Gillian Cal­iste

Al­though the pub­lic and es­pe­cial­ly her fans may be look­ing for­ward to her hu­mor­ous side once again on the Ca­lyp­so Monarch stage tonight, reign­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch Ter­ri Lyons says she has more press­ing is­sues to ad­dress.

“I know a lot of peo­ple were ex­pect­ing me to come fun­ny, but there are se­ri­ous mat­ters that have to be dealt with,” she told the Sun­day Guardian.

In the com­po­si­tion with which she in­tends to de­fend her 2020 ti­tle against her 11 com­peti­tors in the cli­max to C2K23's ca­lyp­so events, Lyons de­clared that she had tak­en part of her Ca­lyp­so Monarch earn­ings and opened a house clean­ing busi­ness and even­tu­al­ly calls for the en­tire na­tion to do some house clean­ing. Ti­tled af­ter the very ex­pres­sion, “House Clean­ing” is a di­rect warn­ing to per­pe­tra­tors and of­fend­ers in­volved in crimes from rob­beries to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and sex­u­al abuse that Lyons and the com­mu­ni­ty would no longer be tol­er­at­ing their acts. She iden­ti­fies var­i­ous of­fences and ral­lies the com­mu­ni­ty to send out the “bat sig­nal” just like the one su­per­hero Bat­man re­sponds to and comes to the res­cue of those in dis­tress.

Point­ing out that for­mer ca­lyp­son­ian Watch­man was her un­cle, the ca­lyp­son­ian, so­ca en­ter­tain­er and ac­tress said she was re­vert­ing to the true role of the ca­lyp­son­ian and con­fronting the crimes and atroc­i­ties in this coun­try head-on in the song writ­ten by Maria Bho­la-Paul and her­self.

“Some peo­ple say that I'm en­cour­ag­ing vig­i­lante jus­tice, but I'm not do­ing that. When you call the po­lice for help, and you are in that present dan­ger and let's say the po­lice take an hour to reach, if the vil­lage could hold that per­son for that time un­til the po­lice reach, it could help,” she said.

She said that the vil­lage could al­so be in­stru­men­tal in help­ing to solve crimes by giv­ing in­for­ma­tion, but many would be afraid be­cause po­lice sta­tions and oth­er au­thor­i­ties need­ed “clean­ing”.

“So when I say house clean­ing, it means that every­where that is hous­ing a par­tic­u­lar group of peo­ple needs to be cleaned in or­der for our com­mu­ni­ties to be peace­ful. You can't have a fam­i­ly mem­ber be­ing a pae­dophile, and you know and once they're not touch­ing your kids, you are OK.”

Reigning Calypso Monarch Terri Lyons

She said she was ask­ing all hands to be on deck when it came to crime as all could be af­fect­ed, adding that even if neigh­bours did not talk they could still look out for each oth­er's chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly. It was up to all mem­bers of so­ci­ety to clean their own hous­es, Lyons said. She said she had been af­fect­ed by the re­cur­rence of some of the is­sues she sings about in her ca­lyp­so; some of which she had wit­nessed and oth­ers she had heard from peo­ple whom her foun­da­tion has been try­ing to help.

A pow­er­house per­former with a nat­ur­al mag­net­ism and com­mand of the stage af­ter her ca­lyp­so and so­ca icon fa­ther Austin "Su­perblue" Lyons and so­ca star sis­ter Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez, Lyons said for Di­manche Gras night, she wants the pub­lic to “just lis­ten.”

As to re­tain­ing her ti­tle, she said her work was not cen­tred on com­pe­ti­tions and that she did not want to take the en­joy­ment out of the ex­pe­ri­ence by fo­cus­ing on win­ning. In 2020, when she cap­tured the Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle, her ap­proach was to de­liv­er a good per­for­mance and en­joy it with lit­tle pres­sure, she shared.

She said she had even joked with some peo­ple that: I'm not afraid to lose. They could take my ti­tle, but they can't take my crown.

“Af­ter com­pe­ti­tion, my name has to live on,” she said, de­scrib­ing her­self as an en­ter­tain­er and a brand. She said she was con­cerned with cre­at­ing mu­sic for longevi­ty and was plan­ning an­oth­er I am Li­on con­cert for lat­er this year as her first held last No­vem­ber was suc­cess­ful. She al­so in­tends to work on bring­ing back ca­lyp­soes in fetes in the way Black Stal­in and oth­ers' mu­sic used to be played.

She al­so took home the Queen of Queens Re­gion­al Fe­male Ca­lyp­so ti­tle at a com­pe­ti­tion held at Fes­ti­val Vil­lage, Montser­rat two weeks ago from a field of the top 10 fe­male ca­lyp­so­ni­ans in the Caribbean with her win­ning 2020 com­po­si­tions “Obeah” and “Meghan My Dear”.

Fol­low­ing her 2020 Monarch tri­umph, her reign was ex­tend­ed due to re­strict­ed in-per­son ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Lyons es­tab­lished the Ter­ri Lyons Foun­da­tion as hu­man­i­tar­i­an work is close to her heart.

She has not stopped since. She said there were ca­lyp­so­ni­ans in need but were ashamed to ask for as­sis­tance. As­sis­tance did not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean a hand­out but a hand up or emo­tion­al sup­port, she added. She al­so said some so­ca artistes were per­form­ing for free be­cause of their pas­sion or for the ex­po­sure as had hap­pened to her in the past.

Lyons has al­so bus­ied her­self with prepa­ra­tions to launch an eye­lash line com­plete with a brand­ed merch box which can be used for ac­ces­sories and trin­kets in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mink Wink. She will al­so be re­leas­ing a Ter­ri Lyons cloth­ing line af­ter Car­ni­val which will serve to em­bell­ish what peo­ple al­ready have in their wardrobe.