day.

Se­nior lec­tur­er Dr Kela Fran­cis de­scribed the oc­ca­sion as “our op­por­tu­ni­ty to give him his flow­ers now”.

The vet­er­an aca­d­e­m­ic and ca­lyp­son­ian, who per­forms un­der the so­bri­quet Chalk­dust but is more pop­u­lar­ly known as Chalkie, said it was the hap­pi­est night of his life.

“I on­ly sor­ry that my wife was not here,” he said.

Ruth Liv­er­pool died in Jan­u­ary fol­low­ing a long ill­ness. Her hus­band told the au­di­ence at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) that when he con­sult­ed the Trinida­di­an Bish­op of Grena­da, Fa­ther Clyde Har­vey, he asked him why he was griev­ing if he knew that she was in heav­en, to which Chalkie replied: “Fa­ther, you ever sleep with a woman yet?”

Feb­ru­ary 28, 2005, was the of­fi­cial start of the uni­ver­si­ty’s post-grad­u­ate de­gree pro­gramme in Car­ni­val Stud­ies. Chalkie said he first thought of it while lec­tur­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Vir­gin Is­lands but a call from then uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Prof Ken Julien got the ball rolling and the course is now based at the uni­ver­si­ty’s Acad­e­my of Arts, Let­ters, Cul­ture and Pub­lic where Chalkie serves as the course leader.

Al­so speak­ing last evening was the 2024 Ca­lyp­so Monarch Machel Mon­tano, a stu­dent in the pro­gramme.

“This ca­lyp­so that I wrote, every­thing in that ca­lyp­so came from Dr Liv­er­pool’s notes in my first se­mes­ter,” Mon­tano ex­plained, speak­ing about his win­ning song, Soul of Ca­lyp­so.

He said not on­ly did Chalkie push for him to be award­ed an ho­n­ourary doc­tor­ate by the uni­ver­si­ty in 2019, but he al­so in­sist­ed that Mon­tano en­rol in the mas­ters de­gree pro­gramme as a full-time stu­dent while he was still lead­ing the course.


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