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Chucky Gordon: Music Saved My Life | The Corie Sheppard Podcast · Corie Sheppard Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: An old Calypsoan jing some rum.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: What talking about?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: He start to talk like it makes him dumb.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: He said that his songs today strange.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like he mixed the rum with Babage.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, I pride myself in being a Calypsoan and a thick inside, right?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: So if you hear look the press, what you would naturally think?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're trying to get rid of somebody, somebody had a bunk.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he was going there?
• 0:24
  Corie: A hundred percent because you're talking about 25.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: That is crazy.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Blazing, right?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: That was a big tune.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I've had successive soaker hits over the years.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of people don't know why I made soccer monarch on five occasions.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: What's five?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: That is stupid and real.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's a big historian.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Disappointing.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_04: Editor Brother.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: No leave it.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: Leave editors.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Leave that.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: You are now applying to us on the foreign step on the podcast.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Step on for we step up podcast.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Mommy, look on some management.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Don't lose this podcast.
• 1:07
  Corie: It's gonna be sexy.
• 1:13
  Corie: Hi, before we get started, we wanted to take a moment to ask you to support the channel for free by liking, sharing, and subscribing.
• 1:22
  Corie: Those are the three things that we realize you're not doing as much as you all say you're enjoying the conversation.
• 1:26
  Corie: So please, we appreciate your support.
• 1:28
  Corie: Let's get into today's conversation.
• 1:30
  Corie: Welcome to the Cory Shepherd Podcast.
• 1:31
  Corie: My name is Corey Shepherd.
• 1:32
  Corie: Thanks for tuning in.
• 1:33
  Corie: Welcome to everybody who knew.
• 1:35
  Corie: If you're here a long time, we're grateful to have you here.
• 1:38
  Corie: I have a man here who've been waiting here for a long time.
• 1:40
  Corie: He's drinking heavy, yeah.
• 1:41
  Corie: So my speech complicated all the gate, right?
• 1:43
  Corie: You're drinking heavy out here.
• 1:46
  Corie: With muscles.
• 1:46
  Corie: The man said he drinks and our muscles.
• 1:48
  Corie: I have a two-time calypso monarch, independence monarch winner.
• 1:52
  Corie: If Joshua Rogello have the longest pan plane ever, a world record, this man has a world record for the longest calypso I ever heard in my life.
• 2:00
  Corie: The calypso lasting about eight months, water voice I hear in here.
• 2:04
  Corie: And I feel I cracked the code.
• 2:06
  Corie: I said it here many times before that this gentleman I saw him perform this year.
• 2:11
  Corie: And I say it's a no way he can make semi-finals.
• 2:14
  Corie: Right?
• 2:14
  Corie: We started in the couture, right?
• 2:16
  Corie: We started all the gate.
• 2:17
  Corie: I said it's a no way he can make semi-finals.
• 2:18
  Corie: And I was in his semis.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: He was in his semis.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Have no way I can't make finals.
• 2:22
  Corie: I say, I say, I can't make I say, it doesn't happen here, but I feel I cracked the code when I listened back to the man music over the last few years.
• 2:28
  Corie: I feel I understand why I want to welcome to the show.
• 2:30
  Corie: Great Chucky Godman.
• 2:32
  Corie: Thank you very much.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: As you as you'll be putting nothing to happen before it's time.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: That is a fact.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: That is a fact.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I decommode program last year, we wouldn't have a Tory to tell.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I'm not voice here.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Number 19.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: We've been talking all the tags in between.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I could go about two hours with that song by now.
• 2:56
  Corie: Yeah, boy, yeah, boy.
• 2:57
  Corie: You remember all them voice, boys?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: If I want to sing a voice, honestly, I sort of sit down in the car before performance and review it.
• 3:06
  Corie: So how are you dealing with all them sit down?
• 3:08
  Corie: Because you sung a uncle.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, um, this 10th season talking about Uncle Um was was particularly interesting because when I realized the momentum this song was picking up, I started, and that's what led to the series, this ongoing series, eh?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: In the 10th season, when I realized the momentum of the song, and people say, hey, how we sing about this, get my tour about this.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So in the tent itself is when I started to develop new material consistently.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: I see.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and from then on, I was able to say, you know what?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that could keep going on for a long period of time.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:43
  Corie: Especially the way you put it together.
• 3:45
  Corie: You're doing your writing, right?
• 3:46
  Corie: You want to write all these things.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, initially the song was written by a guy by the name of Marvin Mason.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: So when I realized what's going on, I say, yo, I'm gonna construct all these voices.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: So now is a process by which I will sit down any concept that I have, and in half an hour time, I put together a voice.
• 4:01
  Corie: Well, before some of them verses, right, I'd ask you about some of them verses, right?
• 4:04
  Corie: And if you're frightened when you point out some of them verse in a climate.
• 4:07
  Corie: Now, if I was you, I might knock out some of them verse you put out.
• 4:10
  Corie: Right.
• 4:10
  Corie: But I want to talk about the hook and the way the song put together because that when the mark buzz.
• 4:15
  Corie: Right.
• 4:15
  Corie: Like I see it in the 1099.
• 4:17
  Corie: So as soon as you catch them, the whole audience buzz, buzz, yeah.
• 4:21
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: You see the response to it as you go.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um the way the concept of the Jiggy Calypso is, right?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Which is my brand essentially, is to be able to bring forward content that is both content-based and dealing with the harding issues, but also something that people can enjoy now.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: So when we're writing and when we're collaborating on the writing, it's always about finding the right hook.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: For example, look the press, of course, Mats and Matson, things like Charles E, you know, the way it's constructed is something that the people on the ground are already saying.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that when it is put into the song, they're able to gravitate towards it.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that is really the science behind it.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so um, I mean, that work, that work is real important work because I think a lot of people have continued to say that the calypso dying.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: And this is my way of reimagining the concept of calypso and bringing it towards a younger generation.
• 5:17
  Corie: Yeah, that Jiggy Calypso is real because like I hear people say, the man is a Calypsonian who is performed like a soccer artist.
• 5:24
  Corie: Well, he's a soccer artist who's look like a calypsonian, right?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and that's coming from a soccer experience.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I was mentioning before we started, um, blazing, right?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: That was a big tune.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I've had successive soccer hits over the years.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of people don't know I made soccer on five occasions.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's five.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Fine, finals on five.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man, David Reyes was a man.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: He was around.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: He was around, yeah.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um the experience of doing soccer and the performative aspect of it.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, our old man partner passed away now, Tony Reyes is always saying Calypso is a performing art.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at the greats of yesterday, even those who were able to balance serious social and political commentary with party music, that was a particular skill and a delicate balance in which one had to operate in now.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I had that particular experience of doing pure party music, and then now being able to find the bridge between what I want to see in Calypso and a party aesthetic.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that is quite deliberate in terms of when I go to studio capturing a certain feel and a song.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: I understand.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really what Jiggy Calypso is.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: I understand, I understand, I get it.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it took some years to develop, but now I'm seeing the fruits of that and and how it is manifesting in terms of people's response now.
• 6:41
  Corie: Yeah, well, let me talk about the climate now because I think the the the the the comments about calypso dying ain't now started.
• 6:48
  Corie: Since I small they're saying calypso dying, right?
• 6:50
  Corie: And that is when Stalin and them, the bads was in intense every night and in the finals and things, and they were saying Calypso dying.
• 6:57
  Corie: But I think I was talking to Kroper about this here the last time.
• 7:00
  Corie: But Krok Crook.
• 7:01
  Corie: Yeah, Krokro.
• 7:02
  Corie: That's the general sentiment when he said salute the great great response.
• 7:13
  Corie: That's who he is.
• 7:14
  Corie: That's who he is.
• 7:15
  Corie: But it's a crook and crew.
• 7:16
  Corie: It's like it's like so later one, but you see, look crooker and chucky here together now.
• 7:23
  Corie: I find they're too much in common.
• 7:25
  Corie: They are more in common than than dissimilar.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Israel for Krookro, I mean.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, them and them do what they do, you know what I mean?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And doing what they're doing, you know.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because you act, you mentioned about being in fear of what the current socio-political climate is.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And Kokru is a man to take example of.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, your work as a Calypsoan is to be taken seriously.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are to deliver on your responsibility, you can't really be afraid.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: But you have a mask in terms of speaking of the devices in Calypso.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: You have a mask in which you can stand behind and the CSI.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that is what you really say.
• 8:03
  Corie: Yeah, and that's a work.
• 8:04
  Corie: Well, that's a comparison for me.
• 8:06
  Corie: Because, like you said, crook raise a crook, right?
• 8:09
  Corie: And I don't think he cares about like ability.
• 8:11
  Corie: It's just who he is, yeah.
• 8:14
  Corie: But you, I see you are wrong for years.
• 8:16
  Corie: Right.
• 8:16
  Corie: And you're a man quick to smile, quick to levity, and them kind of thing.
• 8:19
  Corie: So I wonder if it's a different so you can see where he don't care what you say about people.
• 8:23
  Corie: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:23
  Corie: But I wonder if when you say, like um the last verse I hear writes on on Movie Land.
• 8:28
  Corie: I call all his song by the wrong name.
• 8:31
  Corie: Story time is talking about the emancipation thing, yeah, which is a real consensus issue with this.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: That is stupid and real long as a big historian.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: He disappoint the nation.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: No, leave it.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Leave that.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Editors, leave that.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: I said it because I want to re-emphasize and reinforce the point.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but to your point, yes, I've always been seen and alight.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's part of my bringing, my personality, and also my academic background, which requires, you know, engaging people with a certain temperance and sensitivity.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: But um serious about the calypso work.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, isn't it hard?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then this time in here, in terms of the way the society is not evolving, devolving, and the way people are evolving, I think it requires calling a speed a speed and speaking truth to power.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, right.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I've grown into that calling Calypsoan aesthetic, yeah, and trying to shake the fear a little bit.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and in spite of the ever presence of a PDO waiting, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:43
  Corie: It could be don't say PDO, edit that on too.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not leave PDO by this table.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can't say that the last man who said that.
• 9:51
  Corie: But PDO could mean public disorder.
• 9:54
  Corie: Yeah, sure, it could also mean permanent detention according to some people inside there, you know.
• 9:58
  Corie: So but the thing about it is like a balance, is a balance because you know you had to navigate this space, you had to be in public still, you have a life to live, you have family and things to study.
• 10:06
  Corie: But then uh, is there something you said that I want to read, right?
• 10:09
  Corie: It's not the greatest when it comes to reading, you know.
• 10:11
  Corie: But it's through to me.
• 10:13
  Corie: You said um Calypso has never been about comfort, it has always been about truth.
• 10:17
  Corie: The Calypsoan's role is to hold up a merit of society, reflect the conversations taking place in homes, workplace, rum shops, and communities, and challenge us to confront the issues that defide and define us.
• 10:30
  Corie: Still the way you feel about it.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Where Calypso was born out of.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we have the idea that carnival on the whole is about a revelry, but then you understand the substance, the the underlying current of what our carnival is, is really resistance, rebellion, reclamation of sense, and speaking truth to power.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a spiritual aspect associated with all of that.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: So definitely I ain't I ain't playing with that responsibility.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I ain't playing with our responsibility.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: So when I sang um Luctor Press last year, um my family vexed with me now.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: They still vex big up Auntie Margaret one time.
• 11:16
  Corie: Um that was Auntie Margaret, actually a legion, so she knows she knows she's back in, she has her horse.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, I pride myself in being a Calypsoan and not taking sides, right?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it was an election yeah 2025.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, April 2025, Carnival 2025, Look the Press.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: So if you hear Look the Press, what you would naturally think?
• 11:38
  Corie: Yeah, you're trying to get rid of somebody, somebody had a bongs, somebody at the bongs, yeah.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I've I've gotten feedback up until now that I am partly responsible for the exit of the I would like to echo that sentiment.
• 11:51
  Corie: I'm glad we get here early because.
• 11:53
  Corie: Oh, you was going there a hundred percent because that's crazy.
• 11:56
  Corie: You talking about that is crazy.
• 11:58
  Corie: You're talking about this election.
• 12:00
  Corie: Tell me the two years you win Calypso Man.
• 12:04
  Corie: 2014 and 15.
• 12:05
  Corie: Tell me when People's Partnership came out of power.
• 12:08
  Corie: Um, came out of power.
• 12:10
  Corie: 2015.
• 12:10
  Corie: Yeah.
• 12:11
  Corie: So use the last nail in the cuff when it's right, right.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: I said um, I said uh what well current prime minister, prime minister then come out smelling like a rose.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, yeah, boy.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: See why they care ball any final.
• 12:23
  Corie: I still see it, I still see it, I say right on the sun.
• 12:26
  Corie: Let me let me let me talk about this final thing.
• 12:27
  Corie: I can't I keep saying semis, I didn't realize you were any semis.
• 12:30
  Corie: So I had that wrong all time.
• 12:31
  Corie: Oh my god, that's it.
• 12:31
  Corie: Yeah, I'm that wrong, and I put out wrong information there all the time.
• 12:33
  Corie: So I'm glad they correct that.
• 12:35
  Corie: Yeah, on the night of the semis this year, you feel like you have it, you feel like you're inside.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um had a good performance and everything.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was great.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like I was in a flow.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the audience response was outstanding.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: After I performed, the audience, skinner crowd, continued to just sing Move along, move along, to the point that Rachel Price had to quiet them down and sing It'sy Bitsy Spider and tell and tell them she the Kia gas in trouble.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because yeah, people come out and move along, t-shirts, different groups.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I felt like I was inside.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: That was my best semi-final performance ever.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I have only gone to the semifinals on two occasions in my 14 entrance and not make it to the finals, and that was my best performance of all of all.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and my greatest crowd response.
• 13:30
  Corie: So, when you see the results and you see the names for the finals, what's your thoughts?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, my thoughts how I feel.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: You ever get a banker?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Bro, I was in literal shock.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had just to distance myself and just walk to the gesture room to collect myself because and it's not that I feel I have the right or entitled to be in the finals, yeah?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean it's competition.
• 13:57
  Corie: So all his finals on the night while he's still there, his final.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the semi-finals, yeah, yeah.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in literal shock.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I went up to the president, I was, I mean, I was really out of it.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I couldn't conceptualize not being in our finals given the trajectory of the song for the season and such and the response of the audience.
• 14:17
  Corie: Yeah, so shock is where you feel in a point.
• 14:19
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I went up to the president, I say, boy, I see, because I had a genuine feeling that something was afoot.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the spirit in my moment in time was just to go on just to go on reason and what kind of reasoning you talk about.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Nah, nah, nah, nah.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know you mentioned more diplomacy, right?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I went up to him and I mean it was just a way of me supposedly releasing, you know, just to kind of say, why?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if I could have used a bad word right now, I would.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but um, I say, Well, what happened to you?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so what?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna put any finals, you wanna put any finals?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he got a little defensive.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: I say, respect Mr.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: King.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Big up Mr.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: King, respect Mr.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: King, congratulations, yeah, yeah.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um re-re-won his yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Back in back in his rival city, yeah, yeah.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: He big and he bad right now.
• 15:18
  Corie: Big yourself.
• 15:18
  Corie: So it's an old story time verse coming about Mr.
• 15:21
  Corie: King.
• 15:21
  Corie: You could say you could safely say that because I know yeah, I didn't.
• 15:28
  Corie: Oh gosh.
• 15:29
  Corie: Just ask it.
• 15:30
  Corie: Just ask it.
• 15:31
  Corie: So I was in shock too, right?
• 15:33
  Corie: I was in shock.
• 15:33
  Corie: I see the night when the Judge Knight in the tent.
• 15:36
  Corie: And I tell myself, well, at that point, it's you trying to get it.
• 15:40
  Corie: Judge Knight was he was on fire.
• 15:42
  Corie: Yeah, he was on fire, on fire.
• 15:44
  Corie: So when I see you after you're laughing, I laugh.
• 15:46
  Corie: I say, Well, boy, guys want to I think in contestant for the crown.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I actually place four in the prelims, and you know, the preliminary preliminaries in Calypso is over 200 people, right, from all the different tents across the country, and then they do something called the bullpen.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right, of course.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: So to place fourth overall, where judges go to different spaces under different environments, under different emotions.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that speaks to something, right?
• 16:09
  Corie: Of course, of course.
• 16:10
  Corie: And it was you and Terry on that night.
• 16:12
  Corie: And I say, I say, all right, neck and neck here.
• 16:14
  Corie: I ain't seeing what else it is.
• 16:15
  Corie: So the question really is: is it your belief that if you're singing political commentary on them things, you're out of the competitions under this current dispensation?
• 16:24
  Corie: Wanna change your hat now or we good?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Nah, I want to keep on your red hat to say this.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is just reality.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I wouldn't um port I'm out to say that is the experience of everybody, and it is quite visible.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um the president had mentioned, hinted, not said overtly, but in several ways, you know, you're trying to keep the politics out of the competition and calypso because it is not seen as universally acceptable.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, my argument is, and there are two things.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: My argument is cannot trade baby out with a bat water in the sense of what calypso was born out of, as the first thing.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing is if you want to maintain that argument, there are methods by which you can achieve that.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: A Calypsoan of yesterday, as I mentioned earlier, balanced both worlds operated in both spaces, to the point of a unique integration, which is you're a Calypsoan dealing with the issues, he's a party man.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: That is what a true artist, in my view, really ought to represent.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the reggae artists, they sing on a range of issues.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the concept of not having politics, any calypso is a flawed one, but then when you have people in power who distributing the monies involved and in control of the pus and the sensitive, you have a level of interference.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know how exactly it played out, but we know because everybody who had a politically aligned song or motivated song was left out.
• 18:19
  Corie: Yeah, especially the people who sing in the year of the election and put people out and put other people back in and think that you're gonna do it.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: The interesting thing is I was in the finals in 2025.
• 18:28
  Corie: Yeah.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right, I'm telling you look to press.
• 18:32
  Corie: Well, they don't make a choice, yes.
• 18:33
  Corie: You always and Sunny talking about your eight people.
• 18:36
  Corie: If you're telling people look to press, who you telling look to press?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was telling whoever was not functioning at the point in time.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Look to press the press.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: That could be everybody in this country, isn't it?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, from business to religious leaders to politicians, right?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if it fall in your garden, right?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: What to it?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: I with you.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: I with you, I'll with you.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right, but how come I could have been in the finals?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Kut Allen, who I love this podcast with Put Allen was quite informative.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um Kut.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Lambash Rowley.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he was he came second in the finals.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So how come with my nice And he learned too?
• 19:13
  Corie: He learned window, yeah, and was talking about that was the letter, right?
• 19:16
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: But how come with my DT?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Very um craftily written, not as hard hitting.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's dealing with the issue and reflecting the ideas, the socio-political ideas, but they're not hard hitting.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I know starting hard hitting me.
• 19:33
  Corie: You can't say that Chucky.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, I know starting a hard hitting Corey.
• 19:36
  Corie: No, let me tell you why, yeah.
• 19:37
  Corie: Because of the same jiggy calypso, right?
• 19:39
  Corie: Let me talk about Stalin.
• 19:41
  Corie: You might say he craft a song in a way that might be hard hitting as in directly talking about a man like you're doing some of the verses now.
• 19:48
  Corie: But when you make the thing jiggy and you sing about people, and young people start to feel people don't care about politics now.
• 19:59
  Corie: They've not known somebody's names at all.
• 20:01
  Corie: They don't read the papers.
• 20:02
  Corie: That is the problem.
• 20:04
  Corie: But it's harder hitting that way because it it's in a groove that people like it.
• 20:08
  Corie: Because now I start to remember this song.
• 20:09
  Corie: Me and trying to remember it, you know.
• 20:11
  Corie: Yeah, but I remember and like I watch it, I watch after the first verse.
• 20:15
  Corie: You come and say, bus, boss.
• 20:17
  Corie: And by the second verse, you must see it every night.
• 20:20
  Corie: The whole tent.
• 20:21
  Corie: All sake and the mini back, bust.
• 20:26
  Corie: So it's hard hitting when it's when you think about it.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it's more it's more hard hitting than I talk does.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's more uh let me not say no names here.
• 20:34
  Corie: I don't think all names after the record.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: What are we talking about?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: He started talking like it makes him dumb.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: He said that these songs today strange.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like he makes the rum with Babash.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we just have what, yeah, yeah, we don't have that.
• 20:52
  Corie: We're not as strong as that.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we so muscular up here.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you you extoling the virtues of the Jiggy Calypso.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, it's bad, it's necessary.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: And my partner, big up Mr.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Chuckdus.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: See the calypsos study is trash.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is part of the problem.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:12
  Corie: If you're a business organization or brand looking to reach an engaged and growing audience, the Cory Shepherd Podcast offers opportunities to sponsor, partner, and advertise.
• 21:22
  Corie: You can check out the email address in our YouTube description or via the link in our bio on Instagram.
• 21:28
  Corie: We need the money.
• 21:30
  Corie: Like uh Max and House, you remember that?
• 21:34
  Corie: Yeah, I was I was shocked when I see it, you know.
• 21:36
  Corie: I was shocked when I see it.
• 21:37
  Corie: I was shocked that somebody recorded that.
• 21:39
  Corie: I was shocked that somebody put it out.
• 21:41
  Corie: Even more so than I was shocked that he said it.
• 21:43
  Corie: Because I have a philosophy about old age too, yeah.
• 21:45
  Corie: Me too.
• 21:46
  Corie: Yeah, when you get when you pass a certain age, like um it wasn't Quincy Jones.
• 21:51
  Corie: There was a fella who when he started to get older, he started selling out all kinds of secrets about men in Hollywood and things.
• 21:56
  Corie: He care what you say.
• 21:57
  Corie: You know what I mean?
• 21:57
  Corie: I feel when you pass a certain age, like I'm waiting for the age where I started coming here bareback and thinking with first button, a button is about here when you see a reach of Sydney that you start across you something.
• 22:06
  Corie: I think it's happened.
• 22:08
  Corie: But I think it's a very unfortunate statement because you are one of the few people who ever win Calypso back to back.
• 22:13
  Corie: Very few people have done that.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um actually the sixth person you should have Calypso.
• 22:17
  Corie: That should be I'm glad you're documenting that so it's important to say.
• 22:20
  Corie: And the and the people who you're amongst who've done that is all the greatest.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Chalk dust himself.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, respect you, right?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, Duke.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um Duke, Duke, of course, Duke done four times in a row.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Missing somebody at Tiladhan was the one.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Nah, nah, kitchen at it.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, kitchen.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Nah, nah, yeah.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Kitchen you want to call up someone at once.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, seriously, yeah.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Only once, yeah.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Tiladihan, Chalkdust, Sparrow, Duke, and Stryker.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And Chucky.
• 22:49
  Corie: And Chuck Gordon.
• 22:50
  Corie: Yeah.
• 22:50
  Corie: So when you hear the man and chuck, that's when he most.
• 22:53
  Corie: Yeah.
• 22:53
  Corie: When you hear the man like him say that.
• 22:55
  Corie: Yeah.
• 22:55
  Corie: I always wonder about things like that.
• 22:57
  Corie: Because from a fan standpoint.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you want to find out how we win the most?
• 23:01
  Corie: Or you want to leave that fan next podcast?
• 23:02
  Corie: I want to find out.
• 23:04
  Corie: Find from you or find from him?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, God.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Let me answer it in this way.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, there's a I I believe there's an artificial separation between Calypso and Sukha, right?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because um somebody, somebody modern their songs, I see it as calypso.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: My my my distinction is one that is content-based and telling a story, even if it has a party feel of aesthetic, much like Jiggy Calypso versus a strictly party song.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: That is my only separation.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that speaks directly to the separation that the elder artists were able to maintain, dealing with the consciousness or dealing with ideas, but then giving you a purely festival recreational song.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: There was a period in our history when that separation became quite stark.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: That was in like the 90s, when you still have people like Stalin and Duke and Tamboo and Rudder doing the balance.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then Sokamana come, Urban Radio come, the Soka Switch come, and then that started to alienate the party concept, send it in a particular direction, and it also served to alienate the Calypsoans who were also doing party music.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result of that, that is where people like Chok the Scrooge Road Sugar Aloe's.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And we and we must add as a necessary factor the politicization of the society because that is when the UNC came in for this first time, and you know when certain groups in power, how the race thing is flare up.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that was an additional factor.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that now steered the calypso union into a particular direction.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it as a result of that, the calypsos became rather formal like four verses, chorus, long-winded, over-explanation.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're gonna go can't beat him out there.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: You say it, I never say that.
• 25:07
  Corie: No, you go to the can beat him then.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but once we get to it.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: But um respect due.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's he's an absolute genius, he's a great, but we had to we're in a space and we're in a time where we have to kind of talk the things, right?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he was kind of instrumental in training judges over a period of time.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see, yeah.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that that contributed to the formula of the calypso over the past 20 to 25 years.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: I with you, yeah, and that created the kind of lamentable style that you know people have lamenting and lamentations, say a little bit.
• 25:44
  Corie: When I'm your knees and whole belly, yeah, holy belly.
• 25:47
  Corie: What's your whole belly inside you?
• 25:49
  Corie: Not me, yeah.
• 25:50
  Corie: Call names of a wisp.
• 25:51
  Corie: Call names of a wisp.
• 25:52
  Corie: I don't know nobody's name.
• 25:53
  Corie: I don't know nobody's name.
• 25:54
  Corie: But it's an interesting thing you're talking about because um, even in the the sentiment that the commentary Kaiso, or the or the political or social commentary, I feel like there are times when that was all you was hearing, and that's why, again, I have an affinity for the jiggy calipso, even the way you put it.
• 26:09
  Corie: Yeah, because it's easy to listen to it, easy to follow, especially as somebody like me who is up to date with issues.
• 26:15
  Corie: Yeah, when you're crafty, people who are up to date with issues go hear what you're saying and they go here where you're talking about it.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: For sure, for sure.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and the work also is even if you're not up to date with issues, you could feel it now.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, and you'll be like, We talking about boy, and then you're going to be able to do it.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, you could Google it.
• 26:29
  Corie: It's so fast compared to back then.
• 26:31
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:32
  Corie: So, last question about the last semifinals, right?
• 26:35
  Corie: Heal and Francis Mike.
• 26:36
  Corie: Yeah, boy.
• 26:37
  Corie: Your opinion.
• 26:38
  Corie: I plan to ask every Calypsoan this for the rest of my life.
• 26:41
  Corie: Yeah.
• 26:42
  Corie: What's your opinion?
• 26:43
  Corie: My opinion in terms of what?
• 26:44
  Corie: Technical error or the takeoff he might be because you're singing against you.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or rather, if it was deliberate or by chance.
• 26:52
  Corie: Don't laugh, don't laugh.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: I seen that already.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: I see walk.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um it it it appears that based on Mr.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Phillips, Mr.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Phillips kinda, you know, send people's mind in a particular direction.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he came on the station and said, Yeah, I'll work, right?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And said, well, no, no, cut the they cut.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's those were his words, yeah.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: They cut he land pike.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, it could not have been so we cut, he said they cut.
• 27:34
  Corie: He said they.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you want to walk that whack the whack the cut.
• 27:39
  Corie: I just asked him.
• 27:40
  Corie: Okay, can he belong to a lot of institutions?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: I just say no bad.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, yeah, yeah.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's right now that's a local PDD in my mind, yes?
• 27:50
  Corie: Careful, careful.
• 27:53
  Corie: What what what part of PDD life you're talking about?
• 27:55
  Corie: Yeah, big.
• 27:55
  Corie: No baby, also.
• 27:59
  Corie: So can he come out and say his technical time?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, it it it it was just overly poetic for them to cut the mic as soon as he mentioned these also bill.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, we don't know for sure.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: They couldn't produce, I can't remember the name of the the audit.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's a technical audit that's a good idea.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: People were asking for they never produced it, right?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that kind of again sends people mind in a particular direction.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: But um, based on all the evidence, yeah, yeah.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I want to use how about it.
• 28:33
  Corie: Yeah, use use all because you know what's funny.
• 28:36
  Corie: I had I was my point up during the whole thing was that okay, when I see Mr.
• 28:40
  Corie: Shaq in there and Queen Victoria and there, Chucky, and there, even chromatics.
• 28:44
  Corie: I just know I say, well, this ain't looking good.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Devon Seal.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Duan O'Connor.
• 28:48
  Corie: Yeah, Duane O'Connor was on fire tonight, too.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Dino O'Connor had a one of the better songs in my time.
• 28:55
  Corie: That was too jiggy.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it wasn't quite jiggy, sir.
• 28:58
  Corie: No, but it's always doing it when you have a lean, so when you see you doing jiggy lean, it was too bad.
• 29:06
  Corie: Bad song, bad song, bad song, bad song.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um had a nice one.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just I mean, but Victoria for me was stinging.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she was obvious.
• 29:17
  Corie: And then so when I see that, and then I see healing my cut off.
• 29:20
  Corie: Uh it's I again as a bystander and a layman.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's I say two coincidence.
• 29:26
  Corie: Let me add to that now.
• 29:26
  Corie: It's almost selling cool.
• 29:28
  Corie: When I see people get boo in emancipation thing, and then TTT drop the feed.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 29:33
  Corie: Sorry, Oli go ahead of the volume one.
• 29:36
  Corie: But when I see that, I say I say, nah.
• 29:39
  Corie: So you can't tell me it's technical difficulty with healing, and then it's technical difficulty emancipation night because people get boo too.
• 29:48
  Corie: I don't know.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was warned.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was warned.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was told by an influential person in one of the nights in the tent, right?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think the ministers and and they were supposed to appear.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the question was asked, who performing?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well that time story, time popular, right?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the feedback was that they're not coming.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh when he where he's singing, or where this one's singing, and we live in intermission.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: I had a living experience recently, you know.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can't laugh, you have to stay serious.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it's ridiculous, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: So what's the experience?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, emancipation day in the savannah.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like the filler was coming to sanitary time.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's a tribute of a baron, bro.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: About seven of them sat in front of the stage.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as the look announced me, everybody give up and walk off.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: I say, I want to walk off too.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: I tell them my mind.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, bro.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Don't let them give me them kind of positions.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you put yourself in a position of power, you place yourself in a position to be criticized and ridicule.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: You had to take it.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: As a manager, I'm sure you've had management experience.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know what it is.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:21
  Corie: Yeah, but I just walk out.
• 31:22
  Corie: I mean if it's in the office, me if it's podcasts, they say something bad about me, I walk over his damn table right now.
• 31:28
  Corie: So, in terms of your creative process now, does it affect you?
• 31:32
  Corie: Because you're getting them warnings.
• 31:33
  Corie: I heard Krocross say here when he was here that he had a line about the education minister, a man telling me in a way, boy, we do the Krang is yours, but the way you take out that line.
• 31:42
  Corie: It's affecting your creative process in terms of what you want to sing about and what you want to say in your songs?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, no, because again, back to Skinner Parker, just as a reflection, a point of reflection.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was told that if I hadn't mentioned the points about Orlando Octave and certain things about the current prime minister, I would have been side.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: They said those were those lines.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: That was the ones I get out.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was the lines that say if if there was something afoot, as as we are assessing it to be so, those were the the lines that contributed to that.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, as I say, you had to be able to stand on your conviction as a Calypsoan.
• 32:24
  Corie: But who you go eat?
• 32:25
  Corie: Because some points you had to make the money.
• 32:26
  Corie: So the balance there is if people you say the people who in control and have the power and control and the budget saying those say this.
• 32:33
  Corie: Yeah.
• 32:33
  Corie: What are you gonna do then when you say it and then you're outside of the major competitions?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, that's why we're living in a wonderful time.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're living in a beautiful era where you could create your own.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the work.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is the work.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and my conception of my approach, my brand, and what I'm evolving into is as you say, jiggy.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I know I bring in entertainment value.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: So when I'm curating my events and my shows, I could say what I want to say, and it have people according to Kroko who will like you and who will come and support.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, all on my social media, getting direct messages literally almost every day when you're having your show.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's it's coming.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: So in no space, in no endeavor of entrepreneurship, you ought to have to rely on government because you know that is inconsistent at best.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, inconsistent at best.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, and especially in this kind of climate that is so divisive and so unnatural and rooted in untruth that you know you really had to kind of step back and decide, you know.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, create your own billion dollars.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I see work, yeah.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: All right, added to the fact that I mean I'm I'm gamefully employed otherwise.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you're checks coming in.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: What is though otherwise?
• 34:04
  Corie: I don't think I want to.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm a practicing social worker.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right, I've been practicing social work for the past 20 to 20 years.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: I see, yeah.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: Straight out of UE.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: I went straight into working as a social worker.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I've looked at youth who've been involved in criminal activity, youth coming from various experiences of risk and advertising adversity.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: So work with families, work with groups, individual counseling, a lot of advocacy work.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have a master's in HR.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, very um interestingly, yeah.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: I've never practiced HR in my life, but I now gain the opportunity to do so.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, just so, just so.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Just so, just so.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Just so I say by the universe, no way you're doing by it.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting alignment.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:54
  Corie: So, social, that's something you always want to do.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, when I was at St.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Augustine Senior, yeah, I big up the Alma Mata, green machine.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had a teacher who really saw a vision for me, Mr.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Chinna Pooh.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, big up Mr.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Chinna pooh, and he pulled me square one day.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Um, you know, Chuck with your he didn't say Chuck.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Roderick.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Chuck and Governor.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: Chuck and Covia.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Roderick with your interest, with your academic potential and your interest in music, the world could be at your fingertips in terms of opportunities.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I fell in love with sociology, that was the subject.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: I got an A at A levels.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: And when I applied to do sociology, he kept calling me back.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: He said, You know what?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think social work will give you far greater opportunities.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so said so then, as a male social worker, I've been able to walk into positions because it's a rare breed.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I fell in love with social work at the age of 18 because of what it did for me in terms of my own understanding of self, personal transformation, and healing.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, healing with training is lifelong, right?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: But at that point in time at 18, understanding my own sense of risk and the difficulties as an adolescent dealing with depression and inadequacy and self-doubt, that was a critical period in my life.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Understood, understood.
• 36:17
  Corie: So, in terms of your own not just the work you're doing with other people, just understanding yourself.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: The initial phase when you introduce to social work is how do you use yourself as an individual.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's your first phase.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding of your emotions, developing emotional intelligence.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: What are your struggles and your difficulties?
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because you you ought not to operate from a place of deficit when you're dealing with other people, right?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of transference and counter-transference.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, of course, of course.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a critical period for me, boy.
• 36:47
  Corie: But from school you went on, how you learned in terms of social work where you went on to be a little bit more.
• 36:51
  Corie: I went to UE.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: I went to university Western is here, undergrad, and from there I went to work.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: What was the programming undergrad?
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: Social work, BS in social work.
• 36:59
  Corie: Okay, gotcha, gotcha.
• 37:00
  Corie: Yes, so from bachelor's in social work, you went to lockjack and do HR.
• 37:03
  Corie: Yeah, but right after one time, one time.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's a piece of madness.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't just didn't make no sense.
• 37:11
  Corie: I guess it's people-centered.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know why.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Look where you're not.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but you say if I use HR manager, bro.
• 37:24
  Corie: So your decision to do HR at the time was just to get more on the business side, or why you chose HR after?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it was, as you mentioned, the people-centeredness.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think I was guided to do that by my daddy.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah, say I want to go and do a master's in social work.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Nah, diversify.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the real thing.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, I had absolutely no interest after doing that degree in pursuing anything.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: I never applied for each other one day in my life.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Seriously, Lord.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's that just so just so with not even an application.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 38:00
  Corie: It's for you, yes.
• 38:01
  Corie: Yeah, I suppose, I suppose you can't avoid it.
• 38:03
  Corie: If it's if it's yours, it's yours.
• 38:05
  Corie: You bring up daddy, you have to say names here, you know.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: Roland Gordon.
• 38:10
  Corie: You know what I mean?
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most generous and giving individuals where his gift is concerned.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Daddy shared that gift with everybody.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he had an agenda behind the sharing of the gift.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: He was able to attract us with an attention, but all right, nice.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: I must get that gift.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Let's focus on the giving of the gift.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_04: And the gift that kept giving.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_04: Alright.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: But um, he touched so many people.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I could go anywhere.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've traveled extensively, and I meet anybody in across North America in the Caribbean, and they remember him.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I also feel like he wasn't truly re-honored for the work that he did.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, across Parang, Steel Band, Calypso, Judging, South Pest Village, I mean, Arranging, Sandfest, I mean, music festivals, you name it.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I feel like his life and the work that he did, I always feel like it offered me grace now.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, grace because the way people spoke about him, it's almost like they poured that energy into me.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: I see.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel that now.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: I literally feel that in my spirit now.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, of course.
• 39:34
  Corie: Back my father credits him.
• 39:35
  Corie: He said, That's the reason he started playing guitar from the tent and going into song reverend them.
• 39:40
  Corie: I hear about your father for years.
• 39:43
  Corie: I couldn't make the connection.
• 39:44
  Corie: I didn't even know that Chucky.
• 39:46
  Corie: So when he tell me eventually, he called me the other day, he said, but one number for Chucky boy.
• 39:49
  Corie: I said, I say, talk to him.
• 39:50
  Corie: He said, No, Chucky said, that's Roland Gordon.
• 39:52
  Corie: I said, Yeah, yeah.
• 39:53
  Corie: I hear that name since I was small growing up and in the culture and helping people see.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: I read the chapter in your dad's book.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it it tri it trimmed trimmed to the world's neighbor.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: He said, just play, play anything.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you had but you know, I like I I sit back and I read it.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was confused now.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because that I never had that experience with my father.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: My father was so gentle and careful, and you sure you could do this, and and that's how we deliver that people check.
• 40:27
  Corie: Yeah, I hear daddy talk about that for years, but I was telling him the other day, I said, Boy, you know, he said, This man hand me the thing and leave me stranded there.
• 40:33
  Corie: I said, Boy, you had to look at that differently.
• 40:34
  Corie: I said, because for a man of his experience to switch instruments with you and hand you that means he ever confidence in you that you need.
• 40:42
  Corie: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
• 40:42
  Corie: So he tells me he said, play a note the whole time.
• 40:46
  Corie: You must be in shock, you must never get in the pull up streak.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, and and that reminds me of also, I mean, I meet some of his past students and their father was real strict.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Father used to have a long whip, so beat people, he pull you over, he pull up your pants, you something may get a wedge.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: And my father never beat me.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: He never had them see never get licks.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_04: So it's only you get trouble, and other people should read people.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: The most, but I suppose it's the relationship we had because the most amateur guys are I and then I just shape up.
• 41:24
  Corie: So from small growing up, you that means you're seeing the culture from very small.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was exposed to Calypso very early, right?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: So three, yeah, three pillars.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: So there's my father, there's my big brother, John Boy.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're familiar with John Boy.
• 41:42
  Corie: Salute John Boy from radio actors.
• 41:43
  Corie: From radio actors and an excalibur.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, big great one.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: But John Boy is a legend in the game, right?
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the other pillar is my uncle, former Calypso Monarch and Road Match winner, Penguin.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, my uncle-in-law.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I was kind of surrounded by I mean all aspects of music that was Trin Bigonian, even the Reggae and Dancehole in the 90s, because that is when radioactive and they became quite popular, right?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I know my brother breaking my father twin tables and yeah, in the middle and thing, and yeah, and and we have a little money he could gather together, he went by chow on Shaggy Road to buy records, you know.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then of course, exposed to Daddy through Steel Pan, he was an arranger for Mova Love until he had won six titles in seven years.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: He was a music teacher and arranger.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: He always had people coming home to rehearse, always investing in somebody's child musically, some young Calypsoan coming to practice.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then Uncle Penguin, who started me as a Calypsoan, he wrote my first set of calypsos.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: But also, and an additional pillar, my cousin Chris on Joseph, he's a popular vocal vocalist, that's Penguin's son, right?
• 42:58
  Corie: Of course, of course.
• 42:59
  Corie: Right.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: So he started in junior calypso a little before me.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: So by the time I was six or seven, I was seeing Chrison singing, Daddy Involve, Penguin still doing his thing.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: He was president at Tuco at a particular time.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: He was still performing.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then well, my brother doing his thing in terms of the music.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: And at 10-11, small man going to parties with my brother.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: Ready, mark, ready mark and excala days had a red bus, bro.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: What it is inside coconuts.
• 43:37
  Corie: Yeah, of course, crazy.
• 43:38
  Corie: Of course, yeah.
• 43:39
  Corie: Like balance.
• 43:40
  Corie: Yeah, balance, yeah.
• 43:40
  Corie: That's a better word.
• 43:41
  Corie: Balance.
• 43:42
  Corie: What area are they grow up in?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, originally Lavantil.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Lavantil, yeah, yeah.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: But you spent some time in Woodbrook.
• 43:47
  Corie: I see, yeah, yeah.
• 43:48
  Corie: So what school are you going at that time?
• 43:49
  Corie: Primary school and your tongue boys.
• 43:51
  Corie: And you tongue boys go and get twice.
• 43:54
  Corie: No, we don't have funny tongue.
• 43:56
  Corie: You tongue boys might be responsible for more calypso money than chuck.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mention you tongue boys, I mention Guston, I mention you we good to go.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 44:23
  Corie: So new tongue is singing from the Calypso competition.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: I won the first time I ever sang Calypso wall in New Tongue Boys.
• 44:29
  Corie: Penguin ready song.
• 44:30
  Corie: This is advantage.
• 44:31
  Corie: This is advantage.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: Who don't like the budget is them?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: But this young boy have no problem.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: Cause I'm very pleased.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: They drop the price of cheese.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: And macaroni prices get disqueased.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's only macaroni pie.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: Macaroni pie.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: Macaroni pie.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: Macaroni pie.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: Tell Catelli.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: You remember that near boy?
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: They couldn't get banner.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: And sponsor easy history.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: And new steel banner.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's only macaroni pie.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: Macaroni pie.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: Toilet paper two use after macaroni.
• 45:23
  Corie: New tongue mashup.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: Mash up.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Flatten.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: That time was time.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: I still small right.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Stature wise, you know, diminutive.
• 45:35
  Corie: There's a new new tongue building.
• 45:37
  Corie: You know any old building.
• 45:38
  Corie: You need a new building.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's a new building.
• 45:40
  Corie: New building, yeah.
• 45:41
  Corie: Yeah, that was nine.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: That was ninety ninety eight.
• 45:43
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:43
  Corie: When I was there, still your old building, and all we all we walk a ton and thing pay for little thing.
• 45:47
  Corie: So Macrony pants in his school at all.
• 45:49
  Corie: But new tongue, plenty people, plenty good things come out on you, too.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I remember um I was in class with with Kitch last son.
• 45:56
  Corie: Right.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, canester.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: Man, I used to marvel when Kitchener pull up with a four in the courtyard and he came out in his suit.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: I say, but reflecting on it now.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Two o'clock when he did this man in the suit and the stuff at such yeah, commitment.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: The brand is the brand.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: The brand is the brand.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, it's a great space, but shout to Mr.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: Gorey, Mr.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: Blackman, Mr.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: John, Mr.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Graham.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Mr.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: John, he could still do them time.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is he legendary?
• 46:31
  Corie: Yeah, he was there in my time, too.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 46:35
  Corie: Calling names many in our long situations, really.
• 46:39
  Corie: Yeah, but he's gonna make his hand new tongue.
• 46:43
  Corie: We lose any audience who didn't go as prestigious schools as New Tong, you know.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure, sure.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Let's dial it back.
• 46:50
  Corie: I want to ask you about performance because you have a way on stage, a level of confidence, whether it's so kaiso, wherever you're saying.
• 46:56
  Corie: Like I remember seeing you a night when um Explainer's daughter had done a show in I can't remember.
• 47:02
  Corie: It was in government plaza, that's right.
• 47:04
  Corie: And you came on and but you have a swag and a presence on stage that many people would envy.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:10
  Corie: Macaroni Pie days, what is it like going on stage for the that's the first time you're gonna perform a song where so I am still as nervous now as I was nervous then.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: The pre-stage jitters never leaves you, you know.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know, it's some experience that you always have, that from the time you step on stage, it is just leave, regardless of the audience response.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: But but that that pre-stage jitters, and I heard Nadia talk about this already.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: Many people, I think there's there's this space in which it allows you to focus to kind of kind of tune in on what you need to do.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but in terms of my my performance aesthetic, it really developed through Best Villager.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I always see some of the better performers and vocalists come from two spaces.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Is that you come from church or you come from Best Villager?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: Best Villager allows you to practice the triple track ideation, which is singing, dancing, and acting.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've had to do all.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you develop a sense of space, you develop a sense of time, and I develop a sense of presence.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: But the critical factor is you develop it with no pressure because you're in a space with plenty of people and you know you're guided and you're supported.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: So when you when you get to practice with little pressure, I think that is where the the real abilities kind of emerge.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I performed in Best Village, I did um theatre for I mean I actually won Best Male Actor.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, from Secondary School Festival in Guston, straight up to working with Malik Foot Performing Company.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: Best all-round performer, best male vocalist for a number of years.
• 49:01
  Corie: Yeah, so despite whatever is the stage, you're comfortable.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Once you step out on stage, once you have a sense of what you're doing, once you step out on stage, that leaves you.
• 49:10
  Corie: Gotcha, gotcha.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a performance collipse, so it's a performing art.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: It is a performing art.
• 49:16
  Corie: It's important to remember that.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's critical.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's critical.
• 49:19
  Corie: I mean, you write on your melody, it's still a carry.
• 49:22
  Corie: I mean, Sparrow.
• 49:23
  Corie: I mean, come on.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, that's the master.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: As good as it is.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I was so privileged to be able to embody Sparrow in in the 10 to 1 play.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, of course, that was that was a remarkable experience, being able to travel with it as well.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: We went to Sun Lucia, we went to Barbados and to learn the history of Sparrow and in terms of the climate at the time, it ain't too different from now, you know.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of the level of subjugation and having to fight for Calypso as a space.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Sparrow does real work.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: Sparrow was a literal rebel in terms of mobilizing the industry, and he brought Calypso to the level of commercialization and professionalization that it is today.
• 50:09
  Corie: So yeah.
• 50:10
  Corie: Well, I hear people say most people talk about how Calypso was born.
• 50:14
  Corie: And in a sense, I starting to believe just from these conversations that 50 years from now we're gonna be saying the same thing because sometimes it's born that way and it designed well, yeah.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think in that, I don't want to believe that we want her to grow up, right?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to be able to do that.
• 50:33
  Corie: Yeah, because when it look at Rose, you could say that about Rose, you could say about Kitchen here, Shadow Talk, all of them talk about it, brother, everybody who passes through.
• 50:40
  Corie: If you want to support the show and ensure that we gain the best guests here telling the best stories and we gain a little bit of back and all out to all of them, you could support for free by liking, sharing, and subscribing on YouTube.
• 50:51
  Corie: But you could also join our Patreon, it's just file us to ensure that we could continue to get stories that inspire, educate, empower, inform, and all the other in things that these people behind the scenes tell me to say.
• 51:02
  Corie: So go and do it now, and then we could jump back into the episode.
• 51:06
  Corie: Bang.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I suppose those who were able to evolve as a survival space is those who I could say it um find your space in their own and really beat and massage that now.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and create an identity and a brand through your work.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm really fortunate to be in an era where some of the younger Calypsonians doing their work.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody now have a style and a sound, you know, for me to say how kind of who I love very much to theory, to heal on.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody finding the song and the space, the identity, the performance aesthetic.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's a reclamation of sense, so to speak.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a new era.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm hopeful that we don't have to be fighting so much.
• 51:55
  Corie: Well, boy, good best socials.
• 51:57
  Corie: Because you know, the thing about it is like I was telling somebody the other day, one of the saddest things I see is Patrick Manning pass away so soon after he leave power them thing.
• 52:05
  Corie: Because edit again.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: Don't leave that leave that.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I want to make a a jiggy call up some of that.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: Leave that!
• 52:19
  Corie: Yeah, we might try to take royalties on that.
• 52:21
  Corie: Keep the scene.
• 52:22
  Corie: But the thing is, like, when he, you know, you see these men and women sacrifice so much for the country.
• 52:26
  Corie: You could say what you want about him.
• 52:28
  Corie: Like, he was a man of, I mean, if you leave, you say it, when you reach the highest levels of power, you open yourself to ridicule, criticism, whether it's fair or unfair, don't matter.
• 52:36
  Corie: But it was always nice to see Manning and Panday play a little card in the end.
• 52:40
  Corie: Oh god.
• 52:41
  Corie: And you know how loved, like, people talk about them now.
• 52:43
  Corie: I hear people talk about Uncle Baz and Pathos, they hated these two men at the time.
• 52:48
  Corie: So I think like when I hear people talk about the the heyday of Calypso, and they talk about the 80s, or they talk about the time Chuck does dominate in, for instance, 80s into 90s and that kind of thing.
• 52:58
  Corie: You know, it's my belief that people saying this now, this crapper Calypsoans, the ones you call just now, along with the others, this is how people will talk about you all, but unfortunately, you're gonna hear 20 years.
• 53:08
  Corie: So you had to bear with people.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna hear when you come out of power, according to um to John Gill, the making of legends.
• 53:15
  Corie: The making of legends, that's why it is the making of legends, it's a fortunate steel.
• 53:20
  Corie: It's not a nice process.
• 53:21
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: So remember, I mean, I'm I'm having I'm having an experience like that, you know, in terms of because I mean I've been singing calypso soccer is 20 years already, you know.
• 53:34
  Corie: 20, 20 years.
• 53:35
  Corie: Oh, I thought it was more because the first time I see you, you had to be in primary school still.
• 53:40
  Corie: Well, all right, no, but professionally, yeah.
• 53:42
  Corie: Gotcha, gotcha.
• 53:42
  Corie: Okay, all right.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to if you want to calculate the all years from my time I first step on stage in Newton Boys, it'll be 31 years.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:51
  Corie: Yeah, because that would start a form, you know.
• 53:53
  Corie: That's the formula legend, right there.
• 53:54
  Corie: I hear you.
• 53:55
  Corie: Most of the people who was on stage in New Tong Boys, like myself singing Kaiso.
• 53:58
  Corie: We've done that, you know.
• 53:59
  Corie: 685.
• 54:00
  Corie: I say, all right, there's not for me.
• 54:02
  Corie: I can't handle this.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, father's a bad Kaiso, yeah.
• 54:04
  Corie: He body, body, body.
• 54:06
  Corie: No Kaiso, you know, he know the thing.
• 54:08
  Corie: But my time in Newton would have been doing a corner and Colonel Robertson then beating me like a dog and Christian every year.
• 54:13
  Corie: So I done with that.
• 54:14
  Corie: But when you're done with Newtons, where you went you went to um I went to some other government secondary.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: I see, right out of the yeah.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to form to form five, and then I went to Gustin for A levels.
• 54:24
  Corie: Right.
• 54:24
  Corie: And you continued performing because that's the same triple threat you have.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I was involved in singing calypso.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was in Parang.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I won Best Mill Vocalist in Junior Parang Festival for about two years straight, and also Best Village.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: I saw listen, I used to be missing classes like that.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: I used to be missing classes.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but I mean the principal understood because obviously I represent in his school in many years.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: I see.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: But some of the teachers used to coast.
• 54:56
  Corie: I imagine they would.
• 54:58
  Corie: I imagine they would.
• 54:59
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:00
  Corie: At that point in time, your ambition is to be a performer.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, no.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when when that really developed, I just was doing it because I knew I could do it, and I enjoyed.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly enough, it was an outlet.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean I had a I had a difficult teenage adaptation period.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're gonna talk necessarily about the risk, but it was a challenge in dealing with self-esteem and and and depressive issues.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that allowed me to form community in several ways.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I was constantly busy.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: I was best village practice, parang practice, right?
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it allowed me to have a close relationship with my father as well because he was the man who would curate the calypso and take me through my pieces.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: Other than that, he's on your own scene, yeah.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: Giving gifts, he's attracting attention and giving gifts, otherwise.
• 55:55
  Corie: So that so yeah, I like this giving a gifting.
• 56:02
  Corie: I like this giving a gifting.
• 56:03
  Corie: Yeah, I heard you say in an interview before, but that is really in them teenagers, like in your late teenagers, you start to get closer to him.
• 56:09
  Corie: It's truly performing on that kind of thing.
• 56:11
  Corie: Absolutely.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: He died when I was 22.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's only in the past be two years prior to that we became really close enough.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: Other than that, is whoever.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: What normal teenage rebellion and you're living your life, or um, nah, I wasn't really rebellious in that respect.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think my issue was a lack of attention and attunement, right?
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: So he wasn't present in the way that I would have liked him to be.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he was he was present because I was involved in the performing arts.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, interestingly enough, thinking about it now as a point of reflection, um, that's probably what drew me to it.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: Seeking daddy's attention and approval.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but but also the exposure allowed me to be propelled into the into these spaces and the work.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: It makes sense.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: So absolutely no regrets because to one extent it helps save my life.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um save my life from plenty of moments of depression and suicidal ideation and them kind of things.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you have them outlets, it helps with your healing work.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you become you get to become something else.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: When you're on stage as a theater, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: When you're on stage as a and you embody in a role, your psychic experience is different, you know, because you're now something else, and then that could transform into your own healing and sense of integration.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:38
  Corie: I suppose it shows you that you can escape your regular experiences every day, I suppose.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you get to you get to seep into other emotions, and that can help you now to tap into what you are actually experiencing on a normal basis.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_04: Fear, fear, fear.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: Theater is life, theater is life, and never give up theater, boy.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, theater is life.
• 57:57
  Corie: Yeah, I also heard you say your mom was living abroad.
• 58:00
  Corie: Your mom was near grow up with grandparents mostly.
• 58:02
  Corie: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, mommy, um well and daddy again.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: Big up Rollo, yes, anyway, yes, every time.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: Not one time, but two times.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: Ummy had to run away, but mommy, I hope you forgive me for saying this, but yeah, yeah.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was difficult for us, so she left.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right, she left when I was four.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a little latent abandonment issues associated with that.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, she had to leave and I live primarily with my grandparents in Lavantil.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: With my two other siblings, John Boy and my bigger sister.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but she came back when her mother died when I was about seven.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the first time I was able to really experience mommy when I was seven or eight.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no fault of hers.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: She just had to do what she had to do.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:55
  Corie: You know, things funny, sometimes it takes you to reach this age, start to look back.
• 58:59
  Corie: Like when I even talk about my mother or my my father, it takes some some age I reach must be in my late things.
• 59:05
  Corie: You know, maybe when I started and I suddenly realized, but this was just two normal people trying to figure things out, just like me.
• 59:10
  Corie: You think that is they have everything figured out and then know is lifelong, you know.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and I think we just had to give each other grace, way, regardless of what, you know.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, grace, and I mean, I believe in the power of forgiveness.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I have been trampled upon in many areas, even in my early experience as a as an artist.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I get real real dismissiveness, real disrespect.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: And even from people who I'm close to now, it's it's like you know, you forgive, you live and yet live.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let bygones be giggons, according to my old man partner.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: Ri Hallman, boy.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oh doc.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: Let byguns be bygones.
• 59:52
  Corie: Yeah, 100% are with you.
• 59:54
  Corie: I want to get into them early days too, but before that, like rum.
• 59:58
  Corie: Eh-When's happening here, people got a special girl playing on here, boy.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: I thought we'd have yellow hat though.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 1:00:08
  Corie: So it means nobody and nobody and we team no car and no gabby.
• 1:00:11
  Corie: Nobody didn't come in and change nothing.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: Gabby can make sure it's a yellow hat to bring to the thing, man.
• 1:00:19
  Corie: It's important, it's important.
• 1:00:27
  Corie: But you know what we can do the next time you come back, you can walk with yellow alone.
• 1:00:30
  Corie: You know, yellow is a code.
• 1:00:32
  Corie: You can do it before the final two.
• 1:00:33
  Corie: We can make it yellow.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yellow is the code.
• 1:00:36
  Corie: That is crazy.
• 1:00:37
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:38
  Corie: We gotta make it happen.
• 1:00:39
  Corie: We gotta make it happen.
• 1:00:40
  Corie: So once again, to you coming out of school or when it became what colour does have this?
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: Red.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: But you're not called never see you in the program with that.
• 1:00:55
  Corie: No, not especially a red one.
• 1:00:57
  Corie: Kill me, money.
• 1:00:58
  Corie: My cup done red, have a red jersey.
• 1:01:00
  Corie: They're frightened away to what it's coming out of the porn no red jersey.
• 1:01:04
  Corie: I have a scale between red and yellow as a metric, you know, like what is do the rector scale.
• 1:01:08
  Corie: So I watch the guess and I say, alright, depending on where this guess is, I will stay black, boy.
• 1:01:14
  Corie: Stay neutral.
• 1:01:15
  Corie: Stay neutral.
• 1:01:17
  Corie: Let me stay neutral.
• 1:01:18
  Corie: So when it when it started to become professional for you, because you're in these spaces, you do anything in nowadays where you want to do.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when I went, when I entered university at 18, I entered my first Calypso tent, which was a Kaiso caravan.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so they used to run that tent in La Jolla.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was always run by Johnny King.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: So my dad was able to squeeze me in on a couple of nights.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it was that was 2005.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, I was still in Ingusten.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: I see.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I entered the tent in 2005.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: I entered the UE.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, sorry.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was in U already.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was in UE in 2004.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that first year, I made it a skinner pack.
• 1:01:55
  Corie: Oh, seriously from Caught the Gates.
• 1:01:57
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:57
  Corie: But you went into the tent there, you're all young.
• 1:02:00
  Corie: You are not the average person in the tent.
• 1:02:01
  Corie: No, I was 18.
• 1:02:03
  Corie: 18.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I was treated with a certain level of accord and respect.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because of daddy, too.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: Again, the grace thing where Roland Roland really played an important role in developing my foundation.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: He gave me that gift.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: As far as should.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_04: As far as should yeah yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in that cariso caravan space, made it to Skinner Park the first time, and then 2006, I made it straight to the Major.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was also in the Sukamona finals.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: At the age of 19, how did you guys?
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: So when the name Chucky came about, by then yeah, Chucky?
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, actually, so that name developed at Sour Government Secondary.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, you know, the origin of it.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because of the movie, right?
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was a Chucky Chucky.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we used to call me that in school.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you carry on that.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, I mean, I wasn't a bad fella in school.
• 1:03:00
  Corie: But generally, when you say so outside with it.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, let's tell me that.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: Let's tell me that.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: They say, um, your mouth boy.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: In the little break we had here.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean it is, right?
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, can I play my son free power?
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you carry that name into your street.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so unfortunately and unfortunately, I went to Saint Augustine and then sub sub subsequently, yeah.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: Hold we can we can wrap.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can rap this.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, leave that.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: Leave that.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: Gabby, bring back the red hat.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: Leave that right.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: I died.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I add that I add that with a my lexicon, huh?
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you.
• 1:03:47
  Corie: I too, supplementally.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: Subsequently, I went I went I went to U We.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: So from Source to Sindagos sent to UI with a group of the same people.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the name stopped.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_01: So when I say hey, I released my first soccer song in 20.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I was just Roger Gordon in 2005.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then 2006, when I was making my my entry into the soccer realm, it was like, hey, yeah, we're going to do it.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because everybody has that time as hey, we ain't doing this.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my name.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, play me song for everybody, hey.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: Chucky, we're going to Chucky.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the vibes.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: What was the song?
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: What was the soak?
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: What was the good song?
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_02: Inside the park.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: That is all the gate?
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: How the gate so come on up finals.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then I followed up in 2007 with turn around and around no wrong, baby.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: Why not wrong and a wrong no wrong?
• 1:04:38
  Corie: Yeah.
• 1:04:40
  Corie: See why you bring people to change hats and things.
• 1:04:42
  Corie: You used to start on the hype because them songs be fetting and things.
• 1:04:46
  Corie: You young too, to be sweet.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a hard balancing act, performing at that level, and I was still doing calyps, right?
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because remember, I made it to the March Gras in 2006.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, after 2006, I hadn't made it to the finals up until 2010.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I was still, you know, plodding, you know, making music and that kind of thing.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: That was a important learning curve.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was challenging balancing academics and that's what I want to know.
• 1:05:14
  Corie: Like your balance, that balancing coming up often because that UE is not easy.
• 1:05:19
  Corie: A sociology book, not thin.
• 1:05:21
  Corie: Every sociology book I ever see has about 6,000 pages.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: You say sociology, the social work is demanding.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is the most demanding undergraduate program possibly in UE.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you do it.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: Your classes, your practicum, and it's whole day school.
• 1:05:36
  Corie: And then there's a lecture tutorial, this, that, this.
• 1:05:39
  Corie: Lecture and tutorial and practicum.
• 1:05:41
  Corie: And then when you turn to the night.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: And fet on TikTok, yeah, yeah, I was getting fet.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we passing it, we pass it.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was doing all them fests and all them kind of thing because I mean I was I was 18, 19.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you pass the courses.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um how many grades?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 1:06:03
  Corie: I don't know if it's Rolo.
• 1:06:04
  Corie: I don't know if Roland Pull has fragments.
• 1:06:09
  Corie: Just making sure.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't not connected.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: Leave that.
• 1:06:23
  Corie: Leave that.
• 1:06:26
  Corie: Why you say weight mark?
• 1:06:27
  Corie: I can tell you a story for weight mark.
• 1:06:29
  Corie: You know that's when I was in love.
• 1:06:31
  Corie: I'm a story for you.
• 1:06:32
  Corie: I can't play it in voice like you, you know.
• 1:06:34
  Corie: I go get away.
• 1:06:35
  Corie: You see, you just play too jiggy, so I go play straight, right?
• 1:06:38
  Corie: When I was in lovejack, I was doing the MBA in Lovejack, right?
• 1:06:44
  Corie: You went a little straight after Newton.
• 1:06:48
  Corie: Dread.
• 1:06:49
  Corie: No, but that's the balance.
• 1:06:50
  Corie: Balance.
• 1:06:52
  Corie: But that's true.
• 1:06:53
  Corie: But green machine is prestige.
• 1:06:55
  Corie: No, it wasn't.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: Where you went?
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: Where you went?
• 1:06:57
  Corie: I went to Tranquility Government.
• 1:07:00
  Corie: Second level.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: Lie.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: Lie.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: Lie again.
• 1:07:05
  Corie: For A levels.
• 1:07:06
  Corie: After Laman to Fatima College.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_04: But let's see.
• 1:07:13
  Corie: Yeah, and I went and trimmed.
• 1:07:17
  Corie: I in Lockjack.
• 1:07:19
  Corie: At the same time as people like Wade Mark.
• 1:07:23
  Corie: Nan Ramgulam.
• 1:07:25
  Corie: Terrace Buttis Connelless.
• 1:07:29
  Corie: This is the people who in Lockjack will do, right?
• 1:07:31
  Corie: Lockjack had an international MBA and an executive MBA.
• 1:07:34
  Corie: You know the things that run.
• 1:07:35
  Corie: I need IMBA.
• 1:07:36
  Corie: And then that whole squad in the EMBA, right?
• 1:07:39
  Corie: Right.
• 1:07:39
  Corie: And I used to do a thing, I call it a wait mark up to now.
• 1:07:42
  Corie: So when I done study a course, a matter of fact, I used a weight mark before this podcast every time.
• 1:07:46
  Corie: You accidentally if I have a guide, right?
• 1:07:48
  Corie: Right.
• 1:07:49
  Corie: I used call my guide a weight mark.
• 1:07:51
  Corie: So I say, all right, Chucky, right?
• 1:07:52
  Corie: Jiggy Calypso, this day.
• 1:07:53
  Corie: I know I had to remember you.
• 1:07:54
  Corie: So I could talk to you.
• 1:07:55
  Corie: And then we go in, right?
• 1:07:56
  Corie: The reason I call that weight mark is because when I study in Lockjack, I used to bring the whole course.
• 1:08:01
  Corie: If I had a topic to answer a question, that question had to fit on one cue card.
• 1:08:05
  Corie: And then I know I could remember it and I could I'll go from there, right?
• 1:08:08
  Corie: Right.
• 1:08:09
  Corie: So the morning before I sit down in my car going from a cue card before the exam, and I have one card, so I say, right, that is about marketing, this, that, that, this is about pricing.
• 1:08:17
  Corie: I can answer my question.
• 1:08:18
  Corie: Next to me is a vehicle driven by a man by the name of Wade Mark.
• 1:08:23
  Corie: And he had every textbook open in the whole car.
• 1:08:26
  Corie: If you see book, I say he could never pass.
• 1:08:29
  Corie: I say he could never pass that.
• 1:08:31
  Corie: That's not possible.
• 1:08:32
  Corie: Yeah, but he passed.
• 1:08:33
  Corie: He and all of them, they pass and they study very hard.
• 1:08:35
  Corie: I will not allow you to say anything on this subject when we move on, right?
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, moving on.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: I passed, I passed, I successfully.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: Good, good, good.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad to say that my social work degree.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was successful in completing my MHRM.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: Good job, sir.
• 1:08:50
  Corie: But I'd ask you too because that point you're performing in intent, you're performing in fets, your name out there.
• 1:08:54
  Corie: Yeah.
• 1:08:54
  Corie: So it means that when you decide to go and do this master's, you're going back into now.
• 1:08:58
  Corie: If an undergrad didn't know how it was to balance for masters, you know this is gonna be how and I was working too.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, at a social work position.
• 1:09:05
  Corie: So you sleep and think, how you're managing these things for because your career taking off.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I mean there were dips and picks and troughs, right?
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: So the master spirit allowed me to focus on your masters, okay, okay.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I was still active during carnival season, particularly in the calypso space, right?
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_01: The soccer scene really started to pick back up in 2011.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: So from like 2007, it was mainly calypso academics work, and then I kind of had a major emergence in soca from 2011 with my bad thing, touch it.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, community, party to la money.
• 1:09:45
  Corie: That was a big truth.
• 1:09:47
  Corie: Yeah, that era there you had huge on the neck that time too.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: Huge all that time I fighting up in lockjack, eh?
• 1:09:54
  Corie: Yeah.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: I remember morning I had to go and do a point fourteen event.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: My brother was playing with Easel.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to sing and have a presentation in Lockjack you Monday morning at Juve event.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's on your mind.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I mean it it's hard, it is really hard.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, back then I kind of had the discipline now, but back then to go in an event and not enjoy the gifts, the gifts.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, I reach over man, I nice presentation and a presentation, right?
• 1:10:36
  Corie: Yeah, it's how to do it.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Did you wanna see why?
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy balance here.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_01: You have a chance to do it.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it's still it's still it's still up to yesterday, yeah?
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's still up to yesterday.
• 1:10:48
  Corie: But that period, so 2027, when you get that kind of success all the gates, and then you see it.
• 1:10:53
  Corie: People in soca in particular talk about that.
• 1:10:55
  Corie: What have you done for me lately?
• 1:10:56
  Corie: Like, if if you don't have a big song, they say you're all the game.
• 1:10:59
  Corie: Yeah, you still in that in that period know that you want to do so and you want to do calypso.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Were there many people doing that then?
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, actually, actually, the my only reference point would have been um somebody like the Mighty Shadow.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose who comes from that era, yeah.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Who come from that era?
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I mean, in conversations with people over the years, it has been clarified that Kai was kind of the only person in that space now, even up until winning in 2015.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, it was the same, it was the same thing.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I can't think of anybody else right now who was.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: I know Mr.
• 1:11:36
  Corie: Shakwood, but he was doing well, he's doing all different kinds of things in the early days, yeah.
• 1:11:40
  Corie: Was on some dance all rhythms with Maximus done and that kind of thing.
• 1:11:43
  Corie: Right, right, right, right.
• 1:11:44
  Corie: Especially somebody your age, because it wasn't normal to see somebody your age in the competitions, yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:50
  Corie: And also not just but competing, yeah, not just in the tent and showing up.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it had years I was in both Calypso Monarch and Soka Monarch Finals.
• 1:12:00
  Corie: So competition is a thing you enjoy, is something when you're young, you wanted to do it.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a competition space.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Carnival is a competition space.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, people talk about doing away with the competition, but I mean, what is carnival without the reign of the merry monarch?
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, at whatever level, if it's just road match, calypso monarch, soca monarch.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's competition is the monarch element, is the the essence in which the the vibration of carnival was built now.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I enjoy it, I enjoy it.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it could be a little nerve wrecking at times, it's plenty of work.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when the results do go away, as I say, if I got if you never get a banker, you know.
• 1:12:40
  Corie: I don't know when it comes to shots.
• 1:12:42
  Corie: I always be surprised when I hear all this say that, you know.
• 1:12:44
  Corie: To me, just from the outside looking in, it's feel as if I know you're putting your soul into the thing and there's a lot of investment in it.
• 1:12:49
  Corie: But I feel like if there's this point that you pass, and you passed that point a long time ago where you know you're a seasoned man, so it's just alright, we can catch them this year, we'll catch them this year.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
• 1:12:59
  Corie: But the initial shock when you had to go and see Enzo Dysregulation.
• 1:13:06
  Corie: Rough.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, it's just initial shock now.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just straight off now.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, then you line back up yourself after.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, I'll wait to you.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'll wait till your point though, I've been competing since I was in juniors.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I I've learned how to manage and you know to win and lose, and I've won many times, lost more times.
• 1:13:29
  Corie: Yeah, it's yeah, as with everybody else.
• 1:13:31
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:32
  Corie: So and the competition in soccer is different in the soccer competition versus the calypso competition in terms of how you approach it and prepare and um not in terms of how you approach it and how you prepare, but in terms of your understanding and appreciation of what you are doing and who you are in the space.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_01: The soccer space is popularity.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_01: So the years have made soccer management finals is purely because the songs were popular.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: The years that I didn't make it, the songs were not so popular.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_01: In the calypso space, your song doesn't necessarily have to be so popular, but that is changing though.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you notice Calypsoans now are recording a lot more, some are doing music videos, absolutely, still have far ways to go.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: But you're seeing now with the advent of social media, they're promoting the calypsos a little more, and the radio stations that play calypso are not enough.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: All you want, right?
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_01: But those that play calypso, they will play the calypsos and put it on rotation, which gives a certain level of familiarity and popularity.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_01: But that has that is changing.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_01: But prior to this era, a calypso, and even it still obtains if you have a good song, even if it's not recorded and your performance resonates with the audience and the judges, they can make it true.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in the case of a Roslyn Reed or some of the other Calypso Unians whose songs were not so popular, who made it to the finals this year, yeah, and and Chuck Gordon Gelly also.
• 1:14:56
  Corie: In spite of carry remember, carry remember.
• 1:15:00
  Corie: I can't remember how many beginning of this interview, and I trying to forget there was certain parts of this little conversation.
• 1:15:08
  Corie: I know that leave that song coming in.
• 1:15:11
  Corie: So let's talk 2011 now.
• 1:15:12
  Corie: Maybe 2011 all the way to 2015.
• 1:15:14
  Corie: There are some songs that have dominated this space.
• 1:15:17
  Corie: I want to talk about Blazing in particular, but I always remember like I hear people now singing Move That Body and talking about Umi Makano.
• 1:15:24
  Corie: That was you and Umi.
• 1:15:25
  Corie: That was me and Umi Makano.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: That was right.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_01: That was 2007.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that wasn't as early as that.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Also you had firefighters.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_01: That was 2007.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was a senior with Tuna Rong.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_01: So what had happened was he was in the Synergy Soka star, right?
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't enter, but I was a guest.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Continually a guest.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we kind of link up.
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, um, I play Keep it for him, you know.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:15:49
  Corie: In this case, dude.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_01: So as Umima Kano's, um, I was also again, I was always involved in Best Village.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_01: That never changed maybe up until 2020, 2018, thereabouts.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was performing with the Barataria Community Council at the time.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And one of my performers with me, Jamila, right, Jamila Phillips.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I rolling it to me, and when we see Jamila, he said, who is that way?
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I was like, Yeah, that's that's my sister and is here writing, and Russian.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we have Jatoy as a result, because we mechanos and Jamila's daughters.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Gifts.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Gifts, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how we we ended up linking up, and Hans, Hans Devin's, who was working with Umi at the time, had kind of invited the collaboration.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we had done it in a in a living room in Digomaten somewhere.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Serious.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think Gonzo, Gonzo had recorded it.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And a guy by the name of I can't remember that youth name now, who produced that song, but yeah.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then Umi went on to Greener Pastures as a result.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:12
  Corie: With Marshall and that's what I wonder what was for you because like a lot of people, if you if you put people in the space of about 18 to 25 year olds, right?
• 1:17:19
  Corie: That's so, and you show me the rigors of the Calypso tent and Skinner Park and the Savannah and so on, and everything that is going there, and then you show me Marshall and them and that kind of soccer life, and what the I feel like one gives way better gifts than the other one.
• 1:17:33
  Corie: So like it's not something you're saying, like at this point, let me take that road to and just go.
• 1:17:38
  Corie: Stick with soaker and people.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes and no.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I've had success in soccer, and I know what that brings, right?
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it has times in seasons, your your worker weekend and is it's 40,000, 50,000 sometimes a week, you know.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's four shows, especially in the height of a carnival, right?
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the Calypso Tent is different.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's a weekend delivery.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right, but but then I came to appreciate over the years what my unique specialness is.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you see, and and I don't take my experience in being able to sing soccer at the commercial level for granted.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we mentioned it in the interview in terms of the ability to sing calypso in a particular way.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've always sung Calypso, Calypso was first as a junior, the soccer came after, right?
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially it's uh it's about me now reclaiming the true identity of who I am.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I've done soccer continuously, I've done try to do so after the major successes in my own way, and then I've realized that hey, you see what I'm doing in terms of my calypso, that is my unique calling.
• 1:18:59
  Corie: So, where are you now?
• 1:19:00
  Corie: With the space in now, yeah, just to focus on calypso, not so.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, jiggy, yeah, man.
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Jiggy Calypso man.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I mean the goal is to ultimately push the envelope at a commercial space, right?
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I could see some evidence of it happening, but I also have a vision in terms of creating a conscious apocalypse soccer style, like in terms of some of the songs I've written in the past years that I've released that are looking to target in some of the European spaces that I have actually some applications gone into, like my love myself and tribulation and that kind of thing.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_01: So um I have a dual focus, it's about satisfying the space on the market and dealing with the Calypsonian aesthetic and the socio-political consciousness, but I also see my work, my energy, my vibration as having an international appeal.
• 1:19:52
  Corie: I with you, I with you.
• 1:19:53
  Corie: And the feel is there, especially that twenty.
• 1:19:55
  Corie: So I talk about blazing a lot.
• 1:19:56
  Corie: When I tell you before we start, like when I hear it, I try not to go back through your catalogue now and I see blazing.
• 1:20:01
  Corie: I say, who is blazing?
• 1:20:03
  Corie: And when I hear it, it's like boy, that you bring me back to cooler fetter.
• 1:20:06
  Corie: Them things like them things make man soak up a lot of ruin.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember?
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_02: I never, I never, man, I never wine on your girl.
• 1:20:14
  Corie: I never take her drink at me.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's that's uncle's that's uncle's problem.
• 1:20:23
  Corie: Yeah, because you did why you know the person girl.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_01: No, I didn't.
• 1:20:26
  Corie: Well, I ain't talking about you, the proverbial you.
• 1:20:28
  Corie: In other words, me.
• 1:20:29
  unknown: Shh shh.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_02: Is she bad bad music?
• 1:20:40
  Corie: I don't know about that.
• 1:20:41
  Corie: I don't know about that.
• 1:20:42
  Corie: But yeah, that was like hit after hit.
• 1:20:44
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:46
  Corie: At that point in so you're more comfortable writing or you're working with writers on that.
• 1:20:49
  Corie: I was working with writers.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I uh uh I mean when I work at a writer, I take a lot of the responsibility in terms of making the song my own.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I make sure I get permission to make my adjustments, adjust the melody accordingly.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, so like now, even if I take somebody's song, right?
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's important for me to find my own groove for the song.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes I'm working with Marvin and Marvin will be like, I like how you swing that to know.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_01: But when I pick up my guitar and I trying to work through the chords and I start to pitch the song anywhere that I want to, and I start to swing the melody, that is what's coming uniquely out of me.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that is what bringing me the particular energy now.
• 1:21:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it is about the the colo is a true collaboration in that sense now.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_01: You have some writers who know about that.
• 1:21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Lady song, authentic.
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I know about it.
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember hearing stories from from Re Hallman, like with Sparrow and things.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Sparrow wasn't about that.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_01: You bring you bring us songs of Sparrow.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he he didn't he wrote probably 30% of his songs, sure.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_01: But he 70% he had to make it as as unique as well.
• 1:21:56
  Corie: Of course, I mean it would, yeah, it makes sense.
• 1:21:58
  Corie: I surprised our writer would say that.
• 1:22:00
  Corie: I think he would want somebody to make it even.
• 1:22:02
  Corie: Absolutely.
• 1:22:03
  Corie: I feel like it would make more sense.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's unevolved writers, I suppose.
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in some respects.
• 1:22:08
  Corie: Words of Roderick Chapter, not necessary, and I'm in trouble already.
• 1:22:15
  Corie: Yeah, maybe that yeah, we hear, we hear.
• 1:22:16
  Corie: I feel like I'm in trouble too for some reason.
• 1:22:18
  Corie: This episode might end up being five minutes, you know.
• 1:22:19
  Corie: When we see what we could keep, but even any heights are that because you're in the fets, you're a young fellow, so we know what that success could look like in that space or something.
• 1:22:28
  Corie: You it wasn't that makes you do the independence competition.
• 1:22:31
  Corie: When is it?
• 1:22:31
  Corie: You were in time?
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So 2012 was the year of touch it.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was in Sokamona finals.
• 1:22:38
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:39
  Corie: So you do that the same year and and and bear with me.
• 1:22:41
  Corie: What's the name of the Bear With Me, bear with me.
• 1:22:43
  Corie: Yeah.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the same time.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that was my first major title.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So um I knew that song was gonna win, you know.
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Serious, yeah.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_01: From the time I sat recording it, yeah.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_01: I say, yeah, this was this is a winner.
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was the same year Kishan Walcott had won.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh shit.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the semi- the semi-finals.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Semi-finals on the Saturday, he win that gold medal.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Tory time style, choking a new voice.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oof.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Licks, shelldown.
• 1:23:14
  Corie: Starting to the sand is balance, you know.
• 1:23:16
  Corie: I was like, the sun is drinking, you know, we get into the rooting.
• 1:23:20
  Corie: Because it's amazing that them two things is in the same year.
• 1:23:23
  Corie: It's in the same year.
• 1:23:24
  Corie: Imagine.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's a perpetual duality.
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've existed in that for a long time, and and that's my unique balance.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_01: My brother said that you know, he's tell people the same.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_01: You see, my brother have a dread balance.
• 1:23:34
  Corie: No, it's real.
• 1:23:34
  Corie: Yeah, because I want I'm encouraging people to go back and listen to Bear With Me.
• 1:23:38
  Corie: This this song, again, an independent song.
• 1:23:40
  Corie: 2012.
• 1:23:40
  Corie: 2012.
• 1:23:41
  Corie: You're looking at when you're going in the independence competition, it there's rules saying that it had to be a nation building.
• 1:23:47
  Corie: It has to be a nation, it does.
• 1:23:48
  Corie: Yes, correct.
• 1:23:49
  Corie: But the way it was approached with your style of delivery and the rights and all these songs and the things, you're basically trying to say we are a young nation.
• 1:23:56
  Corie: That's right.
• 1:23:56
  Corie: That's right.
• 1:23:57
  Corie: Take with time.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Grace, grace again, you know, have some grace for the nation.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they have nations 150, 200 years old who haven't achieved what we have to what we have achieved in terms of our collective experience now.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_01: The kind of things that we have done as a nation, socially, politically, academically, economically.
• 1:24:17
  Corie: I mean, no, it's a few songs you have here that are uh again, Blazon is one of our favorites.
• 1:24:22
  Corie: Don't take it on.
• 1:24:22
  Corie: Once again, I horn that is always called my other name and wherever the hook is.
• 1:24:26
  Corie: Well yeah that was.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_01: That was 2015.
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_01: So come so come on at finals as well.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_01: So wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 1:24:31
  Corie: 2014 and 15, you come back and win the monarch, right?
• 1:24:33
  Corie: Yeah.
• 1:24:34
  Corie: So both those years, yeah, I hits any soccer space.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Five years consecutively.
• 1:24:39
  SPEAKER_01: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
• 1:24:41
  Corie: I with you.
• 1:24:42
  Corie: I with you.
• 1:24:42
  Corie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's funny when I started relics for that balance, huh?
• 1:24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, because so the after that period the soccer industry evolved.
• 1:24:56
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, I wasn't able to normal spirit to operate with that level of for want of a better word, clickism.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_01: So from 2015-16, we had DJs singing more prominently, and they also became promoters.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_01: They became a kind of like in my mind, that is what the math is the so-called math.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, is it?
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 1:25:25
  Corie: Everybody started to become a team, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_01: That is because I mean, yeah, it's it's competing interests, collective interest, and you work together based on what you want to achieve, right?
• 1:25:34
  SPEAKER_01: You have people in the events, they play the songs accordingly, I promote and I also sing in radio DJs who play each other's songs who sing in, etc.
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that is it's a kind of informal kind of structure.
• 1:25:45
  Corie: So you feel yourself getting squeezed out of the place.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and because also I was successful in Calypso.
• 1:25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So people was like, But you're making money in Calypso.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing too much.
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_01: That is what that is exactly what started happening.
• 1:25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I understand.
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm gonna I won't I wouldn't call no names in this instance.
• 1:26:01
  Corie: I with you, I with you, I witch.
• 1:26:02
  Corie: But you know, the interesting thing is you're saying that you find yourself to in because you say your focus is a calypso, so at the same time, it's a hurting if you're honest, but okay, how with you, how with you?
• 1:26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it hurt an extent because they may release in songs, and you again the kind of traction that you're accustomed to getting, you know, but um yeah, but I had enough other spaces in which to invest interest.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_01: How with you?
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_01: And culture was always important to me, so my best village, my parang.
• 1:26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I was always doing all these things consistently, yeah.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Nah, yeah, no, no, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:35
  Corie: Last thing I want to ask you about telling them that long time.
• 1:26:38
  Corie: You seem to have a uh you said, for instance, more Calypsoonians recording Calypsos now.
• 1:26:42
  Corie: I see that you as a Calypsoan focus a lot on what happened on the social media, whether it's is the memes, is the continuation of the song, is the videos or the animations and stuff deliberately space.
• 1:26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, but the audience that we have to reach.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, we have been failing in that regard for far too long.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've always said that the soccer industry has taken advantage of production elements, right?
• 1:27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Which is has contributed to success, even at not just social media in terms of curating the products, but in terms of events, and I think Calypso has to move towards that space of being able to utilize production elements now, and social media is a critical part of that.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how do you curate that?
• 1:27:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my social media content person is here, so yeah, it's only playing out here.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_01: No, we're not playing.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_01: So when the Cory Shepard podcasts drop a chuckordin, also the parts where we edit us.
• 1:27:44
  Corie: I've got drop a reel.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, you get in a way.
• 1:27:49
  Corie: Just make sure my face is not as well.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, and and so you're to your point that the attention to detail.
• 1:27:53
  Corie: Yeah, but no, but it's important, it's important because I always I hope my hope is that I always remember but as we see you for the first time and calypso in particular, not just Soko.
• 1:28:03
  Corie: Just somebody who looks young.
• 1:28:04
  Corie: You just done look young already.
• 1:28:06
  Corie: Yeah, still.
• 1:28:07
  Corie: But you mean you're looking like a young, young youth.
• 1:28:09
  Corie: So when I see your face, your face is fresh, and I'm thinking this is what we need in Calypso.
• 1:28:13
  Corie: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:28:14
  Corie: So this idea that Calypso dying and the youth's not interested in Calypso.
• 1:28:17
  Corie: I don't think it's true.
• 1:28:18
  Corie: I don't think it was ever true.
• 1:28:19
  Corie: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:28:19
  Corie: And then your approach to it's making it.
• 1:28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I you know why watching, I watching um Nelson at 93.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_01: I watching Rose.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_01: That is where my mind is.
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man.
• 1:28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, good.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I will be on stage for a very long time.
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, well, we're waiting for you here.
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's in them tour, we have to.
• 1:28:37
  Corie: Well, we here, we here waiting for you, we waiting for you here.
• 1:28:39
  Corie: We grateful that you're doing it.
• 1:28:42
  Corie: We nerf us, but we're very grateful that now you're safe, you're safe, you're safe.
• 1:28:47
  Corie: You're safe.
• 1:28:49
  Corie: I want to thank you for taking the time.
• 1:28:50
  Corie: I appreciate you coming out here.
• 1:28:52
  Corie: Thanks for all the people who do all the hat changes and so on.
• 1:28:54
  Corie: Thanks for the old PNMs for now, you know what I mean?
• 1:28:57
  Corie: We appreciate it greatly.
• 1:28:58
  Corie: Thanks very much, brother.
• 1:29:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's time.