Leah So­rias

Just as the na­tion was com­ing to terms with the death of stel­lar ac­tress Mairoon Ali, T&T has lost an­oth­er cul­tur­al icon. Mu­si­cal di­rec­tor, arranger and promi­nent ad­ju­di­ca­tor, Roland Gor­don, suc­cumbed to a stroke at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex yes­ter­day. He was 57. Gor­don col­lapsed at his home on Tues­day morn­ing and was tak­en to hos­pi­tal. Rel­a­tives said he suf­fered a "mild" stroke. Al­though Gor­don was un­able to speak or use the left side of his body, his son, so­ca artiste Ro­drique "Chucky" Gor­don, 23, said his fa­ther had been okay. How­ev­er, Gor­don's con­di­tion took a turn for the worse on Wednes­day and he suf­fered an­oth­er stroke. He died around 4 am the fol­low­ing day. It was on­ly on Sun­day that Gor­don judged the semi­fi­nal round of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion at the Ari­ma Velo­drome.

As chief judge of the en­tire com­pe­ti­tion, he held the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of fi­nal­is­ing the names of those who made it to the fi­nals as well as de­cid­ing the over­all win­ner. Some 300 artistes per­formed for more than nine hours on Sun­day. Gor­don's sis­ter, Roslyn Joseph, said Gor­don wore many hats, in­clud­ing mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of the Amantes de Par­ran­da parang group, as well as the Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ing Group. "He was al­so a mu­sic fa­cil­i­ta­tor with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and was at­tached to the St Joseph Sec­ondary School (for­mer­ly Curepe Ju­nior Sec­ondary) up to the time of his death," she said. Gor­don's friends in the cul­tur­al fra­ter­ni­ty said they were shocked at his pass­ing as he nev­er showed any signs of ill­ness. "I did not know he was sick, it was on­ly when he took ill on Tues­day that I heard for the first time that he had high blood pres­sure," said Nor­van Fuller­ton, cul­tur­al am­bas­sador and founder of the Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ing Group.

He said the 150-plus mem­bers of the group were dev­as­tat­ed by Gor­don's death. He not­ed that Gor­don has been mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of the folk group since 1984. "Rol­lo, as we called him, kept Mal­ick at the top of the Best Vil­lage Tro­phy Com­pe­ti­tion, lead­ing them to vic­to­ry on ten oc­ca­sions," Fuller­ton said. The group had won the com­pe­ti­tion once be­fore Gor­don joined, he said. He said Gor­don was re­cent­ly made as­sis­tant di­rec­tor of the group and was re­spon­si­ble for the group's last two Best Vil­lage Pro­duc­tions. "We are all very sad­dened...it is a loss to the whole en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, not on­ly in T&T, but to the rest of the re­gion," Fuller­ton said. "He will be hard to re­place, he had some unique arrange­ments," he added.

Chair­man of Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion (CPF), William Munroe, said he, too, was sur­prised at Gor­don's death. CPF runs the So­ca Monarch show. "He looked a bit ex­haust­ed on Sun­day for the semis and I told him that," Munroe said. "He was sup­posed to come the fol­low­ing day to read out the re­sults to the me­dia and I told him to get some rest." Munroe said the fol­low­ing day he learnt of Gor­don's stroke. He high­light­ed how stress­ful Gor­don's role as ad­ju­di­ca­tor was, not­ing that Gor­don had to pick from among 300 artistes, the fi­nal­ists of the com­pe­ti­tion. "It is ex­treme­ly hard work, very tir­ing," he said. "Then af­ter all of that, peo­ple ac­cuse the judges of be­ing un­fair," Munroe added. Gor­don leaves to mourn his chil­dren Ro­drique and Rod­ney, 30, a ra­dio DJ, as well as his sib­lings. He is sur­vived by his fa­ther, Den­nis Gor­don, 96.