Rose, world calypso queen

Well, that title found greater confirmation last week on shores far away from calypso country, France to be exact, as that music mecca conferred on her top recognition last week. The spicy, evergreen, larger than life Tobagonian won the World Music Album award in the French Ministry of Culture’s Victoires de la Musique awards, dubbed the French Grammys, for her platinum album Far from Home.

This came after hard months of tours in Europe, and is indeed a joyous shot-in-the-arm for Trinidad and Tobago, a ray of sunshine during some gloomy times, economically and socially, when this country is in a painful period of self-doubt and necessary self-evaluation. Rose has provided a wonderful boost to our collective self-confidence to give us hope. Who would have thought that this reassertion of national pride could have come from a woman in her eighth decade of life, the much loved McCartha “Calypso Rose” Lewis, all of 76 years young? Truly, her contemporary, Slinger “Mighty Sparrow” Francisco, was correct when he sang, “Age is just a number,” a point not lost on another vintage calypsonian Lord Nelson, 86, vying for Soca Monarch in 2017.

Given that any monarch’s role is to personify their nation and its aspirations, such has aptly been achieved by Queen Rose since being declared our very own Calypso Monarch in 1978 as recorded in her lively 1978 number, “Her Majesty” (1978).

While the French award is a victory that is personal to Rose as a crowning glory of her decades of labouring in the calypso vineyard, the sweetness of it all spills over onto all of us who as a people now bask in her reflected glory Her agent, Lorraine O’Connor, said, “We are so ecstatic and overwhelmed right now. People say calypso is dying but it is more than alive. It is so amazing!” Culture Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly said Rose has put kaiso music onto the world stage and shown our people’s potential.

If Rose’s mission in her latter years had simply been to sing over her early hits -- “Tempo” and “Fire in mih wire”-- it would have allowed her to keep her place in our hearts, but she has done so much more. She has taken her genre of kaiso a step further to fresh audiences by blending in the influences of her international collaborators.

In “Albatina” Rose has guitar notes, deliberately slightly offchord, jumping in and out of the main stream of music, adding to her allure.

Like past calypsoes, revellers will nicely chip to “Leave Me Alone” yet all will agree its beat has a little extra something.

But overall, Rose has shown how calypso can evolve to find fresh avenues abroad, alongside the success of soca stars, completely outside her era, like Montano, Ian “Bunji Garlin” Alvarez, Destra Garcia and Fay-Ann Lyons-Alvarez, all this decades after overseas successes of Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca Cola” and Lord Kitchener’s “Jump in the line”, the latter featured in the movies, Beetlejuice, The Little Mermaid and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. We excitedly anticipate Rose’s return at Carnival even as the nation surely mulls ways in which to honour her.