Soyi­ni Gray

Trib­utes have poured in on so­cial me­dia, fol­low­ing the pass­ing of Va­lerie Greene, the icon­ic dancer who, for decades, was the muse, part­ner and stage col­lab­o­ra­tor of late ca­lyp­son­ian Ald­wyn “Lord Kitch­en­er” Roberts. Sev­en­ty-four-year-old Greene died yes­ter­day morn­ing in her son Ker­nal’s arms.

How­ev­er, her daugh­ter, Quweina Roberts, is al­leg­ing mal­prac­tice was the cause of her moth­er’s death.

“The failed med­ical sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go took our moth­er from us. She’s gone be­cause they failed her this morn­ing,” she said via her Face­book ac­count.

In a con­ver­sa­tion with Guardian Me­dia, she lat­er said her moth­er was tak­en to the St James Med­ical Com­plex yes­ter­day morn­ing com­plain­ing of short­ness of breath.

Roberts said no one re­spond­ed to her broth­er Ker­nal’s des­per­ate screams for as­sis­tance for his ail­ing moth­er when they got to the in­sti­tu­tion. She even­tu­al­ly died in his arms of a mas­sive heart at­tack.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty CEO An­tho­ny Blake for a re­sponse to the fam­i­ly’s claim that the nurs­es on du­ty ne­glect­ed to re­spond to a pa­tient in dis­tress, con­tribut­ing to her death. How­ev­er, there was no re­sponse up to press time

An au­top­sy is sched­uled for Mon­day.

Greene rose to promi­nence in the 1970s as part of Kitch­en­er’s in­ner cir­cle. The cou­ple shared a long re­la­tion­ship and raised four chil­dren to­geth­er—among them Ker­nal Roberts, now a suc­cess­ful so­ca pro­duc­er, singer and song­writer—as well as Chris­t­ian, Quweina and Kir­nister Roberts.

Greene in­spired two of Kitch­en­er’s most en­dur­ing hits, Sug­ar Bum Bum and Flag Woman. In both songs, he cel­e­brat­ed her en­er­gy and style, while Greene her­self brought those im­ages vivid­ly to life on stage. Her sig­na­ture flag-wav­ing, daz­zling cos­tumes and chore­o­graphed moves cre­at­ed an im­age that count­less steel­band flag bear­ers and mas­quer­aders have since em­u­lat­ed.

Long be­fore the “road” chore­o­gra­phies of mod­ern Car­ni­val bands, Greene helped trans­form the role of the flag bear­er in­to a per­for­mance art.

Ca­lyp­son­ian and his­to­ri­an Dr Hol­lis “Mighty Chalk­dust” Liv­er­pool yes­ter­day said Green in­spired Kitch­en­er.

“What­ev­er he was singing, he would make sure that she had a part to play in it. She was no dancer be­fore she met Kitch­en­er,” Liv­er­pool said.

Even af­ter Kitch­en­er’s death in 2000, Greene re­mained com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing his lega­cy. She loaned mem­o­ra­bil­ia to ex­hi­bi­tions, sup­port­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al projects and ap­peared at com­mem­o­ra­tive events to share sto­ries of the man be­hind the mu­sic.

To­day, the term “Flag Woman” is firm­ly em­bed­ded in the lex­i­con of Car­ni­val, and Greene is cred­it­ed with help­ing cre­ate a tra­di­tion of move­ment, colour and pres­ence at the front of a band—a liv­ing lega­cy that con­tin­ues to shape the fes­ti­val.