Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

Pro­mot­er Randy Glas­gow is call­ing on the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for main­tain­ing stat­ues ho­n­our­ing ca­lyp­so leg­ends, say­ing there is no rea­son to seek more Gov­ern­ment mon­ey when the art form al­ready re­ceives mil­lions in an­nu­al fund­ing.

His call fol­lows a vol­un­teer ef­fort on Sat­ur­day morn­ing to pow­er-wash the stat­ue of the Mighty Spar­row and clean its sur­round­ings.

Glas­gow said main­tain­ing the stat­ues of Spar­row and Lord Kitch­en­er should be­come part of TU­CO’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, rather than de­pend­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to pay for every cleanup.

He said he is al­so a mem­ber of TU­CO and be­lieves the or­gan­i­sa­tion has enough mem­bers to car­ry out the work.

“I feel, you know, there’s enough ca­lyp­so in there. I’m a mem­ber of TU­CO my­self, and there are like 500 TU­CO mem­bers, and, you know, that could be part of their man­date.”

Glas­gow said sim­i­lar at­ten­tion should be giv­en to the stat­ue of Lord Kitch­en­er.

He ar­gued that ca­lyp­so al­ready ben­e­fits from sub­stan­tial Gov­ern­ment sup­port.

“I don’t think it looks good if the min­istry al­ready plays its part, where every year, Ca­lyp­so get a sub­ven­tion of $15 to $16 mil­lion.”

He said seek­ing ad­di­tion­al mon­ey for rou­tine main­te­nance was un­nec­es­sary.

“I will nev­er en­cour­age that.”

The pro­mot­er said the cleanup was or­gan­ised by a small group of vol­un­teers who want­ed to en­sure Spar­row’s stat­ue re­mained in good con­di­tion fol­low­ing his death.

He said no one had asked him to be­come in­volved, but he felt a per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect Spar­row’s lega­cy.

“No­body asked me for any­thing and I just de­cid­ed, you know, be­cause I think I al­ways as­pire to pro­tect and pro­mote his lega­cy. And we have been do­ing that since the first day that he died.”

Glas­gow iden­ti­fied sev­er­al peo­ple in­volved in the ef­fort, in­clud­ing Luther, Hamidul­lah, ca­lyp­son­ian Twig­gy and Kurt, among oth­ers.

He said the group re­ceived sup­port from the May­or of Port-of-Spain, who arranged for a crew and wa­ter to as­sist with the cleanup.

The work in­clud­ed pow­er-wash­ing the stat­ue and cut­ting the sur­round­ing grass.

Glas­gow said main­tain­ing the area should not be dif­fi­cult and com­pared it to keep­ing a yard clean.

“I mean, you know, it’s a stat­ue and some bush to cut. It’s like a lit­tle yard in your home.”

He said the group hoped to con­tin­ue clean­ing the stat­ue reg­u­lar­ly, ide­al­ly once a month.

Glas­gow stressed that the stat­ue should re­main in good con­di­tion be­cause of its promi­nent lo­ca­tion near ma­jor ho­tels, Queen’s Hall and the Prime Min­is­ter’s Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.

“It’s cleaned up and paint­ed if nec­es­sary, but it must look good be­cause it’s a good lo­ca­tion.”

He said the vol­un­teers were com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the stat­ue con­tin­ued to re­ceive at­ten­tion.

Glas­gow hopes the ini­tia­tive will en­cour­age greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty among ca­lyp­so or­gan­i­sa­tions for pre­serv­ing mon­u­ments ho­n­our­ing the coun­try’s cul­tur­al icons.