Latest / Corie Sheppard Podcast / 3 Canal: Kings of J’Ouvert – Stanton Kewley | The Rhythm of Resistance

Transcript

3 Canal: Kings of J’Ouvert – Stanton Kewley | The Rhythm of Resistance · Corie Sheppard Podcast

0:03
SPEAKER_03: And most of them when they eat planting, that planting thing where they do one arm and they do muko.
0:11
Corie: Andred, you ain't eating again till evening time.
0:14
Corie: That's right.
0:14
Corie: That's right.
0:15
Corie: Sometimes you might even eat till night.
0:17
Corie: Yeah, exactly.
0:18
Corie: Exactly.
0:18
Corie: We really?
0:19
Corie: Yeah, man.
0:21
Corie: Welcome to the Curry Chapel Podcast.
0:22
Corie: Welcome back to everybody who's been listening.
0:24
Corie: Welcome to all the new listeners.
0:25
Corie: David, what are we supposed to announce again?
0:26
Corie: We're supposed to announce that we have a Patreon where you can sign up and subscribe to support the show.
0:30
Corie: We're supposed to announce we have merch too.
0:32
Corie: Come to the website and grab the merch and thing.
0:34
SPEAKER_03: You'll see the ads yesterday.
0:36
Corie: We'll see the ads, yeah.
0:37
Corie: One day we're gonna do an ad, one day we will get organized.
0:39
Corie: But at some point, you're gonna be as organized as the guests we have.
0:42
Corie: We have a special guest today and a special juvenile morning episode to bring to with me today, Mr.
0:46
Corie: Stanton Cue.
0:47
Corie: How are you going to?
0:48
SPEAKER_03: Yes, man.
0:49
SPEAKER_03: It's a pleasure.
0:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thank you very much, man.
0:51
Corie: Something we're looking forward to a long time.
0:53
SPEAKER_03: Nice man.
0:54
Corie: So we kind of all go in.
0:55
Corie: What is the season looking like for you?
0:56
SPEAKER_03: Oh, we're gonna tell you brother.
0:58
SPEAKER_03: Poke a poke, you know, right?
0:59
SPEAKER_03: Now, once the rehearsals start for us in our backyard in the black box we rehearse, right?
1:04
SPEAKER_03: That kind of takes precedent over everything else, you know, because we will try to preserve voice more than anything else.
1:10
SPEAKER_03: And a lot of the events you might want to take a book in, yes, alright.
1:14
SPEAKER_03: Your pocket looking little lean, you might want to take a little book in, but sometimes you run in there and it's a rancid song system, you know, yeah.
1:22
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, the trick and our show is now our main staple, having you know, give up the juve and stuff like that.
1:29
SPEAKER_03: And I when I shouldn't even say give up the juve, and and it's not even my case of surrendering the juve to the youth Snyder as well.
1:36
SPEAKER_03: I mean, we've 30 years is a long time, it's like you know, a full generation.
1:42
SPEAKER_03: So we have some young people who are interested in still doing the juve, and we bless them, and it's more or less our it's it's like a mini ban.
1:50
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so we're not really working behind the scenes, but we support them full hundred, you know.
1:56
SPEAKER_03: I mean, like with all our links, or you know, in any way we could help them in whatever capacity, we would help Juve Love to get their foot in the door and you know, be off on yeah, be on the ground.
2:07
Corie: Well, you know, it's one of the main things when I tell people trick and I'll hear this.
2:10
Corie: Say we had to talk to them about the juve because people listen to people still call all the anarchists.
2:14
SPEAKER_03: Of course, of course.
2:15
SPEAKER_03: I mean, last Friday night we had um the second installment at the backyard jams.
2:20
SPEAKER_03: Half of the audience was like, Oh, go to trick and all of you, do we that for another year?
2:24
SPEAKER_03: You know, people were out of sorts last year, they didn't know what to do with themselves.
2:28
SPEAKER_03: Because some of them have been playing with the band for 20 years, 15 years, 10.
2:32
SPEAKER_03: So they they they been indoctrinated into the family because it's a is a fit is a special band, eh?
2:38
SPEAKER_03: Yes, you know, we don't have no rope or no nothing like that.
2:42
SPEAKER_03: You know, we no wee wee truck on the road and no bar truck on the road and thing.
2:46
SPEAKER_03: There's a raw, real juve.
2:50
SPEAKER_03: Trick canal and the big truck coming down behind, you know, yeah, and full paint truck, paint care done.
2:55
SPEAKER_03: So people they they get accustomed to that, they enjoy that, and now to transition to a band that rope off and you care lead and it the restrictions in it.
3:04
SPEAKER_03: I think um a lot of people having a problem with that.
3:07
SPEAKER_03: So people stayed home, but they could support Juve Love because it's a similar feeling.
3:12
SPEAKER_03: They don't want to rope neither.
3:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a smaller band, I mean similar to when we started back in '94, you know, and um they're small, they're gonna build.
3:22
Corie: Because it had the vibe, you know.
3:23
Corie: Yeah, the thing is, and and David, there's a thing about Juve that change I find too, because even you play with trick and all, I was with only one year, and the energy and vibe of a slow chip all night.
3:35
Corie: Yes, I find it real hard to replace.
3:37
Corie: Like when I play juve a couple years with a few Juve bands lately, yeah.
3:41
Corie: And what they're playing is Road match, coming down the road at a tempo and a pace.
3:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's not it.
3:47
SPEAKER_03: That's not it, definitely not it.
3:48
SPEAKER_03: I mean, for many reasons, the ritual of Juve is lost, right?
3:53
SPEAKER_03: And I would put it down to the paint parties that they keep during the year, stuff like Juve in July, you know, it it so it's now just a painting, it's not a ritual anymore.
4:06
SPEAKER_03: The ritual of Juve is looking for that day clean, that food morning, that transformation from being a white man and playing a black job, or you know, or you know, just transforming, becoming something else.
4:20
SPEAKER_03: It happens only once a year.
4:22
SPEAKER_03: It was a ritual.
4:23
SPEAKER_03: But if you keep a juve party if you had a weekend, I mean you're spending top in mud.
4:28
SPEAKER_03: So the ritual is lost.
4:29
Corie: Yeah, it became about the mud, the powder, the paint, you know what I mean.
4:33
Corie: Whatever it might be, and the the whole I in agreement that that ritual of well, first with the mash grah and then going straight into it, you know what I mean.
4:42
Corie: That's right.
4:44
SPEAKER_03: And you know, you had two hours just to sit on all over the place.
4:47
SPEAKER_03: It looking just wait.
4:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you just wait.
4:51
SPEAKER_04: Carnival Sunday night, everybody just cool but hype, but everybody waiting.
4:57
SPEAKER_04: The people just waiting.
5:00
SPEAKER_04: Carnival Sunday night, everybody just cool but hype.
5:04
SPEAKER_04: The people just waiting.
5:06
SPEAKER_04: The people just waiting for the spirits to open the carnival, for the spirits to open the festival.
5:15
SPEAKER_03: For the 25th ritual, we in paint.
5:17
SPEAKER_03: That's when we sing um, that was the 25th, 25th anniversary.
5:21
SPEAKER_03: We in paint and powder, but it's about that waiting, anticipating, you're just waiting, and it's the spirit, the spirits building, and you gain that vibe, and it's time for the thing to start, and the drums start to play, and the paint starts to come.
5:33
SPEAKER_03: Oh Lord, and it's cool, it's cold, it plays cool, and that paint hits you, and you start to get the energy and your partner you take a bottle and you take a shot and you think and uh oh god and the thing strike up on you on the road, and then when that when when day break, yeah, that is a whole new year there again start all over again.
5:52
SPEAKER_05: Undescribable.
5:53
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
5:53
Corie: We lost that ritual.
5:54
Corie: So now only was the men carrying it on.
5:57
Corie: I'm not sure as I say Juv love, so we're gonna support that and we'll see if we could keep that going because spirits can't die, right?
6:02
Corie: So if the spirits had to wake up, it it had to wake up.
6:04
Corie: What's your feeling, boy?
6:06
Corie: Because I I know what I felt like when I see the announcement that that was it and trick and I'm no longer part of Juve.
6:11
Corie: It feels like an era dull.
6:13
Corie: What was your feeling when you're listening?
6:14
SPEAKER_03: Um more more or less we it took a it took a while for us to come to that decision, eh?
6:22
SPEAKER_03: You know, because the expectation, people looking forward to the ban, you know, and making a decision like that, you know, you're going to disappoint a lot of people.
6:33
SPEAKER_03: But we've had enough.
6:35
SPEAKER_03: And we've it was a collective feeling of this and the last morning on the Tutiat ban, that morning, it concretized it.
6:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this is not what we want to be doing.
6:47
SPEAKER_03: From the year before, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:49
SPEAKER_03: This is not what we want to be doing going forward.
6:54
SPEAKER_03: Right.
6:55
SPEAKER_03: You know, we've we've transitioned into becoming more mentors to young people.
6:59
SPEAKER_03: The black box is a facility that a lot of young people come through and they use, young songwriters, young producers, you know, and we we've always been teachers, I think, you know, but we're more in a zone where we're able to support young people and help the culture to move forward with this new understanding of self.
7:22
SPEAKER_03: This is their era, this is the young people time, and the young people we need to guide them in the right way so that they make the good decisions and they make the the you know the right songs.
7:32
SPEAKER_03: It's not all songs must be recorded.
7:35
SPEAKER_03: You know, people come to you with songs and you have to say, but nah, this needs work.
7:39
SPEAKER_03: You can't just put out this, you know.
7:41
SPEAKER_03: Where's where where's your evidence?
7:43
SPEAKER_03: Where's what's this based in?
7:45
SPEAKER_03: What's you know what's driving this?
7:47
SPEAKER_03: Is this your idea?
7:49
SPEAKER_03: Is it coming from a real place?
7:51
SPEAKER_03: And and all those questions need to be answered.
7:54
SPEAKER_03: And they're looking for people, they'll they ask any question, you know, but they they they ask any question in various places where the answer mightn't be the right answer.
8:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, boy, that bad boy, like we record that boy and thing because that producer young and excited, and he do have and they don't know, or charging us certain amounts of money, so no matter where you go with the go produce, right?
8:12
SPEAKER_03: You know, so we gotta take with time and make sure that the thing is in good hands.
8:16
SPEAKER_03: So we've transitioned into that that kind of era in real life, as you say.
8:20
SPEAKER_03: You say one era done, another era, you know, open up.
8:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:24
SPEAKER_03: And that is what it is, really.
8:25
SPEAKER_03: We you gotta support, we have to be accommodative, we have to encourage.
8:32
Corie: It's something that I always hear y'all do.
8:34
Corie: Y'all make that part of your life.
8:35
SPEAKER_03: Well, is he rap so music too?
8:37
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's a kind of stance when we came into the whole thing, it is a more supportive um body of artists than pussy soca artists or calypso.
8:47
SPEAKER_03: Oh, let's talk to one another.
8:48
SPEAKER_03: Because they've always been they've always been a calypso competition or a soaker competition.
8:54
SPEAKER_03: It was never ever a rap so competition.
8:57
SPEAKER_03: One year they tried it with a rag asoka, and then the rapsoman girl lumped into that.
9:02
SPEAKER_03: But the rap so man is the is is always have a stance, rap so is a philosophy, you know.
9:08
SPEAKER_03: I coin an acronym for rap so it representing a positive social outlook, you understand?
9:16
SPEAKER_03: And from with that understanding, you have to nurture, you have to guide, you have to educate.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: So to educate and entertain is rap so man vibes.
9:26
Corie: Yeah, you know, even as you talk about everybody who talks about brother resistance in particular says that.
9:31
Corie: Like I remember as a youth, you could have just gone a drag.
9:34
Corie: That's right.
9:35
Corie: It's a big thing to see a man who them days ring the bell and thing on TV and video and thing.
9:39
Corie: And you see, I guess you know, TV, you watch a man, you ain't know he looks like you see how tall and his presence.
9:44
Corie: Yes, yes.
9:44
SPEAKER_03: You could ask him anything, and how commanding, yeah, of course, and how polite he was as a gentleman.
9:50
SPEAKER_03: Resistance was a gentleman, educated brother, university educated, a part of the the struggle, the 70s revolution resistance was in the forefront of it.
10:00
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
10:01
SPEAKER_03: And that that thinking of the time was a radical change in the country, too, as well.
10:07
SPEAKER_03: Right?
10:07
SPEAKER_03: We're going through a similar change in society again with another generation, so it's linking back to releasing it into the hands of the young people, the practitioners of it now.
10:17
SPEAKER_03: Some things you're not in agreement with at all.
10:20
SPEAKER_03: But some things you could see have potential.
10:23
SPEAKER_03: And that is where you have to come now as the mentor and say, Well, look, you have a good idea, yeah.
10:28
SPEAKER_03: You know, you have to stick with it, develop it, and work it in into your own personality and what you want to portray and to bring out.
10:36
SPEAKER_03: And to so if my fat is a different type of feta I offer, it has to reflect my personality and it has to have a vision too.
10:44
SPEAKER_03: Yes, we might see the present, but the present is only a guide to what has come before, you know.
10:51
SPEAKER_03: Because we can't see the future.
10:53
SPEAKER_03: So if we know we're living in this present and we know all the things that we have been pulling from before to make this happen all right, the live entertainment, the stage that I hide, the backdrop, the lights, everything.
11:03
SPEAKER_03: And now we're pulling and we're making something happen.
11:06
SPEAKER_03: And this generation sees different now.
11:08
SPEAKER_03: They say, Well, boy, we're going with digital screens and we're doing this, and we want crane and we want a camera and we're pointing up a drone.
11:14
SPEAKER_03: Things have changed.
11:15
SPEAKER_03: So it's going to look different, it's going to feel different, but it has to be connected to us because our expression is coming out of us.
11:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it mustn't feel foreign.
11:25
SPEAKER_03: I I went a couple of all-inclusives to performing, and as I walk in, it has no vibes.
11:29
Corie: It's only a facade.
11:30
Corie: You see it now?
11:31
Corie: Like if you're watching on social media, now you're watching what people call in fets.
11:35
Corie: No, I don't knock it out because you sort of enjoy the stuff in them way.
11:38
Corie: This is their interpretation of it.
11:42
Corie: I wish they could they could have a slice of what we know as fets, or we know as events, or we know as joves.
11:47
Corie: Just just to feel it.
11:49
SPEAKER_03: That is why that is so true because that's that made Bungie Garland's song last year so poignant when the Grung used to carry it.
11:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
11:58
SPEAKER_03: The Grung now cry holding the rope that that people fetting in, that people partying in on the road.
12:06
SPEAKER_03: The Grong is the security now.
12:08
SPEAKER_03: The Grung, their grandfathers was the makers of the mass.
12:13
SPEAKER_03: Them is the men who invent bat, who make dragon.
12:16
SPEAKER_03: You understand?
12:18
SPEAKER_03: Who make pan.
12:20
SPEAKER_03: They can't afford carnival no more.
12:22
SPEAKER_03: They have to take a walk, so they're holding rope.
12:24
Corie: And the walk is to keep themselves out of the carnival.
12:27
SPEAKER_03: To keep yourself out of the carnival.
12:29
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
12:30
SPEAKER_03: So you tell me.
12:31
Corie: Yeah.
12:31
SPEAKER_03: Carnival is supposed to be a mirror of the society.
12:35
Corie: When you try to show them these things, they aren't yet while you're the wall boy eat our food, boy, you know, but even as it's about eating food, it's something I always used to wonder because in my experience with Trick and I just see it, it was a force.
12:48
Corie: The thing I could compare it to most as a child watching TV, you used to see Burrow Kids.
12:52
Corie: And Trick and Al Juve used to give you that same sort of energy coming down.
12:57
Corie: And I always used to wonder how business students wonder how they're making money.
13:00
Corie: I hear you say in an interview before, you link up with some people, all you have mud, you have paint, everything they needed there.
13:05
Corie: You come in your draw, you paint them down.
13:07
Corie: Yeah, somebody might give you$50.
13:09
Corie: That's right.
13:09
Corie: So how are you making money?
13:11
SPEAKER_03: That's right.
13:11
SPEAKER_03: So the monetizing of a lot of things have suffered for tradition.
13:16
SPEAKER_03: You know, you want a nice band, you wire ban full, you wire things.
13:20
SPEAKER_03: So we have no ropey people storm it, storm it just make the vibes nicer.
13:24
SPEAKER_03: You know.
13:25
SPEAKER_03: But then comes the issue of how do we pay for this?
13:28
SPEAKER_03: So you have to solicit sponsorship.
13:30
SPEAKER_03: You know, I drink Guinness.
13:32
SPEAKER_03: Guinness always used to sponsor three canal.
13:34
SPEAKER_03: They ain't sponsored three canal in a while.
13:36
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
13:37
Corie: Yeah.
13:38
Corie: So it's gonna be like you say before we start, it's gonna be you paying out money to have a big fit on people.
13:43
SPEAKER_03: I pay in for everybody to have a nice, enjoyable time.
13:46
SPEAKER_03: And the last bit of it, because I must say that there were points in times when the Juve was successful.
13:52
SPEAKER_03: But you're looking at if you look through the lens of change, you would see where the dynamic started to change and where it was uneconomical anymore.
14:01
Corie: That's right, that's right.
14:02
SPEAKER_03: You know, and we're getting older as older practitioners of the art form now.
14:07
SPEAKER_03: You're looking down, you're looking future-wise.
14:10
SPEAKER_03: We in the present, but we can see they, but we know they coming.
14:15
SPEAKER_03: You know, man gonna need healthcare thing, man gonna need this, man gonna need you're gonna need things as you get older.
14:21
SPEAKER_03: You've seen it happen with your your own parents.
14:23
SPEAKER_03: So you would understand that you need to put a particular amount of ducks in line so that when with one bullet, everybody lie down.
14:31
SPEAKER_03: Of course, you know?
14:32
SPEAKER_03: Of course.
14:33
SPEAKER_03: Um and making money was never like I must always remember this too as well.
14:40
SPEAKER_03: With three canal, we wasn't money men like money, money, money, money, take every gig, take every gig, and kill out yourself and all them kind of thing.
14:48
SPEAKER_03: We were specific and we were eclectic in what we chose to do and what we chose to align ourselves with.
14:55
SPEAKER_03: Because we always started from we are making a statement.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: What is the statement we are making?
15:00
SPEAKER_03: And how does your thing line up with our statement?
15:03
SPEAKER_03: Okay, we seen that link, we will associate ourselves with you or we'll partner with you.
15:08
SPEAKER_03: You know, so it wasn't initially about the money in the beginning.
15:12
SPEAKER_03: Because we've all we we were all touring before we even started to sing.
15:16
Corie: Yeah, yes.
15:17
SPEAKER_03: I was going to Paris and Denmark and England with mint Peter Mitchell Mask.
15:21
SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
15:22
SPEAKER_03: You know?
15:23
SPEAKER_03: When we started our Juvent, we were in the midst of Atlanta Olympics.
15:27
Corie: All right, so you're all there for that.
15:29
SPEAKER_03: Wendell and Roger were both there and a lot of other Kahlu people.
15:32
SPEAKER_03: I was hands-on in Kalalu company making things, working three, four days without sleep in some cases to pack that container for it to go, you know.
15:42
SPEAKER_03: And so I had experienced some traveling to Europe before even America.
15:47
SPEAKER_03: The first time I went to America, I was like, Brooklyn, you're going to Brooklyn to sing.
15:51
SPEAKER_03: I like, but it's looking like we home singing for a home audience, yeah.
15:56
SPEAKER_03: But we're going on, you know.
15:58
SPEAKER_03: These people and them, and then you reach Miami and you see the same people that you see in Brooklyn.
16:03
SPEAKER_03: And then you go a bus and you see the same people, and you get to realize well, it's cann't all hoppers.
16:08
SPEAKER_03: Of course.
16:09
SPEAKER_03: And then we get we we did that for a while and say, brothers, this ain't looking like it have no forward saying, World music.
16:16
SPEAKER_03: But we look try to get ourselves on them kind of stages, and that took us to places like Belgium and Francis.
16:23
SPEAKER_03: That was a deliberate choice because we used to have to go when we got when we got to New York, we'd go to let's say we'll get Gloria as a plug here, Gloria's rooty shop, and take out flyers with our faces on it and promoting us that we don't know about.
16:39
SPEAKER_03: We didn't come to do this show, we come to do Ichi Baba show, right?
16:42
SPEAKER_03: Or we come to do bigger crew shows, and we seen once it up flyers people advertise with one time, mate.
16:48
SPEAKER_03: You touch down, you touchdown, people sat to advertise you.
16:52
SPEAKER_03: So that was that daily thing.
16:53
SPEAKER_03: People would go wrong to those shops, the people who concern the promoters who legitimately paid our airfare and accommodation and podium to be there, right?
17:04
SPEAKER_03: And we remove the things.
17:05
SPEAKER_03: Now you hear what I said there airfare, accommodation, and podiums.
17:12
SPEAKER_03: We got to realize a lot of these young artists in Trinidad staying in people's basement.
17:17
SPEAKER_03: You hear what I'm telling you?
17:19
SPEAKER_03: Some of them pay their own way to come up, staying in people's basement.
17:24
SPEAKER_03: Podium, where is that?
17:26
SPEAKER_03: Rider, where's a rider?
17:28
SPEAKER_03: We had international experience through mental.
17:30
SPEAKER_03: We know what a rider looks like.
17:32
SPEAKER_03: We know what we need when we on the ground, ground transportation, this, that, etc.
17:36
SPEAKER_03: Logistics, right?
17:38
Corie: Them fellas ain't know nothing about that.
17:40
Corie: Yeah, you hear a lot of so much.
17:41
Corie: So we realize we're waiting now.
17:42
Corie: We need the wrong place, right?
17:44
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
17:44
SPEAKER_03: We need to get back on that place with people getting a rider and with accommodation.
17:51
Corie: Yeah, man, yeah, man, yeah, man.
17:52
Corie: I'd say for youth, right?
17:53
Corie: To watching this, you're talking about uh 1996 Atlanta Olympics opening.
17:58
Corie: Yes.
17:58
Corie: People might remember that mentioned that that was part of the open ceremony.
18:01
Corie: But designing it was did he design the whole ceremony or closing?
18:04
SPEAKER_03: Yes, opening and closing.
18:05
SPEAKER_03: So in 1992, we did the Olympics as well, too.
18:08
SPEAKER_03: But he worked with a Spanish artist named Miranda.
18:11
SPEAKER_03: And in 94 we did the 94 was the World Cup.
18:16
Corie: I see.
18:17
SPEAKER_03: So, and then in 98 we did the Winter Olympics.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: So he has done three Olympics and a World Cup.
18:23
SPEAKER_03: And besides that, many counkles Bastille day celebration in France, in Paris.
18:29
SPEAKER_03: Um we did a festival in Mexico.
18:32
SPEAKER_03: I mean, quite a lot.
18:35
SPEAKER_03: The company, I uh the night we there was one night I was insanely jealous because we were performing in Miami and my crew was in Japan.
18:43
SPEAKER_03: Oh you know, another time we were performing in Brooklyn and they were in Russia.
18:47
SPEAKER_03: Um, another time we were performing somewhere, it might have been somewhere in the Caribbean or wherever, and these guys were in Singapore.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:55
SPEAKER_03: You know, now I'm not jealous of the Kalalu because I I transitioned from making maths into music and and travel too as well extensively, you know.
19:04
SPEAKER_03: But it's things like you feel you miss out because it's also a part of you making mass, making these puppets, performing them, being crew and being tech, and then being in a place like Russia.
19:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, of course.
19:17
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
19:18
SPEAKER_03: No, so kind of you know.
19:20
Corie: So I'm gonna ask you about them early days.
19:22
Corie: How you end up involved in the Kalalu company in the first place?
19:26
SPEAKER_03: That was a happy accident, yes.
19:27
SPEAKER_03: I came into town to buy shoes for my graduation and uh passed a check a couple of friends of mine who were working with Baggers Company in the central bank.
19:39
SPEAKER_03: And when I got there, I met a guy named Jeffrey Stanford and Claude Alium, and they were like, um, so you're just lymphed waiting on your friends, you could do something in the meanwhile.
19:51
SPEAKER_03: So Jeffrey said, You're good with a knife?
19:52
SPEAKER_03: I said, Well, I'm better with a cut, last.
19:55
SPEAKER_03: But if I if it's a knife or my operate, yeah, well, why?
19:59
SPEAKER_03: And he and he gave me some lattice work to cut out out of the cardboard, so it's relief.
20:03
SPEAKER_03: You're cutting different parts and you're stacking them with glue and you're making these like French gingerbread style house thing.
20:10
SPEAKER_03: And I lick it up in two-two's, and man was like, What are you doing tomorrow?
20:15
SPEAKER_03: I was like, Well, I ain't doing nothing tomorrow.
20:17
SPEAKER_03: I graduating in a couple of days here and um at home.
20:21
SPEAKER_03: Well, you could come tomorrow.
20:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and that was it.
20:24
SPEAKER_03: I got a job immediately with Baggers Company, that's 1990, and um Wendell, Cecilia, Roger were involved with Kalalu Company, and they introduced that, they were also involved with Minchell.
20:39
SPEAKER_03: And as a young crew, now building set and learning things, they say, Well, all these good fellas, all they're handy, we are carrying all the Kalalu company.
20:47
SPEAKER_03: And that's how we end up in Kalalu Company as builders.
20:50
SPEAKER_03: The first time I walked in, they said, that small man, they are real patience, you can give you things with plenty patience to do.
20:57
SPEAKER_03: So I end up a sculptor.
20:59
SPEAKER_03: I see.
20:59
SPEAKER_03: So I sculpt.
21:00
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I now I work for the church more than anybody else.
21:04
SPEAKER_03: They have the most things repairing.
21:06
SPEAKER_03: So I just did a crucifix in the Sacred Heart Church.
21:08
SPEAKER_03: I restored it.
21:10
SPEAKER_03: Then um Martin Deporz in the Catholic Church on Independence Square in the um cathedral, I'm about to start another job in Mousica.
21:19
SPEAKER_03: This some mad person vandalized another crucifix and mash it up.
21:24
SPEAKER_03: And when I'm done with that Mousica job, I'm heading to Pfizer Bad to repair Jesus that is missing an arm.
21:30
SPEAKER_03: I have to remake that whole arm.
21:32
Corie: Yeah.
21:33
SPEAKER_03: You know, so yeah, so I sculpt.
21:35
Corie: Well, I don't see this.
21:36
Corie: If I hox up a man in central bank, right?
21:39
Corie: And he tell me make a gingerbread house, they ain't gonna invite me back the next day.
21:42
Corie: So where you was at you you you you had that upbringing in art and I had that upbringing with making things.
21:49
SPEAKER_03: My father was a mechanical engineer, so I've watched him make machines, and he has also worked for the Caldo Company too, as well.
21:56
SPEAKER_03: Minchell wanted particular things, and I said, My dad can make that.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: Before the made that he came in and he made machines that with flattened crumb corks, bend things.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: Do he's done stuff for the company too as well.
22:07
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, so it's two standards in the place because he's Stanton Senior, I'm Stanton Junior.
22:13
SPEAKER_03: Nice.
22:13
SPEAKER_03: You know, and um, so I've I've I've always seen things being made.
22:19
SPEAKER_03: I've been, you know, familiar with power tools from a young age.
22:22
SPEAKER_03: So I'll be using drill, grinder, everything from a young age.
22:27
SPEAKER_03: So I suppose I would have to thank my dad for exposing me to develop that part of my brain that could make things, that could watch something on paper and make it in real.
22:37
SPEAKER_03: And back then you see that as art or you just seen it as no, I saw it as just trying to be around my father and be involved.
22:44
SPEAKER_03: I didn't even have a concept of art or where that would take me.
22:49
SPEAKER_03: You know, at that point in time it was just familiarizing myself with cutting wire, twisting a wire, and then you be you realize you're you're doing wire sculpting now, you're wire bending and you're doing things.
23:00
SPEAKER_03: So the the skill transforms, sorry, transfers into another field, you know, and that is how it starts.
23:08
SPEAKER_03: And by extension now, in Kalalu Company, every evening, now where West Shore Medical is now was where Kalalu Company was.
23:15
SPEAKER_03: That was the old armara building.
23:17
SPEAKER_03: Right?
23:18
SPEAKER_03: Um, used to share it with a pan company called Lincoln Enterprises.
23:23
SPEAKER_03: I do they're not around anymore, but Lincoln had a place where Stuart Young Brother and Father built a bank on RPT Avenue was Lincoln Enterprises.
23:31
SPEAKER_03: You could have gone there and buy a steel pan, you could have got there and buy a tenor pan, you could have got sticks.
23:36
SPEAKER_03: They used to sell pans, guitar pans, so they would make pans and sell tune pans and sell them there.
23:41
SPEAKER_03: That was their shop.
23:43
SPEAKER_03: But the the where the band was, we shared that massive warehouse with them.
23:47
SPEAKER_03: So Carol was Peter Minchel to the front, them down in Lincoln in the back.
23:51
SPEAKER_03: On the evening, Lincoln Enterprises would come from about six the pan players started coming.
23:56
SPEAKER_03: And we would use that as our break to go outside, smoke up with thing, and you know, I re up with self to creative work we doing.
24:04
SPEAKER_03: And every evening I would make up a song based on what happened during the day.
24:10
SPEAKER_03: Freestyle, eh?
24:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
24:13
SPEAKER_03: And Wendell and Roger used to be like, Boy, you making them thing up off the top of your head, boy.
24:18
SPEAKER_03: And to a mother brothers, some Malabar called from Malabarima.
24:22
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, boy, Killy man, sing that one with your boss last night, boy.
24:25
SPEAKER_03: Thing and thing, you know, and again my one now.
24:28
SPEAKER_03: And I day Wendell approached me, he said, Well, you just write down anything.
24:32
SPEAKER_03: I say, No, me don't write down nothing.
24:34
SPEAKER_03: But you just remember everything because we developed songs, right?
24:38
SPEAKER_03: And we would sing some of them every evening.
24:40
SPEAKER_03: My little island, Kalalu, referring to Kalalu Company as an island of people, you know.
24:46
SPEAKER_03: And um he was like, Well, you gotta start to write.
24:49
SPEAKER_03: So I did.
24:50
SPEAKER_03: And then I ended up with about 17, 18 books.
24:53
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
24:54
SPEAKER_03: Because I couldn't stop writing, and I that's my problem.
24:57
SPEAKER_03: I music just runs through my head all the time.
25:00
SPEAKER_03: We'd be in conversation, I hear something.
25:02
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
25:02
SPEAKER_03: I gone with your head already.
25:04
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
25:05
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
25:07
SPEAKER_03: I done, you know, things bung with me that way.
25:11
SPEAKER_03: So after a while, you know, having all these writings and all these things, he he got involved with resistance to help with breaking new ground, was a project Resistance was doing.
25:23
SPEAKER_03: Strange enough, we started to record on people's albums.
25:27
SPEAKER_03: So we were doing background vocals for Resistance.
25:31
SPEAKER_03: We were doing our own thing as the little house crew.
25:34
Corie: Because Wendell and them together at that point in time.
25:36
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
25:37
SPEAKER_03: Not just three of us, it was a massive crew.
25:39
SPEAKER_03: I see.
25:39
SPEAKER_03: There was Myron Ali deceased, right?
25:42
SPEAKER_03: Penelope Spencer, Cecilia Salazar, Roger, Roger Roberts, Wendell Man Warren, John Isaacs, myself, Christine Johnston, and they would we would sing every Christmas night and open for David Roder.
25:59
SPEAKER_03: And we did that for like, yeah, oh two.
26:02
SPEAKER_03: We did that for like three or four years before we even sang blue.
26:05
SPEAKER_03: Now you have to remember we also had three or four Juve bands.
26:08
SPEAKER_03: We had three Juvands before we sang Blue.
26:13
SPEAKER_03: A music label owner used to play Juve Virtus, Jan Michel Gibe.
26:18
SPEAKER_03: And he would bring a big French contingent to play Juve Virtus every year.
26:21
SPEAKER_03: And then one year he said, like, where you no make music?
26:23
SPEAKER_04: Where you no make song for your Juvand?
26:25
SPEAKER_04: You chicken and you must make song for your Juvan.
26:28
SPEAKER_03: So he knows how he's musically inclined by then when he comes back.
26:30
SPEAKER_03: By then he realized we used to do this show and uh because every David could tell you the who's who and everybody in Porter Spain used to ram cram out the back of Westmall in that moon over Bourbon Street for Christmas night with David Rodder.
26:44
SPEAKER_03: And we used to open it.
26:45
SPEAKER_04: And he was like, You guys sing, you guys sing, I heard you guys sing, you chant, you make music, you make juve, we make a song.
26:53
SPEAKER_03: So we went and we recorded.
26:55
SPEAKER_03: Um I don't know if you remember Blue Blue.
26:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that was actually the first song.
27:00
SPEAKER_05: Bidi bidi bidi bidi bam bamba.
27:02
SPEAKER_05: Bidi biddy bidi biddi bam bamba dim.
27:04
SPEAKER_05: Bidi bidi biddy biddi bam bamba dim.
27:07
SPEAKER_05: Biddim bidim bim Blue is the world, the world that we live in, and we do it.
27:11
SPEAKER_05: He's like, Oh, nice song, nice song, but no juvenile song, no juvenile song.
27:14
SPEAKER_03: So we went back and you say, Oh, you are juvenile hard lashing songs.
27:18
SPEAKER_03: I pulled the dictionary so and I see blue, a color pigment.
27:21
SPEAKER_03: And I started one time, blue, a color pigment, trick and all making a statement, blue, and from the time I wrote that line, making a statement, that became our core thing.
27:33
SPEAKER_03: So when we said the next year, what is the statement?
27:37
SPEAKER_03: And the next year, what is the statement?
27:39
SPEAKER_03: And that sort of gave us the impetus to always have something important to say, or to always make a statement, or to be of some sort of reverence in the thing.
27:51
Corie: But I don't actually right in them early days that making a statement, it stands out because when you listen to your songs, well, when I injuve mode, it's hard to listen to the songs and I just feel this all.
28:02
Corie: So sometimes it's after when you listen, you say what is it is a statement almost down to the everyone, yeah.
28:09
Corie: You you're thinking of it creatively to put the statements in a way that people is dance and enjoy themselves and thing, or you have that in mind?
28:16
Corie: I had to dance to it first for you to dance.
28:19
SPEAKER_03: So when I making it, I gain I I I making it in a way where I could dance, and while we in the studio, we dancing and we we we loading it up with with the good vibes, the statement and the message strong and powerful, you know, but it had to have something that will move you first because music you make music is to dance, music is for festival, music is for dancing, music is for church, music is for everything, you know.
28:46
SPEAKER_03: You know, and it's in the particular time that you're doing it in is uh is is the carnival-oriented, you gain it towards carnival, so it had to have that swing and that thing, and yeah, so you're building it with the intent to make people dance and move, and as you rightly say, who get the message later on get.
29:06
SPEAKER_03: But in the first move thing of it, you feel the vibes from it, and it moves you.
29:10
SPEAKER_05: Of course, and then later in your deep, quiet moment, you say, but wait now is that what them fellas and them saying they were called lyric's bad boy.
29:19
SPEAKER_05: That thing by that serious boy.
29:20
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
29:21
Corie: You know what I mean?
29:22
Corie: So you go into that blue, you see it in the dictionary, and you go on to the that is just for your job as a signature.
29:27
Corie: You have any idea where that song landed or where you want it to go because it turned out to be.
29:32
SPEAKER_03: Never knew that.
29:32
SPEAKER_03: That that song literally catapulted us into music.
29:36
SPEAKER_03: We became musicians thereafter.
29:38
SPEAKER_03: But where it was hard to work in Minchel because we had gigs, we had tent, we had all kinds of things, and I see man who doing his sculpting, and uh my work is I had to do these pieces so it could go to the shop, and a thousand of that going on vacuum press.
29:52
SPEAKER_03: And that work is where the whole camp waiting on to come back to cut out that plastic to think, think, think.
29:57
SPEAKER_03: So I run in ruggedly, sleeping, making it up, finishing by Pascal in the shop, send up the mole, the mole crack it, boss.
30:06
SPEAKER_03: Some man had to pick me up, cry me up, they had to fix that, press out that thing, bring it down for the rest of the camp to our work.
30:13
SPEAKER_03: So my thing was in integral, you know.
30:17
SPEAKER_03: So I would get the most buff, baby lady who in charge, catching child and go say, Look here, you ain't even sleep, and I we need this to go out, slap out the tape, this to buy Pascal.
30:28
SPEAKER_04: We had to press this.
30:29
SPEAKER_04: We had nothing to do in the camp other than that.
30:31
SPEAKER_04: This had to finish.
30:32
SPEAKER_04: You're hustling.
30:33
SPEAKER_03: You reach points in time where I never even make a negative to then make the positive of the mole that is the plaster to press.
30:40
SPEAKER_03: Right.
30:42
SPEAKER_03: Go with the clay, and we press the clay.
30:44
SPEAKER_03: Oh, and then in the press of the clay now, I take that and put body filler inside of that car material and make them uh uh a temper, you know, temporary mole, yeah, just to run off a portion because chaos, I can't why you watch that back at all.
31:01
Corie: But before we go deep any music, the sculptor now, how that was the origin of that because that's engineering.
31:07
SPEAKER_03: I would say as a young fella now, as I tell you, I know any company, yeah, 18, 17, 18.
31:12
SPEAKER_03: Um, they say that man had patience.
31:15
SPEAKER_03: So they put me to work with a lady named Louise Kimi.
31:18
SPEAKER_03: She was a German sculptor.
31:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I started with learning from her face, which was subtractive sculpting, taking a block of stereotex, carving out her face using steel brush, you're combing in the stereotex literally, you're combing in the shape you want, and the face and the features, the eyes, measuring back of the head.
31:38
SPEAKER_03: So these were big pieces, these were the calypso puppets, David Rudder.
31:42
SPEAKER_03: We had live in in Kallaloo to work from, but the Kitchener was still alive, you know.
31:48
SPEAKER_03: I think he was in hospital though for some reason.
31:50
SPEAKER_03: Sparrow and Denise Plummer.
31:52
SPEAKER_03: But Sparrow was living in New York.
31:54
SPEAKER_03: Dennis Plummer, we couldn't get in studio in the Kalaloo.
31:58
SPEAKER_03: Rodder was the only one available.
32:00
SPEAKER_03: Kitch wasn't well, and um, so I started there with those four things.
32:05
SPEAKER_03: The couple years later, the company moved from there in Kokery to Kalaloo, where we are present in Shagaramas, and that's when I met another sculptor from Japan named Yajimoto.
32:21
SPEAKER_03: I don't want to let me call no name because I remember the man's name too good.
32:25
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, he taught me clay sculpting.
32:28
SPEAKER_03: So first I learned in styrotex, and you in case it's styrotex with plaster Paris, and you press that because it's just one David rather you're pressing one thing.
32:38
SPEAKER_03: But when you need to press thousands, you have to make a proper mole in plaster, plaster Paris, right?
32:44
SPEAKER_03: So he taught me clay sculpting, but he didn't only teach me clay sculpting, he taught me how to make the tools.
32:50
SPEAKER_03: So the first thing was to go outside by the bamboo patch, check the right bamboo, check the moon, and cut the bamboo, and we made tools first.
33:00
SPEAKER_03: And then if we started with hard, dry clay, so he taught me how to re-wedge clay, add water to it, soften it, thing it need it, wedge it, slam it to get all the air out of it, and you know, it's a whole process.
33:12
SPEAKER_03: So I really had a concrete learning that was like university.
33:16
SPEAKER_03: I always say Kallaloo Company is a university, and um many years later I worked with another English sculptor again, other sculptors who came through the Kalaloo, baby so from 17 to roughly 23, I had a crash course in sculpting.
33:34
SPEAKER_03: And then I started to teach sculpting.
33:36
SPEAKER_03: Two years, three years later, I I taught at Creative Arts in UI.
33:41
SPEAKER_03: So I taught clay sculpting, basic clay sculpting, and mold making.
33:45
SPEAKER_03: And then another time I taught material design and metal, which is the manipulation of material.
33:51
SPEAKER_03: So I was teaching basically how to manipulate any material: wire, paper, clay, plaster, cement, body filler, go right down the line.
34:01
Corie: Yeah, so you learn this coming out of Kal University.
34:03
Corie: I learned everything in the world.
34:04
Corie: You talk about this like it's normal.
34:05
Corie: You're saying David Rodder coming in Kallo, sit down and you so you do it to spar on them if they wasn't available from photographs.
34:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:14
SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
34:16
Corie: So you take the photographs with it all.
34:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
34:19
SPEAKER_03: Do the same thing like what you would do if you're doing a big painting, you'd grid the photograph, get your your um your boxes on there and see, and then you start to think now.
34:28
SPEAKER_03: Remember, it's three-dimensional, so it's a whole photo.
34:31
SPEAKER_03: Your mind had to be your mind had to be curved into it.
34:35
SPEAKER_03: Your brain had to be curved.
34:40
Corie: Of course, you're gonna see the whole thing.
34:41
SPEAKER_03: And then airs, airs is always a problem.
34:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
34:44
SPEAKER_03: That's why the air is our problem with ears and fingers on top.
34:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, airs is our problem.
34:50
SPEAKER_03: You watch plenty Master Day and all, where you have a full head, and they will probably join it right on that seam.
34:56
SPEAKER_03: Look, and you'll see how funny airs always look.
34:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, airs is hard, yeah.
35:00
Corie: It's really hard to do.
35:02
Corie: And you bring a painting, but you'll tell me before you start the the paintings or the murals in the savannah, some of them same legends, you do you do that?
35:09
Corie: I did that set.
35:10
SPEAKER_03: So I've always done the trick and all set.
35:13
SPEAKER_03: That's like my little baby inside of the the whole production thing.
35:17
SPEAKER_03: Roger does the production when there is the more assist artistic director with the dancing and the singing.
35:23
SPEAKER_03: I deal with venues and set.
35:26
SPEAKER_03: I was always a builder.
35:28
SPEAKER_03: So the set is more or less my thing.
35:30
SPEAKER_03: I would work with the architect Sean Leonard.
35:33
SPEAKER_03: He I he would do the design and then I would execute.
35:36
SPEAKER_03: So um, a couple years before I did that Kaiso house thing with all the legends looking out the windows.
35:44
SPEAKER_03: I did something for a guy named Jude.
35:47
SPEAKER_03: He had something called Roots Yard.
35:49
SPEAKER_03: People were quite impressed with the Roots Yard and all the Shiva painting in the tent and all them kind of thing.
35:55
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, who do this?
35:56
SPEAKER_03: So by them born them from Kala, who do that?
35:59
SPEAKER_03: You know, and that's how Kaiso house.
36:02
SPEAKER_03: People had gone to Roots Yard and they had seen it, and they made a mental note that we had to get Santon Qlee and his crew to come and do Kaiso House.
36:11
SPEAKER_03: You know, and when they invited me, I I was, you know, really overwhelmed too as well.
36:15
SPEAKER_03: Like, what Kaiso House doesn't joke is a big one by saying NCC, but I'm gonna do it, you know, too by doing this with that.
36:23
SPEAKER_03: You know, a big one come Rhapsod resistance was the president of Tuco.
36:27
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, him having passed, I felt like an obligation to do it and do it well too as well.
36:33
SPEAKER_03: And it was properly well executed.
36:36
SPEAKER_03: I'm glad that they cut out a lot of the the the the paintings the the the they kept from the set instead of just destroying all the gypsum and thing.
36:46
SPEAKER_03: They kept bits of it and that was good.
36:48
SPEAKER_03: They have it in the um the savannah, they're storing.
36:51
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, I brought in same guys.
36:54
SPEAKER_03: We have a team, so you use your team, you know what I mean?
36:58
SPEAKER_03: Guys who good with airbrushing and doing portraits and all them kind of thing.
37:01
SPEAKER_03: They have to do that.
37:02
SPEAKER_03: Right.
37:02
SPEAKER_03: Me going to fight up the grid thing to I mean, I can do it.
37:05
SPEAKER_03: I figured, but it will take me three or four times longer than he coming and do it freehand.
37:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course.
37:11
SPEAKER_03: You know, so I mean, it's just how things transition, you go from one thing to another thing, and the building of the mass and the building of the set is almost like the same thing because you have to dress trick and I said to look at it so when you do this, you develop an aesthetic over the time too.
37:30
SPEAKER_03: You know what looks good because you come up with Minchel and mailing and a whole heap of people who play correct international quality, world class.
37:40
Corie: So yeah, you know, it's funny you're saying that because Bridgeran who's an engineer too, right?
37:44
Corie: And he's always I them thing is baffle my mind.
37:47
Corie: Me so bright, but he's always telling me he's about engineering, and engineering is identifying and solving problems.
37:53
Corie: So it's not like it's the same thing in the mass camp because I can imagine.
37:56
Corie: Yes, I hear people complaining.
37:57
Corie: Oh, or not just complaining, but say talking about that wind on the savannah stage.
38:02
SPEAKER_03: And so that goes into your yep, yep, yep, especially the bigger puppets and all them kind of thing.
38:07
SPEAKER_03: You can't make a kite because you're good, mango seal off, you know what I mean?
38:12
Corie: So you have to make it the engineering had to be spot on for you to and the masquerade ought to be able to and the masqueraders to be physically strong though, as well.
38:21
SPEAKER_03: Because we we grew up, well, I would say we mean in this era of Minchel people, we grew up free carry.
38:29
SPEAKER_03: We don't know nothing about wheels, so we don't know about making.
38:33
SPEAKER_03: I don't know how to make a mask to put it on wheels because to me that's just uh hitch.
38:39
SPEAKER_03: That's uh you have a lorry, yeah.
38:42
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you don't have a mask, that is a vehicle.
38:45
SPEAKER_03: So wait, look at that.
38:46
SPEAKER_03: Amount of wheels under vehicle part.
38:48
Corie: I know he was the dead, but the rat race, the big mechanical rat.
38:51
SPEAKER_03: That was he was on wheels, okay.
38:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because that had to be but yeah, no, no, that was a soul.
38:54
SPEAKER_03: He had to be on wheels.
38:56
SPEAKER_03: If you look like that era is before me, that's in the 80s, right?
39:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's the first memory I have of it.
39:03
SPEAKER_03: Right.
39:03
SPEAKER_03: Seeing that.
39:04
SPEAKER_03: So there are a couple masks that I if you go through the mention archives, you would see there are a couple of them that are on wheels.
39:11
SPEAKER_03: But the only reason they were on wheels is because he was still trying to work out that free carry thing, and the weight would have been too much, so eventually they slid in at two wheels.
39:21
Corie: You know, it makes sense.
39:23
Corie: Yeah, it's a random question, right?
39:24
Corie: But as a sculptor, when I see Calypso is my thing.
39:29
Corie: So when I see the way you would have do, you know, your you and your team do the paintings of the artists, for instance.
39:35
Corie: I like to see it all you go Kaiser Blues.
39:37
Corie: I like when they're represented well and they look good.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
39:40
Corie: I always remember people commenting about sparrow looking like Rosie.
39:43
Corie: Remember that?
39:44
Corie: Yeah, yeah, that's a horrible statue.
39:46
Corie: Yeah, so it's but it bother you as a sculptor.
39:47
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:48
Corie: Definitely.
39:48
SPEAKER_03: It bothers me tremendously.
39:50
SPEAKER_03: Every time I pass King George 5th a park and I see that big crack in the in the kitchen or two as well.
39:55
SPEAKER_03: Um somebody had engaged me to fix a lot of the statues, the patch of fun around in town.
40:02
SPEAKER_03: And um, unfortunately, he died before we that's Jeffrey McLean.
40:07
SPEAKER_03: God rest his soul.
40:08
SPEAKER_03: He had come to me and said, But look, Stanton, you're probably one of the only guys we have in the country who might be able to tackle this and take it on and solve the problem and stop these cracking and the splitting and the thing, think, think, think, thing.
40:20
SPEAKER_03: The one that's like the finger by track it road there, that's leaning, that whole that whole thing has to be replinted.
40:28
SPEAKER_03: Right?
40:28
SPEAKER_03: No, it's a lot of work, and you have to get budget to do it, and you have to get the um approval from the mayor and the corporation and the so it's a lot, right?
40:38
SPEAKER_03: One individual passing, seeing these things and want to do something about it, is not aware that you have to go through all these restrictions and regulations just to get to fix that.
40:48
SPEAKER_03: Right?
40:49
SPEAKER_03: So he had approached me, and presently there's actually a document sitting with Chenwa Allen outlining how we're about to go about fixing these statues in Port of Spain.
41:02
SPEAKER_03: So hopefully, I know Chenwa, when you hear this, you can give my call and please, please.
41:06
SPEAKER_03: Let me look at um fixing these things because I mean it's definitely an eyesore, and you want to give these people the reverence they deserve.
41:15
SPEAKER_03: You can't just say we're putting up a kitchen statue just because right now he's an all-time leading road match champion.
41:22
SPEAKER_03: Come on, get him on flowers, you know.
41:25
SPEAKER_03: You've got five citizens or cooperate.
41:28
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is something it's a good call to make.
41:31
Corie: It's a good call to make, yeah.
41:32
SPEAKER_03: Um, the Lara on the promenade doesn't look like Lara.
41:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, playing that his classical no-luck shot.
41:40
SPEAKER_03: Doesn't look like him.
41:41
SPEAKER_03: I mean, but this is what you're saddled with because those things were made abroad.
41:46
SPEAKER_03: They weren't made by Trinidadi who understand our physiology, ethnomology, and understand us as a people.
41:57
SPEAKER_03: So they probably had a photo of Rose making statue and making shadow, making sparroy.
42:02
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, probably.
42:03
Corie: This is this is one thing that I want to think about so much like Rose.
42:08
Corie: He said so, you remember that?
42:10
Corie: So much like Rose.
42:12
Corie: It's weird.
42:13
Corie: And you know, my father is something in business we always talk about, right?
42:16
Corie: He used to work at TST and he used to say, you know, he study and he has so much experience doing this thing, and he might do a proposal to a company.
42:23
Corie: This is when you now start off in business.
42:25
Corie: You do a proposal to a company and then it rejects it.
42:28
Corie: And then they end up doing a proposal from somebody who comes from somewhere else.
42:32
Corie: Three, four, five times the price.
42:33
Corie: When we look at it, it's the exact same thing.
42:35
Corie: That's right.
42:36
Corie: But we trust that man holding that thing coming from the airport, we trust that white guy to do it.
42:41
SPEAKER_03: That's right.
42:41
SPEAKER_03: You know what they call that?
42:43
SPEAKER_03: Self-contempt.
42:45
SPEAKER_03: That's self-contempt.
42:47
SPEAKER_03: We have people here capable of solving our problems.
42:51
SPEAKER_03: We have people who contributed to make any problem.
42:56
SPEAKER_03: You understand?
42:57
SPEAKER_03: And therein lies the solution.
42:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
43:00
SPEAKER_03: They don't always need a foreign advice.
43:04
SPEAKER_03: Do we really want to be in bed with with Dubai?
43:08
SPEAKER_03: Do we really want to support America at present?
43:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
43:11
SPEAKER_03: These are things that are harsh decisions that governments need to take with the interests of their people in mind, not with their own interests in mind.
43:20
Corie: The interest of the people is done election day, as far as I concern.
43:23
Corie: After the election, then forget it working for the people.
43:24
SPEAKER_03: But the voice of the people is the voice of God.
43:27
Corie: So you can't silence it.
43:28
Corie: Yeah.
43:28
SPEAKER_03: You can't silence it.
43:30
Corie: And you know, something is so so poignant, right?
43:32
Corie: You're saying that Rodder was the only one who could come in the studio.
43:35
Corie: But the truth is, you I hear you talk about Calypsonians.
43:39
Corie: So you have something emblazoned in your mind.
43:41
Corie: If you see Kitchener, you have a view of him that somebody from abroad could never have.
43:46
Corie: Right.
43:47
SPEAKER_03: That is what I was talking about.
43:48
SPEAKER_03: That that fit knowing us.
43:51
SPEAKER_03: Know him.
43:51
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
43:52
Corie: Yeah, is that is a knowing.
43:53
Corie: Yeah, and and and you don't get commission for them kind of jobs to build the statues of someone else.
43:58
SPEAKER_03: Nah, commission.
43:58
SPEAKER_03: I don't get the big boss.
44:00
Corie: Well he answer a question for me too because I just can't understand why Kitchener had to be looking so Lara as an example Sparrow.
44:08
Corie: But somehow the Ciprianis and these fellas and them or the what do you call the next one?
44:12
Corie: Columba.
44:13
Corie: That fellas such as be good enough.
44:14
Corie: But the people making it probably understand them better than they understand Alara.
44:18
SPEAKER_03: The people who made those are those people.
44:22
SPEAKER_03: They are those people.
44:23
SPEAKER_03: So they know their own ethnology and they know they know you know they know they know their self.
44:29
SPEAKER_03: They could do that.
44:30
SPEAKER_03: You know?
44:32
SPEAKER_03: You know, yeah, we say that.
44:34
SPEAKER_03: The thing about the self-contempt is that it goes so deep.
44:39
SPEAKER_03: You know?
44:41
SPEAKER_03: Man go away for two weeks and come back.
44:43
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, man, what's up, man?
44:45
SPEAKER_05: Broski.
44:47
SPEAKER_03: Better is only two weeks and for, you know.
44:50
SPEAKER_03: You gain on so next one goes, bloody hell.
44:54
SPEAKER_05: In it, mate.
44:56
SPEAKER_03: Brother is how weekend you went to London, boy.
44:59
SPEAKER_03: You understand?
45:00
SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's all the time.
45:01
SPEAKER_03: Is that madness?
45:03
SPEAKER_03: Self-contempt.
45:03
SPEAKER_03: This is what I'm telling you about.
45:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:06
SPEAKER_03: So you need to love with self more for sure.
45:08
SPEAKER_03: And maintain that you're representing yourself too as well.
45:12
SPEAKER_03: Of course, of course.
45:13
SPEAKER_03: Because when you tell me, what's up, mate?
45:16
SPEAKER_03: What is that?
45:17
SPEAKER_03: What about?
45:18
SPEAKER_03: You just fancy that because you hear it and you like it.
45:21
SPEAKER_03: But it's what happening, by going on, by and you travel the world with that.
45:26
SPEAKER_03: I talk, brother.
45:27
SPEAKER_03: I just try to talk as bad as possible to my children.
45:31
SPEAKER_03: See my daughter.
45:32
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
45:33
SPEAKER_03: Last little one.
45:34
SPEAKER_03: Come here, gal.
45:35
SPEAKER_03: You be listening, you listening good.
45:37
SPEAKER_03: Because you have to understand that.
45:39
SPEAKER_03: Because you will be in Trinidad, you will go to places in Trinidad where people speak that way.
45:44
SPEAKER_03: And you and I don't want you to be balling, eh?
45:46
SPEAKER_03: What you say?
45:47
SPEAKER_03: Why is that?
45:47
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
45:48
SPEAKER_05: No.
45:49
Corie: So I will expose you to it.
45:51
Corie: Yeah.
45:51
Corie: As a way of representing yourself.
45:53
Corie: Always remember when I now start a lecture.
45:55
Corie: You talk about teaching, for instance.
45:56
Corie: Yeah.
45:57
Corie: I guess part of my so conscious is self-contempt to say, I trying to talk proper.
46:01
Corie: Well, I say, well, let me talk like a lecturer.
46:03
Corie: Right.
46:04
Corie: And I never really find myself until I just talk.
46:08
Corie: Be normal.
46:08
Corie: Yeah, be myself.
46:09
Corie: You know what I mean?
46:10
SPEAKER_03: Or my students could tell you that.
46:12
SPEAKER_03: And I taught from um age 26 till 33.
46:17
SPEAKER_03: Right.
46:17
SPEAKER_03: At UE.
46:19
SPEAKER_03: So I was a young person.
46:20
SPEAKER_03: I grew into it, you know, by time.
46:23
SPEAKER_03: And they would tell you, he never changed.
46:25
SPEAKER_03: I died the way I used to talk.
46:27
SPEAKER_03: Die way you do him.
46:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
46:28
SPEAKER_03: You find that looking good.
46:30
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
46:31
SPEAKER_03: I talk to you very normal, very it's art we make it.
46:34
SPEAKER_03: Of course.
46:35
SPEAKER_03: And it there's some part, there's ugly art, but in looking at ugly art, you could still appreciate it and like it and see the message in it and see everything.
46:43
SPEAKER_03: But me, I see no message, that just ugly.
46:47
Corie: And you had to say it as it is.
46:48
SPEAKER_03: And I had to say it as it is.
46:49
Corie: And I thought it was at 26.
46:53
SPEAKER_03: Yes, there were uh when I just started, there were students who were older than I am.
46:58
SPEAKER_03: And they're presently art teachers in secondary schools throughout Trinidad.
47:03
SPEAKER_03: And Tobago.
47:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because Tom Lee Roberts in Tobago was one of my students, and I saw him recently in an interview, and I was really proud of him.
47:11
SPEAKER_03: You know, Keith Wyson from Woodbrook was another one of my students, art teacher in Woodbrook.
47:16
SPEAKER_03: When you see them, and certain names stay with you, eh?
47:19
SPEAKER_03: Now remember, I teach all them years, it are names that I don't remember.
47:24
SPEAKER_03: Because their work was not impactful.
47:28
SPEAKER_03: You remember things by how it impacts you.
47:30
SPEAKER_03: Of course.
47:31
SPEAKER_03: And certain names will stay with you because of the work that they created in your class.
47:36
SPEAKER_03: And you're looking forward, you're looking down the road, as I say, you only know the present.
47:40
SPEAKER_03: Right?
47:42
SPEAKER_03: And you have already lived the past.
47:45
SPEAKER_03: You only know the present.
47:46
SPEAKER_03: You don't know what down the road.
47:47
SPEAKER_03: So you're always looking out, you know, and when you see the names come up, even though if it's in an article where they were at Modular Gallery or showed something or showed a piece of their own work.
47:57
SPEAKER_03: Because a lot of art teachers teach art their whole life and never do exhibition.
48:03
SPEAKER_03: Never have their own exhibition.
48:05
SPEAKER_03: You know, they would do exhibitions of all the students' work year after year after year after year to grade it.
48:10
SPEAKER_03: But their own personal work, you've never seen it.
48:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
48:15
SPEAKER_03: You know?
48:16
SPEAKER_03: So it isn't important that when I see them do that, I remark it, and you know, I may run into them and I say, Hey, like they will be shocked sometime.
48:24
SPEAKER_05: I run into one in a high law and I say, Hey boy, I see a thing in it thing, my thing, my real good work.
48:29
SPEAKER_05: And you see that?
48:30
SPEAKER_05: Well, boy, thank you, boy.
48:32
SPEAKER_04: I appreciate that, boy.
48:33
SPEAKER_04: Stanton boy coming from you, boy.
48:35
SPEAKER_03: That you know, you make me feel you encourage me.
48:37
SPEAKER_03: They go in and do an X piece.
48:39
SPEAKER_03: I go in and you know, yeah, you give them that love and that inspiration.
48:42
Corie: Yeah, part of us is creating, but I mean you you walk into the creation, all you say, a happy accident, right?
48:47
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
48:47
Corie: I had to ask you about that life before blue and life after blue, because the band then, as you say, you get encouragement, you do the song.
48:55
Corie: What is the numbers in the Juvent in the first three years?
48:57
SPEAKER_03: Like, oh, the Juvent would be ridiculous.
49:00
SPEAKER_03: We yeah, registration crossing thousand a thousand.
49:03
SPEAKER_03: Can you start off with start off when you first start?
49:06
SPEAKER_03: When blue was over a thousand.
49:08
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
49:09
SPEAKER_03: What was like band was not even 60 people, right?
49:11
SPEAKER_03: It's just only having a time.
49:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
49:13
SPEAKER_03: So when blue came out is yeah, that was crazy.
49:15
SPEAKER_03: That was chaotic.
49:16
SPEAKER_03: That was over 10,000 people.
49:18
Corie: What time were you released blue in relation to Carnaval?
49:23
SPEAKER_03: Blue was released fairly early, you know.
49:25
SPEAKER_03: I think blue was released in November.
49:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so get time to play.
49:30
SPEAKER_03: Daniel Diffentala God rests her soul as well.
49:33
SPEAKER_03: Call and say, Hello, gentlemen.
49:35
SPEAKER_03: We have to do a video for the show, for the songs.
49:37
SPEAKER_03: And that was it.
49:39
SPEAKER_03: So it was TV more or less pulled together, you know, a video.
49:44
SPEAKER_03: We use the Kalaloo Company, that's where it started.
49:46
SPEAKER_03: The little child in the in the photograph is a big married girl living in in Canada presently, Isabella.
49:53
SPEAKER_03: You know, that's Cecilia's first daughter.
49:55
SPEAKER_03: And um, we just built everything in the mass camp.
49:59
SPEAKER_03: We turned Minchel mass camp upside down for a couple hours, literally turned it upside down, and everything was blue, and then we went down tongue and shot, and then we went on the foreshore and shot, and that was it.
50:09
Corie: Yeah, video done.
50:11
Corie: That video was one of them that anybody from wita it's just it emblazoned in your mind.
50:15
Corie: Yeah, the old police headquarters, all them things.
50:18
SPEAKER_03: All them thing, jamming in the draining from the old police station, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
50:23
SPEAKER_03: I remember and a lot of people in that video have since passed on Clifford Lehman, Christopher Panero, Myron Ali.
50:31
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, so John Isaacs.
50:34
SPEAKER_03: Of course, of course.
50:35
SPEAKER_03: So John ever didn't have a video.
50:38
SPEAKER_03: If he didn't have a song with John, but now you song that John.
50:41
SPEAKER_03: No, no, in um Araka Kibone, Talk Your Talk in that video too as well.
50:46
SPEAKER_03: Um, Talk Your Talk video might have been the last video John did with us, boy.
50:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because right after that, we did Over the Mountain when he passed as three of us.
50:57
SPEAKER_03: Correct.
50:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
50:58
SPEAKER_03: That was the first song we did after.
51:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Over the Mountain.
51:01
SPEAKER_03: The first song we did after John passed was a song called Together.
51:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
51:07
SPEAKER_03: And then we did the Over the Mountain as a part of our album.
51:11
SPEAKER_03: And by extension, I want to say, yeah, Walty Boy Walter, Walt Loveless.
51:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, big up Walt Loveless.
51:18
SPEAKER_03: Loveless is bad man.
51:19
SPEAKER_03: And he's always been supportive of Tree Canal and always work with us in terms of helping us get our images out there and our concepts and thing.
51:27
Corie: And as he brings up Walt, let me just ask you this now.
51:30
Corie: That Mud Madness video was him to where where where all it do that?
51:34
SPEAKER_03: That was shot in Valencia in our abandoned quarry in Valencia.
51:39
SPEAKER_03: Um, and the thing about like talk and salt and mud madness, it was shot on film.
51:49
SPEAKER_03: So you there was no playback to see what you're shooting, it was just shoot it.
51:54
SPEAKER_03: That film had to go to California, develop, and then only when it came back you'd have an idea of what you captured.
52:01
SPEAKER_03: So you were happy with it?
52:02
SPEAKER_03: Of course.
52:03
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's why you have to say Walt D of his flowers.
52:06
SPEAKER_03: Walt is really good.
52:08
SPEAKER_03: You know?
52:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:10
SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
52:11
SPEAKER_03: Nobody shoots on film again.
52:12
SPEAKER_03: We are 4K now, you know.
52:14
Corie: Thank God for that.
52:15
Corie: I would have been in trouble.
52:16
Corie: I would be in trouble as a cut and paste champion.
52:20
Corie: Question about the early days again.
52:22
Corie: You clearly have some gifts, right?
52:25
Corie: And singing and chanting is one of them.
52:27
Corie: What makes decide you're going in a group and not going individual as an artist?
52:31
SPEAKER_03: Because it started as a group, I would say.
52:33
SPEAKER_03: Right.
52:33
SPEAKER_03: You know, I back home, I was my own individual.
52:38
SPEAKER_03: On the corner, on the block, I was my own individual.
52:41
SPEAKER_03: So my brethren who chanting, we are all we were all our own individuals.
52:47
SPEAKER_03: But in the coming together of the little house crew, I suppose, it felt different.
52:54
SPEAKER_03: I was a part of something, and then it transitioned into Tri Canal.
52:59
SPEAKER_03: Now you have to remember TriCanal was um Roger Roberts, Wendell Man Warren, and Steve Hood.
53:06
SPEAKER_03: John and myself only became a part of TriCanal business-wise in 1997 when we sang in 1996 we sang the song for 97 Carnival.
53:17
SPEAKER_03: Right?
53:18
SPEAKER_03: But before that, Tri Canal was three men.
53:22
SPEAKER_03: Yes, I was involved in Tri Canal, come and help them on the morning, share paint, and do whatever part of it.
53:28
SPEAKER_03: Right.
53:28
SPEAKER_03: But I wasn't Tri Canal.
53:30
SPEAKER_03: I only became Tri Canal in 97 officially.
53:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
53:33
SPEAKER_03: From the moment my image went out singing, and we use the same name, that was it.
53:38
SPEAKER_03: I was Tri Canal, you know.
53:40
Corie: So Tri Canal, like when you're going some people calling it back videos, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
53:45
SPEAKER_03: I remember Caribbean, if if you if I remember this distinctly because um BT Grooves, Caribbean grooves had just launched and come out and blew us a big song on that.
53:56
SPEAKER_03: The first time we land in um Brooklyn, we walk around the road and people like Chick-o-Ah!
54:01
SPEAKER_05: We was like, What about these people now?
54:05
SPEAKER_05: We going in a place now, we nice area, we gonna visit a Brethren and we come out.
54:09
SPEAKER_05: I watching our man on the pavement.
54:11
SPEAKER_02: So I say, But when they'll dying up Buster Rhymes, yeah, but I looking just like Buster Rhymes, Buster Rhymes, I dreadlocks something, and we come out.
54:18
SPEAKER_05: Say, Buster Rhymes, man, respect man, Bridget, man, think channel and say, yeah, you the blue guys, we was like, following here, that man had a paint video, look all my pause.
54:29
SPEAKER_03: We following here, Buster Rhymes had one of the baddest paint video, you know.
54:33
SPEAKER_03: But real paint getting on crazy and flourish and paint and all kind of thing, you know.
54:38
SPEAKER_04: So don't feel that's why they say cultural appropriation is a serious thing.
54:42
Corie: Yeah, it's also why we're gonna be.
54:55
Corie: If I had a market of artists now and I tell them the first two videos that banging all over the place, your whole face cover all they was paint down, mud down.
55:03
Corie: It's like it's like you know, I might say, Boy, better you show your face, you know.
55:06
Corie: I'm gonna I yeah, I'm not gonna tell you, boy, you need people need to see your face on them painting, but all you do it in a way that was was true to it, you know.
55:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, man.
55:15
Corie: And that's again because I don't know in if it's kaiso, so rap so I don't know much groups.
55:20
Corie: Maybe if you look at Kiskidi Caravan, they have a few groups who who came through there and thing, but in our culture, I don't know that we have a real group.
55:28
SPEAKER_03: No, unfortunately, we don't, and it's um I don't know how to weigh it actually, if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but there's the sense of commune, you know, is is absent then.
55:43
SPEAKER_03: Um the few artists who even have an office.
55:47
SPEAKER_03: So in 97 when rituals had signed Kindred, which was a group two, and uh Jala and this one and that one, and and Disney's bell phone, everybody had some money.
56:02
SPEAKER_03: Right?
56:03
SPEAKER_03: And they actually can have what they want.
56:04
SPEAKER_03: We say we want our little space in the corner, they were office, and they was like, Oh, they were office, all they want that sweet, and we transformed that little space into office.
56:15
SPEAKER_03: They came and built the studio to the back after, and we say, they say so we say, Well, do you know what our little space there?
56:22
SPEAKER_03: We say thing.
56:24
SPEAKER_03: We were we were past stage there, and we created the backyard jams in rituals music because they and it wasn't because of they weren't playing tricanal music, eh?
56:37
SPEAKER_03: They weren't playing the label music.
56:38
SPEAKER_03: Tri canal was the only artist they were playing from the rituals label because for solid six years we were consistent.
56:47
SPEAKER_03: We had blue, talk your talk, mod madness, salt, Ben Lion.
56:53
SPEAKER_03: Right?
56:54
SPEAKER_03: And the six day happy song, right?
56:56
SPEAKER_03: So six straight years are clout, and inside of that it had good news and and revolution, and so there were other songs that were playing too as well.
57:07
SPEAKER_03: Right?
57:08
SPEAKER_03: Um but Kindred music wasn't playing, resistance music wasn't playing, Ajala music wasn't playing, Denny's Belfort music wasn't playing, Charlene Boo drum and um and and and I called this Gordon, Patrick Gordon music wasn't playing.
57:23
SPEAKER_03: Mr.
57:24
SPEAKER_03: Vibe.
57:24
SPEAKER_03: Mr.
57:24
SPEAKER_03: Vibe.
57:25
SPEAKER_03: So we say, well, we had shafts music wasn't playing.
57:28
SPEAKER_03: So we say, Wait, look, we have our space here.
57:31
SPEAKER_03: We call Lalu, Wendell knew Lalu well, and we say, Lalu, you are we we were something for every Friday, boy.
57:39
SPEAKER_03: But we not no money.
57:40
SPEAKER_03: We have no money, nobody.
57:42
SPEAKER_03: The artists did this, eh?
57:44
SPEAKER_03: Not the labeler and we chip up money among Faith, Trick Canal, Kindred, whoever with past through, we chip up money and we pay Lalu and we keep we first backyard jams, and that was it axe David Where's he got telling you?
57:58
SPEAKER_03: You couldn't stick a pin on a Friday night.
58:02
SPEAKER_03: On a Friday.
58:06
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
58:06
SPEAKER_05: I too said a picture on a Friday night, brother man.
58:09
SPEAKER_05: You can't even get a park.
58:11
SPEAKER_05: No way around Laparoo Cemetery, around that little key there, that um Q place.
58:17
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
58:18
SPEAKER_03: You couldn't get a park out on Park Street, you couldn't even get into the black into the backyard jams.
58:25
SPEAKER_03: It was Ram Bowter Stone.
58:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
58:27
SPEAKER_03: And artist after artist after artist.
58:30
SPEAKER_03: So you're doing this with all the artists in mind?
58:32
SPEAKER_03: But that we doing this with we artists, big artists that they call Iowa want to come in the backyard, Ronnie McIntosh wants to come in the backyard.
58:41
SPEAKER_03: This whoever had a song to promote wanted to come there because DJs were there.
58:47
SPEAKER_03: DJs and producers and promoters was started to come and gravitate and listen.
58:53
SPEAKER_03: And the vibe was of the chain where Mary Mother was selling bacon shark.
58:58
SPEAKER_03: We had we bar, you know what I mean?
59:00
SPEAKER_03: And we that was the yard bar, that was the artist, but we chip up the money and buy them drinks.
59:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
59:05
SPEAKER_03: And we turn it over and turn it over and turn it over until we could have started do things for ourselves as a crew.
59:12
Corie: Was amazing.
59:12
Corie: Yeah, of course, of course.
59:14
Corie: You know what I mean?
59:14
Corie: Yeah.
59:14
SPEAKER_03: But present day we have a new incarnation of the black box, um, of the backyard jams, which is happening at the black box theater.
59:22
Corie: Yeah, two Fridays now are trying to reach, but I ain't reached it.
59:24
SPEAKER_03: According to um Lauren always used to say this too as well.
59:28
SPEAKER_03: She said we was weird in in regards to how we wanted an office and we wanted a performance space.
59:34
SPEAKER_03: Artists listen really want that.
59:37
SPEAKER_03: They they want the quick way out, you know what I mean?
59:40
SPEAKER_03: Money.
59:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sell me and give me some dust.
59:44
Corie: Like we talking about it now, and I hear any rhetoric about we making music and radio and playing with this place and booking me and them kind of things.
59:52
Corie: So creating your own spaces, yeah.
59:54
Corie: And we never complain.
59:55
SPEAKER_03: I never heard never complain.
59:56
SPEAKER_03: I never heard that.
59:57
SPEAKER_03: We could play with your don't play with don't matter we, and we were still traveling.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_03: And when we in the airport and we bong some of them brothers, we well, I'm by canal, we all are performing this weekend, but we go in Belgium, boy.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_03: We go in Brooklyn, boy.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_03: You're going home.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_03: Canal, we all are going, but we're going to Switzerland, but we're playing in Montrose Jazz Festival.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_03: Why?
1:00:18
SPEAKER_03: Montrose Jazz Festival.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_03: Oh, we go in Miami, boy.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:00:26
SPEAKER_03: But you had what's a change.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_03: If you want change, you can't, you can't like people vote for change and they really just want exchange.
1:00:32
Corie: No, no, yeah, they don't want that.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_03: They don't want change enough.
1:00:34
Corie: Yeah, people want change and comfort.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they want changes what they want.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_03: No, you vote for change.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_03: When we decided we not, we coming off that them set up false promoters who bad promoting you and and and you they book you and promoting you and thing.
1:00:48
SPEAKER_03: And we coming off that that jumbi scene that was the soccer scene, and we gave ourselves so better.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_03: We started world music gigs.
1:00:56
Corie: Yeah, I never realized that was a deliberate thing, man.
1:00:58
Corie: Congrats on that thinking, yeah.
1:01:00
Corie: Yeah.
1:01:02
Corie: In terms of them space, because you're talking about early days, you're performing rather than them there.
1:01:06
Corie: I would say that maybe uh uh respect to everybody else.
1:01:10
Corie: In terms of rudder shows, when you used to do um Normandy and them things where you're talking classics now, I see Oli and Kaiso blues the other night, and outside of Rudder, I'm not sure that there's an artist who have a I want to say almost a cult following.
1:01:25
Corie: I I hear entry canal song with me and know when all they're singing.
1:01:28
Corie: Yeah, and it has some girls in the back there, it's our crew.
1:01:31
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:01:32
Corie: And when I say a crew, most of the audio eyes word for word all in both to sing.
1:01:35
Corie: They know who coming when who comes in center stage when you think it's just from building them performance spaces and them things?
1:01:42
SPEAKER_03: I think so, yes.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_03: Because familiarity is with repetition too as well, eh?
1:01:47
SPEAKER_03: So if you if they've supported us for so long, they know our music.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_03: Some of them know when you make a mistake, when I fob flub a lyric, they know they don't watch you.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_03: Because they know they're not pattery song, you know, freestyle something they're going to go.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_03: Fuck it up, Lady.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:02:09
SPEAKER_03: They know what you fuck it up.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_03: But but you're so skillful, yeah.
1:02:13
SPEAKER_03: That's you know, freestyle a little piece there because I mean it's a lot of music, eh?
1:02:18
SPEAKER_03: And your fans will know your music inside out.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, do you do it?
1:02:21
SPEAKER_03: So they are true fans, you know.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_03: Is that your thing?
1:02:24
SPEAKER_03: But I remember performing in those concerts like no restriction.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_03: I was nervous like a bitch because we're in the restriction.
1:02:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we perform, we perform in about two other.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_03: We do um a big shadow boy.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_03: That yeah when we do that shadow concert, plus you see thousands of people, boy.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_03: And we singing two jam and we singing three three shadow.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_03: And in my mind, and my mind racing, you know, I don't even want a bay, I don't want a cigarette, I don't want nothing, you know, I don't want weed smoking.
1:02:52
SPEAKER_02: Because I just want to know what I singing when, and not the fuck up shadow song.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_03: You understand?
1:02:59
SPEAKER_03: Same thing with with with um when you're performing in with Rodder and these guys and them, it you can't fuck up the music, but brother, you was doing what backups and no restrictions, or you open the show.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_03: We sang, we no, we don't do backups.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_03: We we get that gig.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_03: We used to we were actually performing, oh, we do no restrictions, but we work on the show, I think, too, you know.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and we performed like two of our own songs, you know.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, I guess but other than that, you're an unofficial background singer in our in our other show, you know, because the whole audience singing, especially like in no restrictions recording now, and they listen to it.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_00: He's hear the crowd.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_03: Yes, correct, correct.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_03: That was in the gene pair.
1:03:41
SPEAKER_03: That was a match, but my knees and them was shaking on stage.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:03:46
Corie: So even performing on stage because they ever said that hard to match.
1:03:50
Corie: That's the thing you went and learned to do, all you just work it out and you figure it out as you go on them guys.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_03: When we first started, as I say, we were catapulted into music.
1:04:00
SPEAKER_03: I was the only greenhorn.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_03: Wendell was a seasoned performer, Roger was a seasoned performer, and by extension, I grew up as a child watching John Isaacs playing the piano on Hazel Ward Redmond Show, Auntie Kay, and singing.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_03: So John was extremely talented in my eyes, John, and he was also an actor just like Roger and Wendell.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_03: So I was a only green one.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_03: So we rented Death Street Studios for me to get a visual understanding.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_03: So we worked with a big mirror room of positioning, playing to the crowd, not looking at the ground.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_03: Most singers, when they start, they sing to the ground.
1:04:40
SPEAKER_03: They're shy to look out at the audience or command the audience.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_03: I've seen this, I wouldn't call names, but I've seen it through many people career in Trinidad and Tobago.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_03: Guys who are now great performers started off in the ground because to give of yourself and then give of yourself is is two different things.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_03: So you know, they tend to sing a song, yeah, they feel they had a good performance, but it's only when they started getting to performance and delivering the performances when they, you know, really truly expanded their performance skills.
1:05:15
SPEAKER_03: In the earliest, they always dung in the ground.
1:05:17
Corie: Yeah, so what do we do?
1:05:19
Corie: No, I'm gonna change a bit to get it.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
1:05:21
Corie: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea.
1:05:23
Corie: Let me take a drink too, yes.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_03: Now set up free.
1:05:26
Corie: If I hear it, let me get the coconut water too.
1:05:33
Corie: You want coconut water, right?
1:05:35
Corie: I like it.
1:05:36
Corie: That call that's called what you can do, boy.
1:05:40
Corie: Even that look no restrictions.
1:05:48
SPEAKER_03: His 70th birthday party, I did the backdrop for it.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_03: That whole big white massive thing in Songforge.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_03: Brother, we popped that three times.
1:05:59
SPEAKER_03: Breeze.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_03: Stay down that you have to go and re-in show it over because you're on the sea front.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just go we have it.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_02: I would just send it to you.
1:06:08
Corie: So this empty birdie, that is that is yeah, the backdrop.
1:06:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that massive white backdrop.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_03: When um this boy from Pepper called me and he said, Boy, I need to get something rig up in Song Forge boy.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, that breeze don't.
1:06:23
SPEAKER_03: Because the year before I had done um free tongue show for them, they did that moon.
1:06:29
SPEAKER_03: That moon never stays as a moon.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_03: That moon looks like a all kind of thing because breeze.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like literally on your seafront.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_03: That that gulf coming in there, but oh my goodness.
1:06:41
Corie: It's unfortunate not to be a special venue, but I love song for it.
1:06:46
SPEAKER_03: When I first went there, I I found it clangy because that governance always gives you that kind of clangy song.
1:06:52
SPEAKER_03: But they they working out.
1:06:53
SPEAKER_03: Somehow they have managed to you know get that sound.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_03: Same thing in the first time.
1:06:57
Corie: First time I went to come out, my ears roaring.
1:06:59
Corie: It just banged up.
1:07:00
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:07:01
Corie: But yeah, they seem to have fixed it.
1:07:03
Corie: So even as um youth watching all at that point in time, because if I it's right here talking to y'all that I started realize blue is really the first thing people because it feels like such seasoned people you're watching.
1:07:15
Corie: Yeah, youth having a time.
1:07:16
Corie: Yeah, again, one of the misconceptions I had as a youth is I think all Oliver John Isaacs is kind of like the same age, same stage, and everything like that.
1:07:24
Corie: So y'all seeing him in the spaces long before you say, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:07:27
SPEAKER_03: John, um, he would have been a couple years older than Wendell and Roger, they are the same age, and then I'm a couple years younger than them two as well, right?
1:07:35
SPEAKER_03: You know, so I mean, yeah, by extension, that is why the the street chanting kind of vibe of Trickanal will come from me because I'm the younger one who it's aggressive too, you know.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_03: It's a little joke, you know.
1:07:47
Corie: When you're on the stage, something is happening.
1:07:50
Corie: Yeah, yeah, but we're attacking the thing, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:07:54
Corie: Yeah, but was it like?
1:07:55
Corie: Because we all see it in the papers, everybody in shock when you see that article and John Isaacs pass away.
1:08:00
Corie: What were you thinking on his?
1:08:01
SPEAKER_03: That was an incredibly emotional time.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_03: We were literally performing without John that season.
1:08:08
SPEAKER_03: We had started to, he had done a couple with us and then got really sick and had to be hospitalized.
1:08:15
SPEAKER_03: And we got the call in the tent that you know we should come to the hospital now.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_03: So I mean, to relive it in woods, I wouldn't like to go down that road, but um, what I would tell you it was it was pretty difficult because the season could not when it didn't stop as well.
1:08:34
SPEAKER_03: We had gigs, we were booked, we were under management, you know.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't like you could um pull back and take a time for yourself and just thing.
1:08:44
SPEAKER_03: You had obligations that the management would have already received down payments for.
1:08:49
SPEAKER_03: So you're not in the mood or you're not interested in doing it, but you had to do it.
1:08:53
SPEAKER_03: So that was difficult.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_03: Um, but the love and support from the greater performing community of Trinidad and Tobago, not only the Rapso Fraternity and the Soka and Um Calypso in Fraternity, but the dancers.
1:09:07
SPEAKER_03: John was a dancer, he was a theatre, he was a director, he taught children's theatre.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_03: He he had you know was a big part of Liliput Theatre.
1:09:17
SPEAKER_03: And when he passed, Wendell took that mantle on, and Wendell is still the theatre director at Liliput Theatre, Children's Theatre today.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_03: Um so you see, we're mentoring and teaching, it has come a long way with us.
1:09:34
SPEAKER_03: Um I would I would I always remember one thing when John was passing away when we got to the hospital and he told me to rub his feet for him, and he just watched me and he hold my hand in a kind of way because John literally taught me to sing.
1:09:51
SPEAKER_03: I I wasn't a singer as a chanter man.
1:09:56
SPEAKER_03: But John would say, them three, four years of touring, him and I room together, and he would say, Um, take your fucking embarrassment on stage, you know, do sing no off key thing and do thing, you know, and he would drill my ass with scales.
1:10:10
SPEAKER_03: Everybody has sleeping and then I go in the room them sleeping, and hear me, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
1:10:20
SPEAKER_03: Up this scale, down the scale, thing pitching, and and he literally taught me to sing and listen to myself at the same time.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_03: So I would say people would come and say now, I I've got this in recent that way, but you could really sing, and I'd be like, nah, Jet, Roger could really sing, John Isaacs could I really sing, and Roger Robertson, my band, I think is the best singer in the band.
1:10:47
SPEAKER_03: But they sing, nah, boy, you boy, kill him, man.
1:10:49
SPEAKER_03: But that singing came.
1:10:53
SPEAKER_03: I I grew into becoming a singer.
1:10:57
SPEAKER_03: I didn't start as a singer.
1:10:58
Corie: Yeah, you know, who would have thought because I mean one of one of the things I'm all known for is the harmonizing.
1:11:03
SPEAKER_03: Correct.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_03: You know, and then where my term is in relation to the where their term is, I sing all the hyper every tricanal tune you hear and all them high parts is me.
1:11:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:11:14
SPEAKER_03: You know, and then when you watch me, I don't hear and two of them updates.
1:11:18
SPEAKER_03: We're going on a small man mouth, real big way.
1:11:23
Corie: Yes, it's no joke.
1:11:25
Corie: And um, talky talk is one of them like that.
1:11:28
Corie: Where it's so boy, who it was us here saying, um, I think it's Marcus Brave Boy.
1:11:35
Corie: So little Brave Boy, you were talking about Blazer Dan about beauty and the beast thing.
1:11:39
Corie: Yeah, and when he said it, my first thoughts was boy, Trick Canal might be one of the first places I really see that.
1:11:45
Corie: Well, that song's so sweet and so gentle and so rough and aggressive at the same time.
1:11:50
Corie: Yeah, yeah.
1:11:51
Corie: And there's a way that um promise the fire next time when you go into that chanting part, and just when you have you on your ropes, you say, ah, ah, I did that time to dance Latin style.
1:12:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:12:04
Corie: No, you're you're right, you're right.
1:12:05
Corie: It it's it's it's the bitter and the sweet.
1:12:07
Corie: So you're going about designing songs and that you have that in mind when you're coming up with the concept?
1:12:12
SPEAKER_03: I would say that the message and the statement in the song is what dictates it, you know, full stop.
1:12:20
SPEAKER_03: Full stop, it's what you really the intent in the message.
1:12:24
SPEAKER_03: And then, yeah, sometimes it's too sweet and nice, and I go come in with my let's call me a ray reina, you know.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_03: And I come in with advisor just rare, but it it adds to it, you know.
1:12:38
SPEAKER_03: And yesterday, boy, strange enough, Ray on Elborn, he said, I listening to the music, I never hear you flow the same flow twice in all of the music.
1:12:48
SPEAKER_03: You say Wendell, I just hear Wendell flow, I just say the E flow we're using Walking Beauty, that you flow from this tune, the E flow, you know, and Roger, same thing, you will hear them, the pattern of the flow, you know, and he's like, How you just do that?
1:13:04
SPEAKER_03: I say, because I this start from a different place.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_03: I just look from an angle that and that it's probably just my personality that you ain't looking at.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_03: And when I pull that together and think it, it that's what makes the difference, and that's what makes tricanal too as well.
1:13:22
SPEAKER_03: That the the contrast.
1:13:25
SPEAKER_03: You know, you have to have that contrast, and that is what makes the vibe of a tricanal song.
1:13:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, if all of we trying to do the same thing, we ain't go, you know, we ain't gonna sound good.
1:13:35
SPEAKER_03: So the sound, the S O U N D does not is not dictated by the S O N G.
1:13:43
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:13:44
SPEAKER_03: The SOUND comes along with the exploring the melody of the S O N G or the harmonizing of the S O N G.
1:13:53
SPEAKER_03: And once we get that, then I say, okay, there's a room for contrast here with this lyric.
1:13:59
SPEAKER_03: Need to go pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa.
1:14:01
SPEAKER_03: Oh-tap ta-tup ta-tup.
1:14:04
SPEAKER_03: Gotcha.
1:14:05
SPEAKER_03: And I hear the pattern in my head, I think, and then I fit the lyrics.
1:14:08
Corie: Well, you say so from the chanting days.
1:14:10
Corie: So you say you're always here, in it.
1:14:11
SPEAKER_03: So we always do all always write only one part, or you just work on it together and then we all write our own parts, come together.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_03: So we would sit, this is his song.
1:14:20
SPEAKER_03: We present, I have a song, Wendell may have a song, Roger may have this song, the initial idea of the song, like good morning neighbor.
1:14:27
SPEAKER_03: I always say, Roger hardly writes.
1:14:31
SPEAKER_03: But when he does, he's brilliant, right?
1:14:33
SPEAKER_03: Myself and man Warren would more or less do the bulk of the writing.
1:14:38
SPEAKER_03: Um, Roger brought good morning neighbor.
1:14:41
SPEAKER_03: And it was from him, his experience of running, and he would bounce into this boy Jason Gooding every time.
1:14:48
SPEAKER_03: And while he running with Jason Gooding, Jason will be, Good morning, good morning, and he said, Everybody Jason passed, Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, and just you know, and he came with that good morning thing, and I went, Well, neighbor, neighbor, neighbor, neighbor, because we have a wealth of music that is us and it's in us already.
1:15:09
SPEAKER_05: So when you hear good morning, yeah, yeah, neighbor, good morning, neighbor, good morning, neighbor.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_05: Because I mean, as I say, um it's it's been done.
1:15:21
SPEAKER_05: Scratch my back for me.
1:15:23
SPEAKER_05: But I want water.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_05: Give me some water.
1:15:29
SPEAKER_05: You could you you could write that?
1:15:31
Corie: Impossible.
1:15:32
Corie: That song in particular.
1:15:33
SPEAKER_05: Rosemary came long in a night gong, telling Eunice People Business, Eunice girl, you don't know.
1:15:41
SPEAKER_05: You can write that.
1:15:42
SPEAKER_05: It only has one shadow.
1:15:44
SPEAKER_05: So it's a one trick and hm.
1:15:46
SPEAKER_05: That is what that is how we that's our thing.
1:15:50
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you know, it's unexplainable more or less.
1:15:52
Corie: Yeah, it's it's it's encouraging to hear somebody like Rihanna Bones say that to listen to his music and where he comes from because not just the flows, but his songs, more than neighbor is unexpected.
1:16:03
Corie: Yeah, how that's so you know, it's so different to everything you all do.
1:16:07
Corie: Every everything, yeah, yeah.
1:16:08
Corie: And not just a random question to in terms of writing, because back to the um mocking pretender, you know.
1:16:16
Corie: When they say you're setting talk, they're you saying talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
1:16:22
Corie: So you just decide that what that needed.
1:16:24
SPEAKER_05: You hear that in your head, you hear that missing.
1:16:26
SPEAKER_03: Strange, strange thing about strange, no music is madness, isn't it?
1:16:31
SPEAKER_03: Strange thing about talk, you talk.
1:16:34
SPEAKER_03: Rather meet me.
1:16:36
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:16:36
SPEAKER_03: And he was like, um, I'll do an album.
1:16:40
SPEAKER_03: I'll do an album, um you know rather talk, right?
1:16:46
SPEAKER_02: I know if by chance you'll be interested in I I want you to vocalize something for me.
1:16:54
SPEAKER_02: Of course, sir.
1:16:56
SPEAKER_04: Many co-tours.
1:16:59
SPEAKER_04: Of course, uh, yes, sir.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_04: What you need, sir?
1:17:01
SPEAKER_04: Anything to ask.
1:17:04
SPEAKER_04: What are my favorite artists?
1:17:05
SPEAKER_03: And if you want me say something, but I want I wait with that voice.
1:17:12
SPEAKER_03: And there's a song called um Sing Song on the Lucky Horseshoe Diamond Club album.
1:17:19
SPEAKER_03: You should listen to that.
1:17:20
SPEAKER_03: I sang that song.
1:17:22
SPEAKER_03: Doesn't song like me because it's it's watch that Jack.
1:17:26
SPEAKER_03: Jack said he's noting a different stratosphere.
1:17:30
SPEAKER_02: He said he's noting a different stratosphere.
1:17:33
SPEAKER_02: When Jack says, Yahna sing the 13th, I say Jack keyboard.
1:17:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_02: Reference.
1:17:38
SPEAKER_02: Whoa! See the 13th Jack.
1:17:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
1:17:44
SPEAKER_02: Wait, semi-note dumb.
1:17:47
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
1:17:47
SPEAKER_02: Say Jack keyboard.
1:17:49
SPEAKER_03: And rather called him for tinging them.
1:17:51
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
1:17:51
SPEAKER_03: Man no music real good, boy.
1:17:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:17:53
Corie: Them fellas on them, yeah.
1:17:54
Corie: It's all right, yeah.
1:17:55
SPEAKER_03: Sing song, boy, sing that song twice live.
1:17:58
SPEAKER_03: Never again.
1:18:01
SPEAKER_03: What's that?
1:18:02
SPEAKER_02: My own ears with me when I don't sing that song, pal.
1:18:05
SPEAKER_02: What's that song?
1:18:06
SPEAKER_04: Hi.
1:18:07
SPEAKER_05: Uh tell him my own ears is what.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but it says brother, so you're going.
1:18:10
SPEAKER_03: I go in.
1:18:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:18:11
SPEAKER_03: That is what you wanted now.
1:18:12
SPEAKER_03: It works for the show, eh?
1:18:14
SPEAKER_03: Pinny.
1:18:15
SPEAKER_03: I think Pinny was in his show.
1:18:16
SPEAKER_03: And I'll go in there, man.
1:18:18
SPEAKER_03: And um, but they use the actual vocals.
1:18:21
SPEAKER_03: Pinny couldn't recreate that vocal.
1:18:23
SPEAKER_03: So you had to mime.
1:18:25
Corie: I hear tell us about our next icon, which only works for sometimes super blue.
1:18:29
Corie: You see, you use a sweat and malabar.
1:18:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I I actually never played with um with super blue team.
1:18:36
SPEAKER_03: You had a team called Drummers.
1:18:38
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:18:38
SPEAKER_03: I was always their antagonist, I suppose.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_03: Because um, I played with a mal Alamander Massive and I played for Newport.
1:18:46
SPEAKER_06: Right.
1:18:47
SPEAKER_03: But I would always love the Bob Super Blue team.
1:18:52
SPEAKER_03: I came from football.
1:18:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, football.
1:18:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was a footballer.
1:18:55
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:18:55
SPEAKER_03: You know, and um, so it was always a running joke because it's one area and one community.
1:19:03
SPEAKER_03: And they'll be like, but come and play with super team by and say, but no, by the way, a phase two team by from phase one by.
1:19:08
SPEAKER_03: I don't do them thing by the crazy.
1:19:11
SPEAKER_03: Which is right, which is right.
1:19:12
SPEAKER_03: Which is right.
1:19:12
SPEAKER_03: So I had to play with Alamanda Massive, which was a phase.
1:19:15
SPEAKER_03: There were two phase one teams, Alamanda Massive and Newport.
1:19:18
SPEAKER_03: So I played for Alamander a couple years, and then I went to Newport because my brother Jen and pulled me in to strike.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_03: You know?
1:19:26
SPEAKER_03: And um, so I would literally, there's there's real talk, eh?
1:19:31
SPEAKER_03: Super Blue House had no windows and no doors.
1:19:35
SPEAKER_03: We used to literally step through the window.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_03: There were no loovers.
1:19:39
SPEAKER_00: All right, yeah.
1:19:40
SPEAKER_00: So it opened.
1:19:41
SPEAKER_03: There was one room that had a curtain thing, like he had a mattress in there, and he had a where he had he had the suitcase and them was closed, lock with pad, lock and things.
1:19:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because he used to travel still.
1:19:52
SPEAKER_03: And so the whole house was painted blue, it had no windows, it wasn't bar wrong.
1:19:58
SPEAKER_03: So and the football field was literally behind the house.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_07: Right, right, right.
1:20:03
SPEAKER_03: So a lot of his louvers were broken because of bullet that man hit.
1:20:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:20:09
SPEAKER_03: From the field.
1:20:10
SPEAKER_03: From the field and break the window on them too.
1:20:12
SPEAKER_03: I must admit that.
1:20:14
SPEAKER_03: Use one.
1:20:14
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I I I I break a couple of them.
1:20:17
SPEAKER_03: But um, the reality of it is that you know, that happened in your life between the age of let's say 14, 15.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_03: You know, even I was younger than that.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, probably 13, 13 to 15, 13 to 16.
1:20:34
SPEAKER_03: And interacting with super blue in terms of getting him talk, I mass your boy, take, take by you.
1:20:41
SPEAKER_03: Come and play for me, boy Douglas boy, dough.
1:20:42
SPEAKER_03: He used to call me dough.
1:20:44
SPEAKER_03: Come and play for me.
1:20:45
SPEAKER_03: Many years later, when I tell Super Blue about that story, he said, watch me.
1:20:48
SPEAKER_03: So he said, Boy, yeah, boy, dough, boy.
1:20:50
SPEAKER_03: And call me about the dog.
1:20:54
SPEAKER_04: You boy.
1:20:55
SPEAKER_03: I say, Super, I used to climb through your window and come in your house and smoke my wanna and smoke level my wanna.
1:21:02
SPEAKER_03: Because that was the youth men smoke house.
1:21:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:21:05
SPEAKER_03: Nobody in the house, super now in Trinidad, super going wherever you go.
1:21:08
SPEAKER_05: And we've been a Jess so you know.
1:21:10
SPEAKER_05: And this girl's son, yeah, they know normal enough, crazy.
1:21:13
SPEAKER_03: She was mad.
1:21:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
1:21:14
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, she kept herself.
1:21:17
SPEAKER_03: God bless you.
1:21:17
SPEAKER_03: Let me hope so.
1:21:18
SPEAKER_00: Let me hope so, let me hope so.
1:21:19
SPEAKER_03: But I ain't gonna lie, I never play for super, but I gave him them talk, and then many years later to come and go in a studio and say, Pom, pump, pump, pump it up, pump, pump, pump, pump, it up, pump, pump, pump, pump, it up.
1:21:34
SPEAKER_03: So comeatrix, pump, pump.
1:21:36
SPEAKER_03: And plenty of people don't know.
1:21:37
SPEAKER_03: Live, I I sing them thing you know.
1:21:40
SPEAKER_03: All super lead verse and all them things.
1:21:43
SPEAKER_03: I just be singing them.
1:21:44
Corie: Yeah, yeah, I guess you could get a voice anywhere.
1:21:46
SPEAKER_03: Have him done cool.
1:21:49
SPEAKER_03: Have him cool, like guys.
1:21:50
SPEAKER_03: I tell him.
1:21:51
SPEAKER_03: Ragstorm is all um ragstorm now.
1:21:55
SPEAKER_03: We didn't sing ragstor, you sing Fantastic Friday.
1:21:58
SPEAKER_05: Aye, the party sad, fantastic Friday.
1:22:01
SPEAKER_05: Sincerely for me, heart.
1:22:03
SPEAKER_05: That's Friday.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_05: And I'm I love you.
1:22:08
Corie: I smell in a panorama greens because Friday, mash up the place, Friday.
1:22:13
Corie: Yeah, tell him.
1:22:16
SPEAKER_03: We're on um, we on um Sundar Popo, we on Pump It Up, Soka Matrix.
1:22:21
SPEAKER_03: We got three soccer monarchy when it's super, you know.
1:22:24
SPEAKER_03: Beautiful, beautiful.
1:22:25
Corie: Congrats, congrats, congrats.
1:22:27
Corie: I don't talk about the black box.
1:22:28
Corie: I would have liked to get paid, but uh well, you never know.
1:22:31
Corie: They say you don't know what the future brings, you know.
1:22:35
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:22:36
Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:22:37
Corie: Uh, I don't talk about the black box too.
1:22:38
Corie: Because um, I was talking here with I can't remember who was the last guest, but you're talking about competition, and you brought it up with soaker and so on and rap.
1:22:45
Corie: So now having competition.
1:22:47
Corie: But every time you talk to one of y'all, that I am a teacher.
1:22:50
Corie: Whether you say it or not, it comes out.
1:22:52
Corie: You'll you're always in teaching mode and that kind of thing.
1:22:55
Corie: And I wonder sometimes if the culture.
1:22:59
Corie: I think they were talking about the ultimate soaker champion and soaker monarch and them thing.
1:23:03
Corie: And my point was competition is good, but the article in the papers said competition is good for development of artists.
1:23:09
Corie: I don't know if I buy that.
1:23:11
Corie: Where especially when I look at what you all do, like the Friday nights, for instance, now you're creating spaces where people could come and hone their craft, but also backstage a man like you who see a lot, been through a lot, travel a lot, could be a good idea.
1:23:24
SPEAKER_03: My take on the competition is that where why was there a need for a competition?
1:23:30
SPEAKER_03: I start from them kind of questions, and the only thing I could come up with is some sort of control.
1:23:39
SPEAKER_03: And when you think about having control, it means that somebody had a vested interest.
1:23:44
SPEAKER_03: So somebody had an interest in what, making money or the proliferation of the art form, or what was it?
1:23:53
Corie: Yeah, I come from somewhere.
1:23:54
SPEAKER_03: Come from somewhere.
1:23:56
SPEAKER_03: And we've never really tried to analyze it to the extent to see whether or not it's a good thing or a bad thing.
1:24:03
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:24:04
SPEAKER_03: I would always say that Man a Bad Man, Bud had one of the biggest songs that year.
1:24:11
SPEAKER_03: Was in the soccer monarch.
1:24:12
SPEAKER_03: I think he actually came second or third in the soccer monarch.
1:24:15
SPEAKER_03: The following year, Bud was nowhere.
1:24:17
SPEAKER_03: When we saw Bud in New York, Bud was like, Go God, can I help me get my tune play and all something in right?
1:24:24
SPEAKER_03: Something ain't right.
1:24:26
SPEAKER_03: So the competition is not benefiting the artists.
1:24:29
SPEAKER_03: If the artist could be so big this year in the competition, and then the following year, do even get a peep in.
1:24:37
Corie: Yeah, then he can tell me development really.
1:24:39
SPEAKER_03: Ah, that is the point I'm coming to.
1:24:42
SPEAKER_03: So then who were you developing?
1:24:44
SPEAKER_03: I helping you develop a bigger bank account.
1:24:48
SPEAKER_03: That is why I feel like the carnival was there was some means to tell there was some reason that they wanted to control it.
1:24:59
SPEAKER_03: Who wanted to control it?
1:25:02
SPEAKER_03: A pick tongue, JC's carnival wanted to control the people and the expression and the groan was too militant, too violent, too commanding, that it was a trick, so they didn't need to put control.
1:25:25
SPEAKER_03: How to control the masses, competition and give them a prize.
1:25:30
Corie: Yeah, and then they go follow the rules.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_03: And then your then your lady rules.
1:25:34
SPEAKER_03: Then your lady rules.
1:25:36
Corie: Yeah, I guess that's the truth about Calypso, soccer competition, mass competition, by the way, yeah, all them different things.
1:25:42
SPEAKER_03: Whereas Rapso, yes, all the traditions came from the model and Africa, but the way Rapso was preserved and the way Lancelot Lane presented it, and what resistance bought into, and what we bought into, was the power of the word in the rhythm of the word, the power of the message in the festival.
1:26:06
SPEAKER_03: And that is.
1:26:07
SPEAKER_03: And super will tell you in the carnival, it's a room for everybody, you know.
1:26:12
SPEAKER_03: Carnival is a festival of festivals.
1:26:14
SPEAKER_03: Carnival is a festival of food, as we now seen with flavour.
1:26:17
SPEAKER_03: Of course.
1:26:17
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:26:18
SPEAKER_03: It's a festival of colours, it's a festival of mass, it's a festival of people, is a festival of music, it's a festival of trucks, it's a festival of look at the elaborate trucks that we see now.
1:26:32
SPEAKER_05: Of course, of course.
1:26:33
Corie: Lighting and trucks thing and go up on the top on the I pass by youth, youth panorama the other day as you bring up flavour, and I see Renegades par youth man up on top, a drummer up on top the thing.
1:26:44
Corie: They make a float, especially for here on top the thing.
1:26:46
Corie: So you're right, and you see it all the time.
1:26:48
Corie: Like I hear and I hear you discuss this in an interview to this other carnival, Jamaica, this, that, that versus shredded carnival.
1:26:55
Corie: My argument is that there's no comparison because when I drive wrong tongue on a Monday Nigerian carnival, every pan yard buzzing.
1:27:04
Corie: Correct.
1:27:04
Corie: Everywhere they're selling food buzzing, the safana, the flavour thing of people.
1:27:08
Corie: People are lime home, people going on the beach, people.
1:27:10
Corie: It's just uh completely immersive thing.
1:27:14
Corie: That's right.
1:27:15
Corie: So the the black box for you is a space where I I know that uh you could see it, where y'all not just give spaces like like you say in the yard, but your mentor, your teacher, your help, yeah, man.
1:27:26
Corie: Of course.
1:27:27
SPEAKER_03: We we're working with young people, um, the Thomas brothers.
1:27:31
SPEAKER_03: I mean, Mugabe Thomas is extremely talented.
1:27:34
SPEAKER_03: He calls himself the love warrior.
1:27:36
SPEAKER_03: I would like to see him get far because I like where his songs come from.
1:27:41
SPEAKER_03: I like how he thinks about his music.
1:27:44
SPEAKER_03: And and always thinking about that, you know, love is the one restorative thing in the world.
1:27:51
SPEAKER_03: Love and time.
1:27:52
SPEAKER_03: I always say restores anything.
1:27:55
SPEAKER_03: Me and you might be talking now, but two, three years down the road, we might bounce up and.
1:28:00
SPEAKER_03: Forget you wasn't talking enough.
1:28:01
SPEAKER_03: And we start to talk again.
1:28:03
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:28:03
SPEAKER_03: But that is based in the love that I would have genuinely for you, or you would have for me as a brethren or a sister or whatever the thing is.
1:28:12
SPEAKER_03: And we know time we put that behind me.
1:28:15
SPEAKER_03: So love and time is the only restorative things it have.
1:28:18
SPEAKER_03: Now, if you're doing that time in jail, you can't find love in there.
1:28:23
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:28:24
SPEAKER_03: So you have to be mindful.
1:28:26
SPEAKER_03: And he was a young man coming from a destitute, desperate situation, being involved in Tallman Foundation.
1:28:35
SPEAKER_03: So thanks to Michelle and them, you know, a young cheek for bringing young men who are vulnerable.
1:28:43
SPEAKER_03: Because he's the kind of guy if you see Mugabe, you'll be immediately fearful of him.
1:28:48
SPEAKER_03: Looks like he's gonna rob you in any minute now.
1:28:50
SPEAKER_03: I'm telling you.
1:28:52
SPEAKER_03: Six foot four, massive, and have that look.
1:28:57
SPEAKER_03: There's a look, and we know the look.
1:28:59
SPEAKER_03: We could see rubbed down when we walk in the road.
1:29:01
SPEAKER_03: That's a rub down.
1:29:03
SPEAKER_03: He will get rubbed down.
1:29:04
SPEAKER_03: You can see it, right?
1:29:05
SPEAKER_03: Of course.
1:29:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:29:07
SPEAKER_03: He looks like he's gonna be constantly rubbed up.
1:29:10
SPEAKER_03: So to know that, you know, you impact one young man's life like this, and he's not the only young man with life we have impacted, or young woman life has been impacted by us.
1:29:20
SPEAKER_03: But to see the growth and development, I will always nurture Gabi.
1:29:24
SPEAKER_03: And I say, Gabi, what a lyric day we go into the next week.
1:29:28
SPEAKER_03: What do you mean by that?
1:29:29
SPEAKER_03: I ain't catching that, you know.
1:29:31
SPEAKER_03: That's not clear to me, it's clear to you.
1:29:33
SPEAKER_03: You're the writer, you are the whole backstory in your head, but you're being cryptic now, you're editing your thing.
1:29:40
SPEAKER_03: How does it how does that translate to me or transcend to me to that I could, you know, rise with it?
1:29:48
SPEAKER_03: Line by line.
1:29:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, line by line.
1:29:50
SPEAKER_03: I we that is how we used to build music.
1:29:52
SPEAKER_03: I appreciate it.
1:29:53
SPEAKER_03: I tell him I say the message solid, but there's something here, there's a glitch.
1:29:58
SPEAKER_03: Let's work on that.
1:29:59
Corie: Yeah, and that's something I want to thank you for personally, because again, you you said, for instance, the among the things you accomplished, you're among the places that you travel to, and you're easily able to identify that listen, Kallo company is a university that teach you to live life and to make them choices.
1:30:15
Corie: Yep.
1:30:16
Corie: And I think that tricanals are institutional and universities who have been doing that for a long time.
1:30:20
Corie: Like, even when you come to these shows, I see the effort to make spaces for people who are outside of the trick canal show.
1:30:26
Corie: I'm not sure that I've seen this man in the carnaval at all.
1:30:30
Corie: No, you might not you might not see him.
1:30:32
Corie: So, brother, thank you very much.
1:30:33
Corie: Not just for today, but for everything that you're doing.
1:30:35
Corie: Anything and this was a joy, it's a pleasure.
1:30:37
Corie: Yeah, man.
1:30:38
Corie: A pleasure, a pleasure.
1:30:39
Corie: Appreciate this.
1:30:39
SPEAKER_03: We are enough time, man.
1:30:41
SPEAKER_03: I would I like to tell you about the inner breeding of our culture.
1:30:43
SPEAKER_03: There's always call it the inner breeding of our culture.
1:30:46
SPEAKER_03: First time I went to Jamaica, the big tune on the radio was um Bonke Killer, look into my eyes.
1:30:52
SPEAKER_03: Tell me what you see.
1:30:53
SPEAKER_03: Now you see me.
1:30:54
SPEAKER_03: You know that tune?
1:30:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:30:57
SPEAKER_05: I say, um, I say, I let up play that tune on the radio.
1:31:00
SPEAKER_05: Charman and Side Riot.
1:31:02
SPEAKER_03: Man tell me that.
1:31:03
SPEAKER_03: I say, What do you mean?
1:31:04
SPEAKER_03: He said, No, government ban them tunes, them tunes can't play on radio.
1:31:08
SPEAKER_03: And I reached Shenanda, that tune wheeling every day.
1:31:11
SPEAKER_03: Every station wheeling that tune, wheeling, pulling it up.
1:31:15
SPEAKER_03: And I said, I say, but wait now.
1:31:17
SPEAKER_03: If them not playing damn music for their own people, why is we playing that for we people and encouraging we people so we inbreed a culture that wasn't we own?
1:31:27
SPEAKER_03: That Margo fly and splatter come from the music.
1:31:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:31:32
SPEAKER_03: Globalization may not be a good thing.
1:31:35
SPEAKER_03: Because if you don't have enough of your own substance and own content to stand up against that, you lose yourself.
1:31:43
SPEAKER_03: And we lose ourselves to cable TV and Jamaican music.
1:31:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:31:47
SPEAKER_03: As I hope you say there's more culture than anything else, no.
1:31:52
SPEAKER_03: So that inner breeding of our culture, it it disadvantage.
1:31:57
SPEAKER_03: As opposed to give you an advantage or an edge in the world, it didn't help Trinidad and Tobago.
1:32:02
SPEAKER_03: And a lot of our young people, that is where the dumbning down started.
1:32:08
SPEAKER_03: By the music they chose to listen to.
1:32:10
SPEAKER_03: Was a dumbing down.
1:32:12
SPEAKER_03: We don't have no ghetto like the barrios in Brazil.
1:32:15
SPEAKER_07: No, no, no, no.
1:32:16
SPEAKER_03: Alright?
1:32:16
SPEAKER_03: And the sorry, the favelas in Brazil.
1:32:19
SPEAKER_03: I've seen it.
1:32:19
SPEAKER_03: I've been to Brazil.
1:32:21
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:32:21
SPEAKER_03: To perform.
1:32:23
SPEAKER_03: How much soak artists you know when Brazilians perform?
1:32:25
SPEAKER_03: I ain't sure.
1:32:26
SPEAKER_03: You see?
1:32:26
Corie: David Good.
1:32:27
Corie: Is what I was telling you.
1:32:28
Corie: But listen, the next time you come here and start with that, because we're kinda here serious conversations, they start again.
1:32:34
Corie: Time to run out.
1:32:38
Corie: My pleasure.