Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

Strange things hap­pen in the mind, which on oc­ca­sion can­not be eas­i­ly ex­plained. At the start of prepa­ra­tion time for my col­umn of to­day, I was ful­ly in­tent on con­tin­u­ing to fol­low and write about the per­ilous con­di­tion of the world we live in, both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

And then, and for no ex­plain­able rea­son, the name Am­jad Farzan Ali and his haunt­ing call of “Gee­tan­gali” just sim­ply oc­cu­pied my mind. In­evitably, a swarm of mem­o­ries con­nect­ed to the Ra­dio Trinidad of the 1980s, be­fore and be­yond, en­tered my mind with­out bid­ding.

Am­jad, a small In­do-Tri­ni man with a big voice and per­son­al­i­ty, played In­di­an mu­sic, of­ten in­ter­ven­ing in his husky tones. He fas­ci­nat­ed me with his sto­ries, which fo­cused on the so­cial state of the coun­try. We met at least once a week along the cor­ri­dor from the front en­trance. I sub­se­quent­ly learnt that “Gee­tan­jali” refers to Ra­bindranath Tagore’s No­bel Prize-win­ning col­lec­tion of po­ems, a clas­sic 1993 Bol­ly­wood film, and the cel­e­brat­ed Hin­di au­thor Gee­tan­jali Shree.

From the en­trance, where ca­lyp­so re­searcher/his­to­ri­an, Rocky Mc­Collin, sat, al­ways ready to en­gage in chat about ca­lyp­so, to the stu­dios, along the way pass­ing the en­gi­neer­ing shop of Mr Wells, the news and sports de­part­ment, and mas­ter con­trol, which kept the sta­tion on the air through the dili­gence of the tech­ni­cians. Frankie Dick­son and Clarence Hinds were OB tech­ni­cians. I had an ex­pe­ri­ence with Frankie broad­cast­ing live from a PNM po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the velo­drome in Ari­ma. Un­der se­ri­ous pres­sure from the NAR in the 1986 elec­tion cam­paign, then-prime min­is­ter George Cham­bers put a TTT crew, led by Jones Madeira, out of the meet­ing claim­ing dis­re­spect; they had ar­rived late. The sup­port­ers de­cid­ed all me­dia need­ed a bap­tism of fire. They rocked the RT van with Frankie and me. I got to hell out, fear­ing they would over­turn the Thames van.

The Ra­dio Trinidad of that pe­ri­od of pro­gram­ming in­clud­ed the Mo­hammed broth­ers – Ka­malud­din and Moen of El So­cor­ro, and lat­er on the next gen­er­a­tion of the Mo­hammeds, Rafi and Aleem.

Be­fore my time at the sta­tion, I lis­tened to broad­cast roy­al­ty of the era of June Gon­salves, Sam Ghany of Sun­day Ser­e­nade, Ken Gor­don, Pe­ter Min­shall and a fel­low I nev­er knew per­son­al­ly, Jim Bryan, who pro­duced a pro­gramme called “Pick a Box”.

It would be a mor­tal sin not to men­tion Trevor Mc­Don­ald, Archie Hen­ry and Raf­fie Knowles, with the oc­ca­sion­al Li­onel Luck­hoo; they broad­cast horse rac­ing, and the for­mer be­came “Sir Trevor” of the BBC. I had the plea­sure of meet­ing and in­ter­view­ing him on TTT, and then we crossed paths at a Com­mon­wealth Sum­mit in Ugan­da- an­oth­er in­stance of one of T&T’s finest jour­nal­ists.

Of spe­cial men­tion is the “Bad Lad” – Bil­ly Re­ece; I shall re­turn to him.

One of the first per­sons I en­coun­tered at RT was Mc­Don­ald “Mac” Hold­er, deputy chief op­er­a­tor. I was feed­ing ra­dio fea­tures to Gail Bind­ley Tay­lor (for­mer­ly an es­tab­lished news read­er/jour­nal­ist at RT) at the UN, and she asked “Mac” to record a pro­gramme for me to send to her. With great cu­rios­i­ty and a trait of his, he in­spect­ed me, per­haps at­tempt­ing to dis­cern if this bushy-head­ed tess had any val­ue, but if Gail asked, there must be some val­ue to him. Lat­er, Mac be­came a great col­league; he is the dad­dy of Colleen Hold­er, then a frisky girl who seemed to be every­where in the sta­tion.

I start­ed broad­cast­ing at the sta­tion on a free­lance ba­sis, brought there by Gabriel Fran­cis, Pro­gramme Man­ag­er, a man who un­der­stood ra­dio and the needs of the au­di­ence; we prob­a­bly did not give him suf­fi­cient cred­it for his wide range of pro­gram­ming in the 1980s.

On the evening of that fate­ful 1986 gen­er­al elec­tion, Mr Fran­cis placed me in the elec­tions cov­er­age stu­dio with Carl Par­ris, Sel­wyn Ryan, and Win­ston May­nard, the sil­ver-tongued one, as the mod­er­a­tor; I am sure I was out of my depth. He al­so sent me to Grena­da to cov­er the con­flict in the New Jew­el Gov­ern­ment.

Win­ston, men­tioned above, pro­duced an ex­cel­lent pro­gramme: “Bring Yuh Mu­sic and Come,” with ca­lyp­so afi­ciona­dos such as Rocky, Tony Mitchell, Bri­an Hon­ore- Com­men­tor, Kelvin Scoon and oth­ers – I sat, lis­tened and learned.

Ken­neth “Trot­ty” Trot­man de­serves spe­cial men­tion. He pro­duced the el­e­ments of the pro­gram­ming of Ra­dio 95: “What yuh have for me, Tony, was his call to me for two-minute com­men­taries on the sta­tion. Con­tin­ue rest­ing well, Trot­ty.

Of a lat­er gen­er­a­tion, I joined a team of broad­cast­ers/jour­nal­ists and DJ-an­nounc­ers at RT led by Neil Giusep­pi - jour­nal­ist/ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er; News Di­rec­tor/Pro­gramme Pro­duc­er, Jones P Madeira, Andy John­son, Deb­bie Ran­some, Richard Lord, Verne Bur­nett, San­dra Ma­haraj, Do­minic Kaliper­sad and Harold Thomp­son. In­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the team were the stal­wart news­men, Li­onel Dixon and Arthur Greene. Sed­ley Joseph and Fazeer Mo­hammed had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for sports.

The news pro­duc­tion team was blessed with news read­ers, Edi­son Carr and Bar­bara As­soon. Phill “the Thrill from Laven­tille” Sim­mons, David El­cock, Hol­ly Thomas, and Er­ic St Bernard drove the so­ca. Sel­ma “the Flame” Ay­ee en­gaged “my taxi dri­vers”.

Just a few re­flec­tions on Ra­dio Trinidad. I shall con­tin­ue.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host, and News Di­rec­tor at TTT; pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad; cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press; grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.