Soyi­ni Grey

David Rud­der gave his au­di­ence a rous­ing five-hour plus treat for what is ex­pect­ed to be his fi­nal full-length con­cert per­for­mance.

Rud­der’s show ti­tled 7.0 start­ed prompt­ly at 8 pm on his birth­day on Sat­ur­day and last­ed well in­to the morn­ing.

De­vot­ed fans kept the ca­lyp­so icon on stage well past the sched­uled end time of mid­night be­cause they sim­ply did not want the night to end.

The venue was filled to ca­pac­i­ty with a most­ly ma­ture but mixed crowd of fans, who, de­spite the com­pet­ing in­ter­ests of the reg­gae con­cert Re­demp­tion in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Ab­hi­jeet in Con­cert at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence fea­tur­ing the Bol­ly­wood play­back singer Ab­hi­jeet Bhat­tacharya and Point Fortin Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions, found them­selves at Sound­forge to wit­ness a true per­former re­tire on his own terms.

With a cat­a­logue of songs as vast as Rud­der’s, there was mu­sic for every mood and move­ment. There were mo­ments of the qui­et con­tem­pla­tion need­ed to re­vere lyrics that still sting decades af­ter be­ing writ­ten, as well as time for a swing­ing of the hips to the count of Bac­cha­nal La­dy as demon­strat­ed by De­stra Gar­cia or a rais­ing of the arms to praise and wor­ship to High Mass.

The show was struc­tured to al­low Rud­der the abil­i­ty to per­form as much or as lit­tle as he saw fit through­out the evening.

Dur­ing per­for­mances by the likes of De­stra Gar­cia, Machel Mon­tano, Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller, Mi­cal Te­ja and Voice, he was able to take short breaks be­tween songs or join in to per­form favourites while leav­ing en­tire vers­es and cho­rus­es to his fel­low artistes.

The ef­fect was like a pass­ing of the ba­ton, a mu­tu­al ac­knowl­edge­ment of tal­ent.

Singer Vaugh­nette Big­ford per­formed two songs—Women of the Sun and Song for a Lone­ly Soul. Rud­der joined her on-stage for the lat­ter and de­liv­ered his lyrics wrapped in her arms.

There wasn’t one high­light in Rud­der 7.0, there were sev­er­al.

How­ev­er, see­ing Rud­der in­ter­act­ing with Carl Ja­cobs on­stage was worth the price of ad­mis­sion. Two el­der states­men of ca­lyp­so on­stage—present, valu­able, and val­ued, singing the mu­sic we know and love.

The au­di­ence was filled with the who’s who of art, busi­ness, and pol­i­tics.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s wife, Sharon Row­ley, was in at­ten­dance, as was At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Amour and po­et Ein­tou Springer, the artist Jack­ie Hink­son, so­ca artiste Akeem Chance, bet­ter known as Preedy, mu­si­cian Gary Hec­tor, for­mer­ly of the lo­cal rock band Joint­Pop, and fash­ion de­sign­er Meil­ing were but a few per­son­al­i­ties spot­ted in the au­di­ence.