In the arena of creating music for popular consumption, it is sometimes the case that a song about which one is very excited, and generating high expectations, will land like a thud – seemingly totally dismissed by the population.  An example is my song “Hit The Road,” which I wrote for a Tradewinds studio session in Toronto, extolling that band-on-the-road aspect of Trinidad carnival. I felt it would do well in Port-of-Spain, but it was simply ignored.  In contrast, I did a column here recently, titled Knowing Our Stalwarts, and the response, frankly, surprised me.

Simply put, that column soared where “Hit The Road” crashed and burned. A market vendor in Kitty made it his business to stop me passing and urge me to elaborate on the singular Guyanese I was referring to, and since I pay a lot of attention to what comes from a man of the soil, I’m taking space here today to give my own suggestions for persons we must recognise, apart from the annual awards, in a way that it reaches the population to, in effect, make us all aware of their contributions.              Continue reading →