Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Ains­ley King has de­scribed the copy­right law­suit against the es­tate of Black Stal­in as “dis­grace­ful” and said he does not be­lieve it will drag on in the courts.

Speak­ing at TU­CO’s 2025 Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Prize Dis­tri­b­u­tion Cer­e­mo­ny, King said, “I must say that that was un­for­tu­nate, and I con­sid­er it dis­grace­ful, you know. That was very dis­grace­ful. But the last in­for­ma­tion I got, which I’m not gonna just put, I’m not gonna take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­tu­al­ly be the first to share with the pub­lic, you know, is that things are be­ing worked out.”

He added, “No, I think that le­gal is­sue will meet to a point where it would dis­solve, right? Where it will not go for­ward. That is the sen­ti­ment that I’m get­ting, right? And I must say that the at­tempts and for it to meet where it was, it is dis­grace­ful. It is shame­ful on the be­half of those who chose to do such a dis­grace­ful thing. And TU­CO does not sup­port that. We stand with the wid­ow. And, you know, such ac­tion will not be sup­port­ed or tol­er­at­ed by us ever. It’s dis­grace­ful. It’s sad, it’s shame­ful.”

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er An­ge­lo Mar­celle filed the law­suit against Janet Cal­liste af­ter his copy­right­ed pho­to of Leroy “Black Stal­in” Cal­liste ap­peared in pro­mo­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al for a trib­ute con­cert on Oc­to­ber 4, 2024. The con­cert was held at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts.

Mar­celle said he had orig­i­nal­ly li­censed the pho­to to news­pa­pers in 2011 and again in 2022 but nev­er au­tho­rised its use in the con­cert ma­te­r­i­al. He claimed the im­age ap­peared in print and so­cial me­dia ad­ver­tis­ing with­out his per­mis­sion and that his ob­jec­tions were ig­nored. He sued for more than $360,000. Cal­liste, who said she could not af­ford a lawyer, did not file a de­fence, and Mar­celle was award­ed a de­fault judg­ment.

Speak­ing on Slam 100.5FM with host Sun­ny Bling, Mar­celle de­fend­ed the law­suit and re­ject­ed the idea that he was tar­get­ing the late ca­lyp­son­ian’s fam­i­ly for mon­ey.

Sun­ny Bling asked, “If it is the es­tate, Black Stal­in’s es­tate and the fam­i­ly, etc, they can­not af­ford to fi­nan­cial­ly cov­er this cost, are you go­ing to…”

Mar­celle in­ter­rupt­ed, “I’m not go­ing af­ter no­body house!”

He hint­ed at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a set­tle­ment, say­ing he want­ed pay­ment but didn’t in­tend to bank­rupt the fam­i­ly.

“Well, we’ll see how things go. There’s al­ways room for dis­cus­sion. But now that the court has award­ed, I’m not too sure what much more I can say, as I say, I’m not a le­gal per­son.”

He said it was nev­er about the mon­ey.

“I al­so think cre­ators will ben­e­fit great­ly from it. Peo­ple must re­spect peo­ple’s prop­er­ty,” he said. “And as cre­atives, you must put re­spect on our prop­er­ty. It’s just a mat­ter of re­spect.”

On so­cial me­dia, a 2023 ar­ti­cle be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing. In it, the fam­i­ly of the late Leroy “Black Stal­in” Cal­liste, through at­tor­ney Ron­dell Don­awa, urged the pub­lic to seek per­mis­sion be­fore us­ing his in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. They said the unau­tho­rised com­mer­cial use of his work dis­re­spect­ed his lega­cy.