“Calypso is a living vibration rooted deep within my Caribbean belly,” calypsonian David Rudder sang in his classic Calypso Music.
This month the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians Organisation (TUCO) will observe that “living vibration” through its annual Calypso History Month. Its theme this year is De Bell Reigns.
This year’s observance is dedicated to TUCO’s late president Lutalo “Brother Resistance” Masimba, who died on July 13.
PRO Sherma Orr-Watkins said if Masimba was alive he would not have accepted the organisation's dedicating the month to him. She said TUCO had tried honouring him before, but he did not accept it.
“It is so sad to know you have to die, and this is how we have to do it, but we just have to do it this way,” she added.
A gala will be held on November 3 at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s where Masimba will be honoured and a plaque presented to his family.
The organisation has a number of other events planned. They are largely virtual again, owing to the covid19 pandemic.
Calypso History Month started with a church service which was recorded on September 10 and which will be aired on October 10 on TTT.
“We have online lectures in schools where the education and research officer Meagan Sylvester will be doing. Every Friday in October and the first Friday in November we have shows…in collaboration with WACK (90.1 FM), where we will be doing calypso online.”
The organisation will also host a Talk De Calypso competition. Open to all TUCO members, the preliminaries will take place on October 16 and the finals on November 6.
Orr-Watkins said the competition was taking calypso and talking it poetry style.
Each of the organisation’s zones will also have its own events, such as the north zone’s Extemporama and the south zone two calypso shows.
TUCO has found younger audiences are listening to calypso.
“Although we tend to say it is only old people, young people also listen to calypso,” Orr-Watkins said, and this was also evident by the quality of entrants to its junior calypso competitions.
She said younger calypsonians were also partnering with older calypsonians.
Calypsonian Edwin “Crazy” Ayoung was also doing a great job of this, she said. Crazy has done some calypsoes with younger artistes and is also helping to mentor some of them in the artform.
Orr-Watkins said TUCO is looking forward to the country reopening.
“We hope this will go away soon and TUCO will be there waiting just to explore…and come out with the younger artistes and work with them.”
She said there were great plans ahead for calypso.
Spotify: Calypso catches on overseas
Although some might be tempted to believe that calypso is largely listened to by an older audience, data from the audio streaming and media services company Spotify showed Gen Z (18-24) makes up for 15 per cent of its calypso listeners.
It said in a release that whilst one in five listeners of calypso is in the age gr
