THE ANTHEM MAN

Nothing he composed could ever outlast the one song that is sung every day somewhere in Trinidad and Tobago — Our National Anthem. Patrick Stanislaus Castagne will always be remembered as the anthem man.

It was at one of those gatherings at the Trinidad and Tobago Embassy, Belgrave Square, London in 1963 when I met Pat Castagne for the second time.

I reminded him of our first meeting in Trinidad which was about 15 years before when I approached him and said, "Have a Carib, Mr Carib." There was a competition to discover who was "Mr Carib" from clues given on the radio every day. The winner was in for a big money prize. He was not "Mr Carib" and he could not remember me but mentioned that hundreds used to ask him the same question.

Mr Castagne became very animated when I told him I had brought my four plays - Zingay, Mamaguy, Doo-Doo and King Cobo and was hoping to have one staged in London. As musicals were the rave in the West End at that time, he volunteered to write the music to one of the scripts. At his home, he selected the full-length "King Cobo" because it reminded him of the popular Afro-American folk-opera + "Porgy and Bess" by George Gershwin and DuBose Heywood. He would compose the music on the piano while I had to re-write several speeches to make the dialogue flow smoothly into song. We had lots of jokes with our names up in lights KING COBO — a Caribbean Musical by Pat Castagne and Freddie Kissoon."

After about two months, he rang and said the songs were not coming to him as readily as before and as I had only a few months more in England, maybe we should shelve the project. I agreed readily because the meetings were interfering with my studies. We had reached about a quarter of the script and that was the end of the musical — King Cobo.

Somewhere around 1986, I met Mr Castagne at a little parlour at the entrance to Hi-Lo on Morne Coco Road. We talked for more than an hour and he still had a dream to compose a musical. The new story was about three girls who used to bathe in a river and hear a beautiful song played on a flute. One day they followed the sound of the music and discovered it was played by a hermit who lived in a cave. His vows to live alone were forgotten, when he fell in love with one of the young ladies.

Mr Castagne posted the synopsis but I was already writing about three of four plays at the same time. A few months after, I rang him and confessed that I had tried my best but I simply could not find the time to develop the story, work on the dialogue and characterisation. He sounded a bit disappointed but understood the passionate commitment I had for my group the Strolling Players. And that was the end of another musical tentatively called "Song of the Hermit."

Once a musician was brought to court for speeding. The judge looked at him and said, "I seem to know you somewhere?" The musician relied, "Yes, Sir. I used to visit your home to teach your wife to play the violin. I told her to practise day and night." The judge replied, "She did and I never slept. Five years in jail for you."