Tuco Pan-Kaiso $$ not diverted to chutney
Posted: Monday, January 10, 2005

By Terry Joseph

Trinbago Unified Calypsonians Organisation (Tuco) president Michael "Protector" Legerton has responded to allegations that he personally ordered the diversion of money originally set aside for a Pan-Kaiso competition to the inaugural chutney category of the national calypso monarch contest.

"This is ludicrous," Protector said yesterday. "There never was any budget allocation for a Pan-Calypso competition so there was nothing to divert.

Those who have been doing the rounds of radio talk shows and appearing on other media saying Tuco has taken calypso funding to run a chutney competition are being malicious and particularly wicked, since their comments could be construed as having a racist tinge."

During the past week, a number of calypsonians who compose songs hoping to attract steelbands participating in the Panorama competition have been grumbling about the decision to axe the Pan-Kaiso contest from this year's calypso schedule.

Most vocal among them was The Original de Fosto Himself, who has repeatedly won such contests in past years and who said on 102FM he knew "for a fact" that the allocation for Pan Kaiso had been shifted to fund the new chutney category.

A fuming Legerton said: "These calypsonians worry me not only for their outrageous accusations but more so because in this art-form, we pride ourselves on having the facts, so if these guys are going around saying they know this and that ‘for a fact' then we have to begin to wonder about all the other facts they parade as truths in their calypsos.

"One fact I can give them is that the whole pan-calypso concept was a myth, created to derive some additional cash for winners of this contrived contest, which we at Tuco have no problem with but we are not about to take the Government's money and invest it in a losing proposition. Over the years of this competition, it has failed to attract wide enough public interest to make it viable and we cannot, in good conscience, prop it up with State funds.

"Calypso never really dedicated itself to pan or any other musical instrument," Legerton said. "When the likes of Kitchener and Sparrow released their songs, some of which celebrated the steelband and its pioneers, the intention was not to have it played at Panorama but to provide the calypsonians' insights into the evolution of pan, couching it in some very sweet melodies, which on their own merit, became attractive to steelbands.

"What today's composers have been doing is making songs that include some reference to the steelband, however slight and calling that a pan-calypso, as if it was agreed somewhere that this was now an official category in the adjudication of national calypso. Whatever interest Tuco might have had at one time in the experiment has been diminished by poor public response, which we must take as the best indicator of its potential for success," Legerton said.

Unrelated to the competition issue, inclusion of a chutney category has also raised concerns in the calypso fraternity, some performers seeing it as a virtual watering-down of a brandy whose quality had already been diluted by other circumstances.

The chutney category is, however, firmly installed and will be judged alongside songs dedicated to other niche genres like party, humour, social and political themes.

Printer friendly version
Send page by E-Mail