3 Canal: Kings of J’Ouvert – Roger Roberts | The Voice & The Harmony

In Part III of the 3 Canal: Kings of J’Ouvert trilogy, we sit with Roger Roberts — vocalist, producer, theatre practitioner, and one of the foundational voices behind 3 Canal’s sound and philosophy.

From sweeping yards on J’Ouvert morning as a child to commanding Olympic stages with Peter Minshall, Roger reflects on a life shaped by ritual, resistance, and responsibility.

This episode traces the journey behind the voice — from choir training and theatre with Derek Walcott to the pivotal decision to leave a secure banking career after confronting systemic injustice. For Roger, art was never about entertainment alone — it was about reflection, truth-telling, and holding up a mirror to society.

We explore:

• The formation of 3 Canal and the birth of “Blue”
• The chaos and cultural shift of the original Blue J’Ouvert band
• Losing John Isaacs and carrying the group forward
• The discipline behind vocal harmony and performance
• Why Carnival is ritual — not product
• Mentorship, the Black Box, and creating space for young artists
• Trinidad & Tobago as a “zone of peace” and the responsibility of artists to defend that ideal

Roger speaks candidly about closing the J’Ouvert chapter after 30 years, the emotional weight of watching Carnival evolve, and why performance remains the most sacred part of his work.

This is not just the story of a singer.
It is the story of a cultural architect who chose purpose over comfort, stage over security, and truth over applause.

This is Part III of the 3 Canal: Kings of J’Ouvert trilogy.

If you care about Carnival, craft, conscience, and the future of Trinidad & Tobago’s creative identity — this episode is essential listening.

Transcript

Opening, Pan On The Track

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Well you took a banyan archive that baby just by Barbidas.

Corie 0:05

Yeah yeah we we we we yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't know how many people realize it I mean so many things just keep slipping out they just slip out of our hands and you just it it's real unfortunate and and and it's one of the it's just patterning Alvin Daniel because one of these things I looking at it talking to he's talking to legends then but when I watch his episode of Ronnie I say wait Ronnie really or Marshall for instance Marshall in a school uniform with Alvin Daniel doesn't I say you know what as I'm doing this it will be nice to get the youths now who just in the figuring it out in the prime or whatever you want to call it yeah stages of the development yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's true it's true to capture them because 30 times in the US you would see that you would see established artists and then you would see them and they were five and they now we don't see that a lot we don't really really record and document those things sad I just hope we're leaving it here so that somebody else who wants to do this later on in life could say well alright well a hality love first interview I could sing and that's true or no I would love to see when she looks like singing Sandra I can't wait to see the day I can't wait to see the day we could go right there we got right yeah right welcome to the Cory Shepherd podcast welcome back to everybody who's been listening thank you for everybody who's tuning in today we have the third canal yes very good very good pleasure to be here man it's a pleasure to have you here it's a pleasure as so people I see you in pan boy on the track pushing pan well to me that's us as I say you know that's the beginning of the carnival that's when all the communities from Chural and Tobago descend on the capital to you know to just be yeah to just exist and to take in the whole scene it's the start of it you know yeah surprise say you see that like some people go say it's um boxing day kind of all is that but the feeling of it on the track like I went in the track for a while and then I went north stand to meet some friends that feeling on the track beyond the pan and the music anything there's a certain togetherness there. Yeah when the pan passing and people moving and you know and just people supporting their favorite band. Yeah is this children to be go on full display right there.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

Yeah right there's make you wonder what happened to the rest you know what we going on right that's the big release that's the big release people be experiencing what they experiencing for the whole year and that moment to me is the moment when ah right we breathe it could take a breath I suppose I suppose say all stars man wells is

Steelband As Community Release

SPEAKER_03 2:30

one of my bands I have a couple of bands that I really love you know for different reasons I love the sound of All-Stars pan the way the pans are tuned I love what Leon Smooth Edwards does because his his arrangements kind of it it resonates with me I like Exodus because well I just from the east as well man from born and grew up in Pity Books okay spent a lot of years up in in St. Augustine and Tunapuna I'm there. So Exodus and I mean I'm living in Woodbrook now so face to an invaders but so you back at any sports men who yeah but I like good music so even if I not supporting you per se right once you come with something good I you know I dare yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's it basically something good something only men known for you know known for things is that is that some questions I have here oh gosh from the early days well I get warned about dates and things right I don't know they always say but Roger you do remember that I'll be like no I don't remember that even back in my family you know my brothers will be talking about um Roger you remember when so so so so so so and everybody else in the family remembers and I'm like I do remember that it's something I've been saying about doers you know people do a lot yeah yeah I guess you when you're doing it you're focusing on what you're doing I guess so I guess so I see a recent post on Instagram and find it's funniest things I've seen in a while I see you and when I'm done doing our modeling thing what was that yeah that was after a photo shoot we did with um you see it happening again after a photo shoot after photoshoot and this is something back in the day a photo shoot with a photographer yeah a Haitian American photographer who was recently chilled Anna Tobago he reached out to us and said like he wanted to shoot us because he documented should that caravan and you know our name came up so of course yeah man we'll do it when I look at him on Instagram he's like if you see the shots this man taking really good stuff yeah anyway so we walked with Mark Eastman who provided the the styling and you know and at the end of it we were just playing around and as we said we're gonna model so I tell Mark Eastman I say look we're gonna give you a little fashion show here and just had a walk down the inside of the black box and having fun. But you know these days anything you do now is liable to end up on social media and of course people like yeah people like that kind of thing. So I think people like to see you as a throw back to I mean I had my days modeling too you know with the cloth in the early days. I think so because also everybody though you look like you know where you're doing all the cat walk you know I mean standard not so much well being the short man in the group too it's not likely that he would

Style, Mentors, And Visual Identity

SPEAKER_03 5:15

have gotten chosen to be a model yeah another place among Solyup recently just randomly was by Brooklyn Bar doing our photo shoot as well right that yeah that was with Jason or then yeah we were in the early stages of the preparation for carnival you know we have to get shots out there and and yeah Jason was a man who wanted to take us in the environment of where we we work and exist which is Woodbrook right and so we walked all over we went to um Adamson Square we were on Murray Street we ended up by Brooklyn Bar all those the main zones right and captured some atmospheric kind of shots and yeah yes it's nice to see all the other when you see that I'm sure you see it all the time how people pass and people stop in and looking and so education.

Corie 5:58

Yeah it it makes me it makes me want to ask you about trick and all and the iconic look because as a group you're fashion seems to be real important like how you present yourself.

SPEAKER_03 6:07

Well I think fashion and music and the arts are hand in hand you know depending on you you have to present yourself and the better way you could present yourself is how people will identify with you. And we've always had a great history with um with mailing mailing was one of our my mentors from way back when and so as I was telling David earlier on I was happy to be mentored by some of the greatest in the industry in terms of mass in terms of music in terms of fashion theatre so of course whenever we did anything we would we would tap into and reach out to the people that you know who you're friendly with and Mailing was one of them. Yeah and so yeah she kind of gave us a look from the very beginning when we did blue well the song blue um so she was one of the main people that clothed us for the year and for years to come for that after that.

Corie 6:56

And that's something you've maintained because is so you such unique personalities which I learned in right by this table here because you know the tendency as a fan is to see that as a group is one.

SPEAKER_05 7:05

Right.

Corie 7:06

But it's very very different talking to anyone and it it even shows with your sense of style and so on. There's a uniqueness but a togetherness with it. And that togetherness is something that I'm really curious about because I've seen in international

Group Longevity And Ego Management

Corie 7:20

spaces locally here with groups groups don't last as long as you all have lasted that's true.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

What's the secret boy how y'all stay together for so long I don't know I don't know what's the secret right um I guess we we agree to disagree with things and we know we don't hold on to things we're not petty so I mean there are times when we would argue I mean people seem to think that we always happy go lucky and whatnot like I mean when the body does argue yeah now now boy now boy I tell you no the other day I get triggered boy I get triggered I get triggered after performance no boy in cafe blue boy I got I well you know the pressure is the pressure was on it's carnival season and I mean I I handle a lot of the production side of things which is a lot a lot of works but yeah so I after the cafe blue performance a little scene happened and I and a little explosion takes place and a fellow who was at the show say nah nah canal do it so I can't do it so but that was probably the first time in public that we you know but um yeah sometimes things don't go according to how you might want it to go or according to plan but you know you just say well we have a greater goal and it's not about petty egos and whatnot it's about something more than that that we're trying to achieve which requires people to have a kind of a a sense of the larger picture. And I guess I guess we all know that at the end of the day what we want to see as musicians as artists is the important thing.

Corie 8:49

Yeah that's admirable because even you saying this now you're talking about cafe blue this year. Yeah that's your first public argument of so much yeah it's crazy when you think about it that is not the norm. That is not we we also in our culture I like it's hard to think of whether you think of rap so soak or calypso you don't hear much groups I don't know if our culture is not just leaning towards that I don't know yeah I'm not sure I'm not sure what that is so that but you're right um yeah the group thing doesn't really it's not something that is common in China and Tobago.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

Yeah I guess maybe we don't seem to be able to hold it together as much as well as we think we could yeah yeah and people have I mean a lot of ego is involved in this business so you have to be able to keep your ego under check and recognize we have something else we look in and that's a difficult thing it's a challenging thing for people to just to do it makes it nice why Haitian American photographers come in and look to shoot all you know after all these years yeah Louje that's the guy named Luce just cut it all yeah we can remember every date and every name before we leave yes big respect to Louje man of course of course salute to him salute to him yeah so those early days you're getting into the arts and so on what was your first entry into arts oh let me where you went to school and again I went to well I went to primary school at St. Joseph boys RC in St. Joseph and CIC as secondary man yeah it's a lot this is a trend yeah and I got involved in music I would say from very early because my mother used to play the piano and my father had a guitar and he would always be playing on his guitar and when I was in primary school my mother entered me into the choir in the school because my mother was also the vice principal of the school and we took part in an interregional choir competition something and I sang a song called Whispering Hope. It was a duet and I was terrified the first time I went up on the stage but I came second me and my it was a duet with I can't remember the other guy's name but we came second and you know I got bitten by that bug of success and feeling that you know that joy of being able to do something and do it very well. And so I was always singing from since then in primary school in primary school. And then when I went to St. Mary's college I joined the choir um I tried to join other things too I I try my hand at some certain sports I say I like cricket I always like cricket but the first day I got a cork ball hit my machine I said I see last day I'm playing cricket I will watch so I would spectate cricket and I decided early on that I didn't want to get into any sport where I get injured. I don't know what something gets a cockball easy a callball and easy and I see I know too many people who get injured in football and then it they're losing the ACL and having to just do Achilles surgery the other day. So I knew those things weren't for me I did swimming and I did lawn tennis and well of course I joined the choir and through the choir got involved in in musicals and performance and that kind of stuff. Right so music festival and all those things were true music festival was a big part of the foundation understanding how to hold your tune how to keep it within the melody keep it in the structure of what the composer wanted and you know to deliver to to to

School, Choir, And Early Training

SPEAKER_03 12:00

beat everybody else which is what we did in school I mean C Mary's college choir was the top choir at the time I mean yeah nobody could attest the choir and Lindyan Bodenrich peace be upon her a brilliant music teacher.

Corie 12:13

So you're learning in in the moment you're not doing like a training like vocal training you're learning as you go through that.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

Yeah just learning in the moment and from whatever when you had choir sessions you would learn from that and she would learn about how to modulate your voice to maintain a kind of to make the coherence with the group so so much so that it was a challenge to unlearn that now when it comes to performing on a stage because you have to find your own voice. Right.

Corie 12:40

So I understand what it is to blend in but you also have to find your own voice inside of that which is yeah it's funny the way schools like I remember going to New Songboys and we had a music teacher her name was Murdi Koto. Of course we know the quote we don't know you know any small you don't know who she is you don't know the giant that is in front of you. But it's it's unique in our education system where if you can go in the choir you could learn a little bit of acting you're gonna learn a little bit of playwriting was that experience for you you're doing a lot of it yeah because we had um there was the mousetrap that we did in St.

SPEAKER_03 13:12

Mary's college which was a play performance with music and stuff and from there Richard Tanyuk who was also in CIC older than I was he had formed a group called the Belvedere choir and they were doing musicals so I did guys and dolls with them and that was my first real big acting singing performance kind of thing and from that as well um the China Tbago Opera Company at the time were doing different um operas and so on in at Queen's Hall. And so a lot of the they would choose some of the best singers from various schools and so I got pulled into that stream and it was just down the road from there. Yeah from musicals and then we got into plays with the Baggas Company and Christine Johnson and yeah we did so many plays with Bagas Company and and that was it and that was my foundation in theater.

Corie 14:01

So as Elias and Mary's you'd see in yourself as getting into the arts as a career um I didn't know what I wanted to to be involved in.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

I didn't know I was just trying all kinds of different things the arts felt comfortable because it was a way to express yourself and it was not competitive um and you learned so much learned so much from in terms of music and that it just felt natural to be there but in terms of career wise I didn't know at one point I was studying accounts I mean when I was in school actually I did about I did about 13 different subjects I did sciences I did social I did languages why boy I don't it's a good question why no I have 13 passes here serious yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I didn't say I did 13 subjects in what 13 passes at one point what you really want to do boy when I left school um I said well I go and work for a couple years and try and make some money and then go and study blah blah blah and I joined I did um I joined panel Fitzpatrick which was an accounting auditing company and that's where I met Christine Johnson actually because she was an auditor in Panel Fitzpatrick and that's how I came to be involved in the baggage company um and I did auditing there but the first day they sent me in a warehouse to count razor blades I was like nah boy yeah what you do content is auditing for it's right there's your route and we went in it was Geddis Grant in warehouse in Lavantee and I had to count razor blades and I started watching like and the senior on the job say well you don't literally have to count every razor blade but you have to spot check and go through and see and make sure that no pill for you discomfort and like that is too much for me boy so I left there. Yeah and then I say well I go and join the bank because the bank was hiring and the bank was paying good I say I'll make some money and then I'll go university and thing join the bank and started working the bank and started feel comfortable in the bank you know then after a while it was not comfortable anymore because it was just too strict and too many rules and things that I felt like what's the point of this and then I started to see unfair practices happening within the banking system and I had to decide myself I need to get out of here because I'm not really evolving and I looked at the whole the um employee chart and after a while I was like I don't really want to be any of these positions. I don't want any of these roles

Banking, Ethics, And A Life Pivot

SPEAKER_03 16:30

so why am I here? And I said nah I had to move from this because and you I was I was always still performing and working in the arts at that time and I used to get in a lot of trouble for being late coming to work late I usually job and I sleepy or rushing off I studying my lines for the play and all that kind of thing so I say I spoke to my father about it and he said well boy do what you love. Yeah when I told my mother about it she was like boy you could give up your good bank work don't give up your bank work I remember my father said do what you love I say all right I like that yeah yeah so I handed him my resignation that was the end of the bank when you have a bank work now people that might not understand bank work then is a really you can't walk away from them kind of things I think everybody running down it was really comfortable and I mean I could have got a loan like that for anything I wanted so those are the things that make you kind of hold on to it but then you after a while you realize you could get those things materially but you're so suffering because you know you want to be something else and you know that you have something that you want to express. But the bank was really too constricting in terms of the things I wanted to do and the kind of time I needed to devote it I realized after a while you know I needed to honor myself and respect that the bank have their way and their way is not my way.

SPEAKER_04 17:43

That they sent me to a psychologist I was in trouble all the time every month was problems.

SPEAKER_03 17:52

So the bank hired a psychologist to deal with all the problematic employees and I went to the man and we sit on there talking doing a session and he said well you realize that the problem is not um the bank you know the problem is you as psychologists will typically say because you what it is you want not aligning with what the bank's goals are.

Corie 18:11

So you need to make a decision and yeah you know something I say there's so interesting because sometimes we the the trappings are them things right and you able to identify it real young which is close to you but sometimes you stay there the salary nice you're doing the thing it you're not happy but you're happy enough I suppose and you do well enough and you get the promotion now it's like a bigger and bigger trap you know when you go further and further up in the organization get real restricted that is a very very serious thing and um I I I was so glad I'm not I was not upset about it.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

I I learned a lot in the bank to be honest with you and so much so that it kind of led to the role that I fulfilled within TreeCanal now where I handle most of the production and the business side of things. You know because I kind of have an understanding for it.

Corie 18:58

Now I wouldn't say that I'm a brilliant producer or anything like that but I have a good fair understanding of how those things operate so you have a good understanding of 13 different subjects as well something else is interesting I've always looked from a fan TriCanal has a sort of a as a as a group a uh what I want to call like gentle militant approach because militants they have people who militant and you know it and it feels they feel that but y'all stand by principles and but there's a gentleness when you're around earlier it's just cool very welcoming everything y'all have done that I see is very very open right and when you when you said that with the bank is at a young age you see an injustice inside there and deciding that it might mean something you want to do.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Yeah yeah well it yeah it that that there was a day I tell you I was at work and I was in tears literally because see I started again I started to feel a little emotional already but I just reflecting on it and there was um there was a time the bank decided it was when the three banks had to merge that was the NCB um the commercial bank commerce and republic or no not republic national commercial bank the cooperative bank and um workers bank emerging and they formed Food Citizens which is what it is now and the bank was about trying to become profitable but of course that has a cost it on the other side and I was in a department where we saw and we had to set down the different um methods by which this would happen and the bank took some measures which were kind of very drastic and the day I saw a woman lose her house because she couldn't make the payments and um little things were literally thrown out that hit me because I know that could have been my mother or anybody mother and there were certain other things certain other aspects certain other facilities that were forgiven by the bank I see and I just found that that didn't sit well with me at all at all at all that day I tell you I was in tears in sitting at my desk and I was like nah boy I can't I can't put my energies behind this at this point in time in my life and so that was one of the decisions that was one of the main things that kind of really triggered me to like I need to find the place that I want to really direct my energy. Is it real interesting I mean that that just instinctively because as that's a young age you're talking about making and I mean and I don't think that people intend to default on their loans some people just can't make it and there's a kind of an injustice and I want to say injustice in courts because this life that we live in here is not things aren't even things aren't always according to strict rules right there's some people who really want to make things happen and they can't because they're just not able to make ends meet and you see them on the streets because they don't have a home to live in they can't afford a basic meal and that is what happens in our capitalist society where they at the end of the day profit Is your is your goal. Your goal is to make profit. It means if you're doing that, somebody's suffering on the other end of the scale. Right? And I think that we have enough resources in this lifetime and on this planet so that nobody should be in that position. There's no way that somebody should be, I mean, to me, be able to afford whatever they want, go wherever they want, and it's have somebody starving because of the way the system is actually set up. Yeah. And I'm not, and I don't want to take anything away from people who are working harder. Sure, sure. But there's some people who just can't make it right now. They're just struggling. Yeah. And I recognize that those people had no voice. You know? So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Corie 22:40

Well, I mean, finding your own voice and finding a way to speak up for that in your own way by leaving is as admirable. Even as you talk about the the enoughness that the world has. And you say planet, right? You didn't say country, which is instructive because even this idea of suffering countries to me and borders where you could cross.

Inequality, Borders, And Numbness

Corie 23:00

I always look at Haiti and Dominican Republic. Like I can't understand. I fly over there one time to my brother. Like Spanish. Anything to do with his language, he likes that. So you book vacation with any family gone. And I mean, maybe I got a better appreciation for it there because I saw how much Haitians living there and what it is, I suppose, when you're looking at it from the outside. But the idea that you could fly over a place where you have a line between plush.

SPEAKER_03 23:25

A line between the brown and the green.

Corie 23:27

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

That's it. I've seen it. When I see it, I could not. You can see the line between the brown and the green. And it's stuck. It's frightening. Yeah. And to know that people just living in that. And I say living, but they ain't really living and they barely surviving. And we turn our back on that.

Corie 23:45

Yeah, it's almost like we we get almost. I want to say C data today, but we kind of pretend it don't happen. We get numb. That's another thing.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

We get numb. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You walk on the streets and you see people lying down on the side of the street and they have no food, and we walk past them and it's become like normal. That thing should never be normal. And I always have to pinch myself and say that's not normal. That man shouldn't be there. Whatever his circumstances are, he might have made a wrong choice in life. But where are the where are these structures and the systems in place to help people like that? Because those people need help. It's not like they're bad people or they're wicked people. Yes, it has bad and wicked people there, but yeah.

Corie 24:21

I could say the reverse too. It's almost as if we look at the successful people like them, we make mistakes and make bad choices and things too. But as you rightly say, sometimes it's the systems. Yeah. And but sometimes we get we get so tight sometimes when you describe the system, people start to close ranks, you know, and it's a difficult discussion to do. But you decided then that the arts is the way to go.

SPEAKER_03 24:39

Well, I was always I'd never left it. But once I grabbed onto the arts, I realized that this was to stay with me. I was trying to juggle both, and it wasn't working out. And it's something that I tell young people to you can't serve all these different things. You might want to do everything, but there will come a point in time when you'll realize that you can't give each one of them 100%. But that time will come when you realize it, nobody can't force it. Yeah, so it comes and it'll come. Exactly.

Corie 25:02

What you were thinking about studying in university at that time, if you say you're going after school, you had something in mind? Just going to university. Yeah, because it was the thing to do.

SPEAKER_03 25:11

I suppose right, everybody. No one study has a certain way. Yeah, and that's why I have empathy for people who really not really sure where they want to go in life. Because sometimes you you don't know, you don't know where you want to go at the time. You don't have an idea, you're just confused, or you know, your friends doing that, so you figure, well, that's the thing to do, but you ain't find yourself and your space yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you go along and then you know, you might get lucky, opportunity might come up, or somebody might present something, and you find, hey, wait, I'm good at this. You know, so you have to have time and patience with people who are not making it. You know, and the arts is a kind of a place to capture a lot of those people who don't fit into the regular places in life. And that's why I think it's so important for people who are in leadership positions to recognize and to support the arts because the arts tends to always have that that net to capture those people who not who just not fitting in. It's not that they're bad and they they're lazy, they're just not fitting in. My mother taught Brian Lara in primary school, and she told me a story. Lara used to sit down right by the door, and he always looking outside, and because when he can't wait for recess to go and play cricket, and she makes a joke and tell him, Lara, you're filial cricket, play cricket for the rest of your life. Imagine that. Imagine that because Lara maybe he was he's not an uh uh academic, yeah. We treat it as if something is wrong with it. And I have to say big respect to Lara because he came to my mother's

Purpose Of Art Beyond Entertainment

SPEAKER_03 26:40

80th birthday, yeah. So my nose came home by me.

Corie 26:43

Oh nice, you know, and I was like, Yeah, man, Laura, respect, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's something that I watch all the time. And I we go going back to that track. So we're talking speaks so much to what I feel my purpose is because I stand up on that track watching um Deltones. You know, young, young, young. And I just watching it and I'm saying, boy, look how much lives. I just looking around and I say, look how much lives being saved there, boys. Generations being saved, song setters on the next side. Youth, I watching Renegades playing a song, them youths never hear that. Exactly. Like before before the one bring that. Exactly. Yeah, but I I agree with 100% and join the call for leadership in the country in whatever form, corporate, political, whatever leadership to recognize the artist.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

Particularly the corporate, because um the government can't do everything, the government could set policy and could encourage things to happen, and they have done at I should say, uh the status of the in terms of being involved, giving people um a tax incentive if you contribute to the arts, don't mind that the the structure for getting that done is a whole nightmare for a lot of companies. But a lot more businesses that earn profits in this country need to find a way to funnel it back into the people who they earn the profits from. And that is a responsibility too. There comes a responsibility. If you could make billions of dollars in profits in one year, it must mean that somebody suffers as a result of that, or somebody didn't get an equal share of the pie. Because then everybody's supposed to be a kind of a half a millionaire by now. Yeah, I suppose, yeah, if it was evil.

Corie 28:19

And if that's not so, then okay, I had to give back something in some way. It's funny as some they have a course going on right now called social entrepreneurship. That's what the course is about. So the project is they have to identify some kind of cause. The class identified the Dong Syndrome Family Network. Right. And the issue that he had, Glenn Niles is the head of the network, and he was saying that we, even as families, sometimes cast aside children with Dong Syndrome as if they can't work, they can't learn. And he's about his own experience with his son. So the problem that they have to solve is okay, how do we get in Trinidad and Tobago, people with Dong Syndrome, to join the workforce? It's a major issue, and they have to make a profit-making venture to help that. It could be related to it or not, but the profits must go back into it. Into that. Yeah, so it's just what you're saying. Because when you're doing billions of dollars, and I like the way you put it, you're making billions of dollars here from people here who invest in or who building their house or who borrowing money for the might be borrowing money for the same arts that you don't you're not gonna sponsor. But you're not holding it to home about us, you could never stop to hold that. That that that is critical.

SPEAKER_03 29:21

And it's a serious thing. I mean, because and it's not impossible, it's not a difficult thing to do. I mean, Jamaica is way steps ahead of us because I mean Edna Manley was an artist at the time, and I guess Jamaica has uh uh they have that part as part of their whole policy and framework for the artism's significant. So Jamaican dance was always leaps and bounds ahead of Trinity B, but the theater was always leaps and bounds ahead of us, and their whole appreciation of music has been supported, even even Barbados they support the musicians way more than we do. We kind of take it for granted, I guess. We come from a uh uh um an economy based on oil and whatnot, so the arts is not seen as significant, of course, but and lots of lots of administration spars talk about revitalizing the arts and recognizing that we need to diversify the economy and the sleeping giant that the arts is, and it's all talk and talk and talk and talk. But nothing comes out of it, yeah.

Corie 30:17

And only it for a long time seeing that all this is several iterations changing. Well, governments will come and governments will go, and music will stay. Of course, yeah. Evidence for that. So you're going in school, going through

Minshall’s River And Creative Mentorship

Corie 30:30

theater, going in, you're you're fully in the arts by the time you come out. Yeah, both both Wendell and Santon talk about this Minchall moment. You had that too into it.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

Of course, of course. I was in school, and what I think that band was um, what was the name of that band? Let me see, let me see, let me see Minchall, Minchel. That was um before Kala Loo. It was Kala, no, the river. River. And Minchel came out with this white ban and everybody died on through the die, and I watched the whole presentation on stage, and it was an electrifying moment when Man Crab came on stage and the whole thing covered down in blood, and people started to scream and say Minchel doing obey and all this kind of. But it was powerful because I recognized the power of it. And we went by the mass camp and they had a sign up saying help wanted, and we went and we volunteered. Then you say we your role. Me and Wendell and a couple other friends from St. Mary's at the time.

Corie 31:23

So by St. Mary's, you and Wendell good by that time from school days? Yeah, we we grew up in school together.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Yeah, same, you know. Um, and we went and we volunteered and met Minchell the first day, and he immediately put us to our task and asked who was good with color, and it was just you hooked one time because you're just meeting all kinds of interesting people and processes and methods and things that, you know, and he took to us immediately um because he recognized that there was something in us that we had a kind of energy at the time. And we were a group of young men at the time. We would go in in places, and people were kind of halfway intimidated and impressed at the same time by us our energy, yeah, because we were kind of force at the time, and yeah, and met Mailing, that's where I met Mailing and fashion because she was working heavily with Minchel at that time, developing his sketches and stuff into putting it into the costuming because the river band was big, it was very a fashion band basically where it was about each river in Trinidad and Tobago. And and yeah, that that to me was the most interesting and exciting thing I could get involved in. At that time, so we went in and do we care. In Minchall, me and where to start we're decorating. First, we started off decorating. I think it was pyots we were putting on something like that.

Corie 32:39

At this time, you have experience doing that kind of thing, or you're just going and well, yeah, in primary school, my mother.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

Um, as I told you, my mother was the vice principal of the school, and that year, one of the years she decided at carnival time that she was gonna bring a band in the school, honey, a band called Honeybees. And our house became the mask camp. And so, and oh yeah, my siblings were workers making customers.

Corie 33:04

So you work a bees. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 33:07

So I I learned about making masks from since way back then, but even before that, um my eldest brother Brian, who is no longer with us, um he was kind of the ringleader home. And of course, we being the eldest, we we went and experienced Juve. We used to go over the hill in sour with um yard broom and rake and clean up people yard juve morning for five cents and 25 cents. And so my experience at Juve was going as a sweeper, sweeping and cleaning people yard. Yeah, and that was kind of scary, but I know I had my brothers around me, so yeah, as a little boy, so that was the that was the and I don't even know how mommy allowed us to do that. I guess she was a trusted Brian at the time, yeah. But yeah, that was my that was my foray into Juve, and that was quite eye-opening to be in the darkness in the early hours in the morning, sweeping up people yard and running from dog and all kinds of things. Sour hill and sour was known at the time to be a rough area, you know, taking your chances and you go out there in the street, right? Yeah, but yeah, so mass was always part of it. Ever here. Yeah, as sweepers, yeah, yeah, yeah. People used to do that, go and clean up people yard and thing. But um, yeah, and then by the time you reach the crazy, you know, you have to navigate yourself very carefully, going through the crazy Juventus morning. But yeah, so I was involved in making masks, as I say in my mother in St. Joseph Boys R.C. And so getting involved in Minchel was just kind of like it was familiar ground, but of course, on a much, much larger scale. Because Minchel had kind of blown my mind when I've seen some of the things he, you know, things the man created, and not only what he would draw and sketch, his ideas, his brain, is is the the the kind of genius mind that he had, that was intoxicating because you learn so much from people like that. It was kind of intimidating. Of course, Mintino is an intimidating character, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Corie 35:01

Well, you said that in the beginning, you say you're mentored by by some of the grades, you get to be in that space because I marvel when people like we all simply say, Yeah, I used to make mass with Minchel. That that means something, you know. I mean, especially with where we are now with mass and so on. That and again, Minchel, as a St. James boy, that used to stop. Minchel had the commanded the road, he commanded the stage, and so I wonder where it is, you know. Commanded the nation.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

People was we would go to the savannah to see what Minchel coming with, answer to cost, and kind of ob yeah, and all kinds of things they would say, all manner of insults they would hurl at Minchell. Of course, and you know, they would place him last, the band come last, and everybody like how Minchell could come last, but win people's choice. Nice. So there was something that he was doing that they were very afraid of the power of what Minchel came with. And I mean, it was like to hold a mirror to society sometimes. It wasn't nice stories when he did dance macabre and the whole band was skulls coming down, it was terrifying. People say, Well, is that that ugly? We say mass carnival is colour, but carnival was always more than just the entertainment side of things, and I think we got caught into a whole idea that this thing about call the arts is about entertainment. But the arts is not about entertainment, you may be entertained by it, but it is the purpose of it is not to entertain, it is to hold up a mirror. And if the mirror is reflecting something in the society that you don't like, then you need to check what it is you're seeing and where it's coming from and not point your finger at the messenger.

Corie 36:42

Yeah, even if it's a mirror, you're pointing your finger at yourself either way. Right. It's like it's like it reminds me of talking to you know, Tiger. You got Tiger here. Wilson, I went to I say, All right, I'm gonna do a research before I get Tiger, right? So I went to a place she did the night before called poison. Okay. Boy, are uneasy. It was the most uncomfortable experience. But I understood what she meant when she came and she said, Listen, she said, My audience is to be uncomfortable. She said, I come in to see what society is, and she said, if you're uneasy in that space, you had to go and reflect as to why and what you could do differently or how you could how you could act. It was about domestic violence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Powerful, powerful, powerful.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

And that that is the challenge to the artists now. I mean, to be able to do that fearlessly because it's very easy for people, you know, to toe the line for your survival. Because if you have come out to you want to come out and see something that you recognize that is not going right in the society, you're likely to be demonized with it. You're likely to lose your job for it if you have a job on the outside. So people have to find in ways to maintain what they have while still being true to themselves as an artist.

Corie 37:48

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 37:48

And as I tell people in our music, it's not about entertainment. You know, this way, well, you're a great entertainer. Not an entertainer.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

No, no.

SPEAKER_03 37:56

Yeah, as I say, we might do a song that you like and it's entertaining, you can dance it and whine and carry on. But at the end of the day, it's not really about entertainment so much as it is about speaking your truth and reflecting what you feel inside as honestly as you can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which old music has done. And we attempt to attempt to do that all the time.

Corie 38:14

All the time, all the time, all the time, by the grace of God, you know. Yeah. Them days in the mass camp, you're paying attention as people working behind you. So what people saying about mention and why it is was it moved like after times like those?

SPEAKER_03 38:27

Um, it was always a kind of

Olympic Production And Stagecraft

SPEAKER_03 38:30

a fight, and you always felt that you were part of something that was on a cutting edge because everybody was against you. And I always recognized, I was never a person to follow the crowd. We would be doing something, and if everybody going that way, I was nah, but if everybody's going, so I think I go in so, you know. We're doing a play, and after the end of the play, we lime in outside the venue, whether it was central bank auditorium or whatnot. And there's a point in time when he lime going, and I'm like, you know something? I think I good, you know. I'm ready to go home. And I went, where you going? I know I'm ready to go. I just kind of had a sense of when, you know, when the curve started to go downwards. I was like, okay, let me chop or cut out before that happened. So but working with Minchell and whatnot was the I mean, those things was like water on a duck's back, you know. I just because I kind of recognized that what Minchel was doing was significant, it was exciting, it was it was like food for not only your brain, but food for your soul. So yeah, what's anchor doing? Yeah, it was those things really bothered me because I mean I got so deep and deeply involved. I was production manager for Minchell's for a couple of his bands and for the Atlanta Olympics when we did the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996.

Corie 39:36

So you're production manager then?

SPEAKER_03 39:37

Myself and Cecilia Salazar were the two co-production managers because it's a huge project. And it, I mean, that that I no university could prepare you for that. The amount of work, the amount of scheduling and costing and working with the various creative aspects and developing the sketch into the final costume, and then taking the costume to the players out there, teaching them how to play the mask because Americans. We had a few people who were there to teach, right? But we had to basically teach them how to dance the costume, so it was a whole journey. It was fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. An incredible experience.

Corie 40:19

I have a little bit of experience with one we when FIFA had done a um something here, and we were working with Sony, and that was the only time I recognized, and uh, it's the production on events. That's when I know I couldn't do it. It's because the ulcers, I started getting sick, I can't deal with the pressure. And what was unique about our event is the the protocols. Because we had laventy rhythm section, we say Sony do I experience boots. So laventy rhythm section had to play by the boot, and then we had to get them all in the stadium to play for the game. And boy, them men started airmark thing as weapon, boy. The iron weapon. They say nicky weapon, weapon, weapon, and it is chaotic. Every single stadium throughout the country, we we we chasing after it. So I can't imagine something as big as Atlanta Olympics, especially I talk about a domestic thing we're doing from south to come here, yeah. And doing that then. I went to Atlanta one time, and you know, you feel good as a trainee. I went in the museum and I saw, you know, Atlanta has this as part of a big display in the museum about four rooms on that Olympics, and of course, one dedicated, our whole section dedicated to Mitchell. Wow, okay. So you feeling that the greatness of where you're doing any moment, or you're just working?

SPEAKER_03 41:27

Yes, yes, and no. Yes, I was feeling the greatness of it, but there was so much work involved that you couldn't really focus on that. I was aware of what we're potentially doing, and I mean Minchella done it before in Barcelona, so I mean I was aware of the impact of it. Um, it was a great honor to be to be in such a role. Um, because yeah, you're in a pivotal position because I was also a performer with Minchella, so not just Rooney Production. So to have that that span of of an experience was incredible. And I guess on the night of the Olympic opening ceremonies to have on one of the main costumes and to be going through the whole thing, it felt really, really, really, really special. Yeah, yeah. Because those people looked up at us and they were in awe of this thing that we created. You know, people had never seen costumes like that. And yeah, that was that was just it was very gratifying. Yeah, but at the time you're doing it, you're just doing it. It's only in in hindsight, even when you reflect on it, you say, Wow, yeah, boy. Yeah, you look back at the tapes and you see it.

Corie 42:25

And plenty of projects like that. And you know, it's always wondered as somebody working on the team. When you hear some of the things that being said about about your like hill, versus how the world received Barcelona or received Atlanta. I don't know if you you observe that, you know, sometimes. Yeah, there is because there was like for instance, there was I remember times where they were saying mental, like you say it's OB and the thing. Okay, yeah, yeah. And then when you go abroad, we lauded everybody in awe, and then the same maybe TV stations, radio stations, presenters now saying that Menchel is the greatest. When home, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:00

But I think that that's not that's not unique to um to us. I think you always tend to be more recognized. Well, I know maybe I might be wrong, but we tend to be recognized outside first and foremost more than your own people recognize you. Um, and I guess our our culture is we get so accustomed to it, I suppose. Yeah, that we kind of kind of take it for granted. But when you go outside and you start to express yourself in a certain way, people like, wow. And there's something about Caribbean people, we have it, we have it in spades, you know. We have it, we breathe it coming out of our paws. Think of the whole Caribbean from Jamaica coming all the way down. It's just so much creative expression. Yeah, yeah.

Corie 43:40

And sometimes just by being ourselves, you know, we just like you see the lime in outside, and it could be the way we occupy the space so we would stand up on a pavement and just lime.

SPEAKER_03 43:50

I remember when Latifa started to talk about lime in the time when she had the whole thing about lyman and Trevor Noah talk about lime. They talk about it in this kind of way, but it's just what we that's just who we are. We just occupy the space in a different way. And in that kind of way, that's the way we live. We live a certain kind of life here that a lot of people envy. And that's one of the things that we talk about this year when we keep reinforcing that we we want to maintain the idea that Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean is a zone of peace. I want to bring it back to that because it's something that is being

From Theatre To “Blue” And Rituals

SPEAKER_03 44:30

challenged in a kind of way by leaders in the country that this is not a zone of peace because they have murders here and whatnot. Everywhere in the world they have murders, everywhere in the world is crime. But we believe in the ideal that this part of the world is special and that we are not of fighting wars. Even though you might want to say there's a war on drugs, we have these use that we have to deal with. But we have to maintain, we have to aspire to something. And if we true to our own watch words together, we aspire together, we achieve, then we have to believe that we have to aspire to keep in this place a zone of peace. And that's what we mean when we say here is a zone of peace. So let's not try to make to play games with what's going on here. We want to maintain that the Caribbean is a special space that people come here to enjoy a lifestyle that we take for granted. Yeah. And that is what we mean when we say this is a zone of peace. So I just want to deal with that and put that there and say, and that is what is so special about us, how we live in this part of the world.

Corie 45:33

Of course, of course. And you're expressing that true art as well. You're expressing that true art. It's like I had somebody here who was talking about a boys' club. It's so encouraging to hear him say, But listen, I gave I put myself in a space where we have young boys and we're recreating what would have been African traditions to help them understand what it takes to be a man and have a whole ritual that tells you, okay, you are a man now. And I was thinking, you know, this song more like a zona special operation to me than what being called a zona special. Sorry, David. No, yeah. I had to say it. If it's a special operation, let me make it special. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 46:07

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. No, and I and I I wanna I want to tell you kudos for that because we have to be have the courage to come out and say these things because we can't just be watching what's going on and be mute and be numbed because history will not absolve us from our silence, you know, when it was happening. Yeah, of course.

Corie 46:25

And when you look back at some of the events historical, you know, we look at it and we say, if I was there, I would have revolted or I would have speak up. When it have things we could speak up and revolt about, no, that we mightn't do. Yeah. All right, let's talk about song and thing that we can make.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

The music, like you see, these are the things that fuel the music, because as I tell you, as an artist, one of my jobs is to really ref is to reflect, is to feel something at that and express it. And so the things that I am interested in, I'm not really so interested in in um, you know, water drinking and what she's wearing. That that to me that's adolescent kind of every adolescent goes through that point in time. And at this stage in my life, I'm not so interested in were you drinking or were you smoking or who whining? No, it's a bigger fish to fry. And if we don't recognize at some point in time, you have to recognize that you have a role, you have a microphone, you have an audience, and that's a power. And with that power comes a responsibility. So, what you're really saying, right? And so you had to have the courage to say what you want to say and not study, oh, this one will have X, oh, they go block earlier.

Corie 47:42

Yeah, received, received. Yeah, what you're really saying is an important message. So even before we get to music, you see there's theater. Where did that fall within what you were doing? Mentioned you started doing that as productions on TV.

SPEAKER_03 47:53

Yeah, that was as I said, most a lot of that was in the early 80s with Bagas Company, right? Baggas Company, and um working with Christine Johnson, Mervyn Gauge, Raymond Chukong, John Isaacs, Peace B upon him. And there's only production, and so you're doing production and acting. No, I wasn't in in theater, I was acting. Okay, okay, good. And that's and through that, we met Derek Walcott because he had just got the Nobel Peace Prize, not Peace, the Nobel Prize for Poetry. Right. And the Trinidad Theatre Workshop was reviving some of his works, and they had put out a call for young performers and young actors to to come through an audition. And we went and Derek loved us, right? As everybody else. Boom. And he was in Dream on Monkey Mountain and Joker of Seville and reviving, meeting all those great actors at the time, and just like, wow, yeah, seeing people transform on a stage and give you a kind of an intensity in performance that you just was learning, learning, and absorbing all of that from. And in those years, that was just leading up to the point in time when we had formed Tree Canal because at that time, too, we were very much interested in doing this Juve band, which we started in 1994. And one of our um customers in the band was Jean-Michel Giber, who would bring his group of French, he was a French guy, and they had formed the label Rituals Music. And um they would come and play with us every year. And he and Lorraine, um, his partner and Rosie Sazikaya was forming uh they were doing a compilation, a music compilation in 1997. Right. On the rituals, yes, and they asked us to do a song for it. And so because we had sung a happy birthday for mailing at the time, you see how things started come together. Of course. We sang Happy Birthday for mailing, uh-huh, and they were there at the time because they were also friends of mailing and they were like, Oh, these guys have talent, blah blah blah. Let's ask them to do a song for the compilation for Carnival.

Corie 49:52

So from singing Happy Birthday, they actually do it.

SPEAKER_03 49:55

And sing it real good. Well, yeah, and well, I mean, they were we have our singing talent because we were also in Walcott's musicals. Right. So all those things started to come together, and you see how we didn't plan that. You know, different streams would lead to the river that didn't actually take it to the sea. So we sang the happy birthday. They said they will take a chance and give us a uh uh save us a spot on the CD for us, and we did blue because that year we were doing blue. We had done white, red, and black the three years before that. And the year when we did blue, just before that, we were in Atlanta for the

Juve “Blue”: Chaos, Paint, And Myth

SPEAKER_03 50:30

Olympics with Minchel, right? And all the news coming back to Atlanta from Trinidad was about kidnapping and raping, and that was the news. Yeah, when you're outside, they say all the bad news. So we knew we were gonna do blue because we wanted to cut the blight of what appeared to be happening to Trinity and Tobago at the time. So we did a we did the first song was called Blue Blue, which is the more blue, blue, my oldest blue. We did that song for them, and he's like, No, no, no, this is not uh this is we're doing a carnival song, we want something more cann't. So why don't you sing about your Juve band? Because he used to play in the Juvent. We did blue, the song blue, the juve song, and they loved it. And that was how yeah, we got into the music through the theater, through all of the all those different streams.

Corie 51:17

Yeah, when they're never still singing that David Roddown, yeah, waiting in O2. Mobs two, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:26

Every year we would go to and write up in the front and singing loud and hard until eventually.

Corie 51:31

Like people do it all in now. Well, right, exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 51:34

So you see, full circle.

Corie 51:35

Yeah, I was at one of your shows in um, I think it was in Kaiso Blue Cell. Maybe that's why they followed it. I can't blind the show, right? But seeing your audience, the way they sing along with every song, yeah, the big songs that everybody knows, the songs that might people might call B-sides or whatever, they done with all you. Yeah, it's just almost like when y'all talk about singing for Rudder now, it's like I get that flashback, it's like it's amazing, so yeah, that's a very gratifying thing, though.

SPEAKER_03 52:00

I mean, when the audience started singing the song, you know, word for word. Yeah, yeah. But singing it singing for Rudder was just, I mean, it was, I mean, Rudders is a quintessential storyteller at the time, you know, and Rudders' music was just connecting in big ways. That longtime band song used to haunt me. I would know I knew every single musical in in notation and what in that song. Longtime band was so visual, I could see the band coming down the road.

Corie 52:28

You know, even the flow of it, even where he put the light, is it's almost like there's a jumbling of the thing, like if people come down the road for real.

SPEAKER_03 52:36

I mean, and I mean, as storytelling to the start off enough is enough, shout little man. As he pull out the ancient and a pan, wow, yeah, yeah. Can you have a soft? That is a fact.

Corie 52:46

Yeah, and that's sometimes fascinated by I always wonder what writers. Oh, you decided where but in first the audacity to start a song saying enough of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when I hear all your story about blue, yeah, so open the dictionary and say a color. No, a color of a pigment. Yeah, because we don't tell nobody about episodes before they come out, right? I I be real guarded. I don't like nobody to know who we have. Yeah, but I just tell everybody, I say you know how tricky can I blue, you know, it's a dictionary. Because when you look at the dictionary, no, if you Google it and you look at blue, they say blue, a color of the pigment. Jesus Christ. Yeah, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 53:20

That's where you're we always start from that POV. We try to figure out okay, what is it, what, what it is we want to see? What's the question? We always have a question. What's the time? What was he what's he feeling on the ground? And get the definition of it, and then you extrapolate on that, you know. So we start off from the basic and then we we build on that, yeah, and making a statement, I suppose.

Corie 53:39

That's a part of it. Make a statement at the end of the day. So I heard that only had juve football three years, then no come and all just he had different kinds of juvenile with that. As the man on the production on the business side of things, how much have a headache? It was the worst.

SPEAKER_04 53:58

It was the best and it was the worst at the same time. I juve morning.

SPEAKER_03 54:05

Well, we we hook up with we hook up with Tony Challenger on Chinese laundry 96.1 at the time. I didn't know it was 96.1 at the time. Yeah, it must have been. Yeah. To do produ to do run the ads and stuff for that. When we realize the June band sell out, we tell them, okay, stop, stop running the ads. Ads still running. Um make sure you don't announce where we meet in. Yeah, meet and the meeting place got announced and only announced already going wrong the savannah now because we're meeting right by the roundabout in St. Ans. And I just see in a crowd, and like with it. Well, who's all them people?

SPEAKER_04 54:52

I spent now in like this.

SPEAKER_03 55:00

And this is Savannah. I watch it, huh? We're on the road going on Queen's Park East, and people walking over cars on top of bonnets, and I just watching the crowd. This is street twice that wide in the savannah coming down. And I'm like, What the hell is this? Why was it worse? It was no, it was the paint, they teethed the paint off the truck. It was total chaos. People say, careful what you asked for, turn the whole hole upside down. Oh people came outside where we were registering and said they they have to get in this jury, they don't care how go and print more tags, do whatever, but they have to play. And part of that, as I was telling David, the video that we did with Walt and Daniel Diffentala, peace be upon her, took the song into a whole other level. Where people's imagination and the the imagination exploded when they saw how we interpreted this little Juvent coming on the road, and we turned the red also from red to blue, and it was, you know, at the time nobody was doing video like that. Everybody said I had to they see the self in this video, and it had to be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Organized chaos, yeah.

Corie 56:15

Yeah, the video tell the story. Did just the color, the type, the colour or the shade of blue that you choose is something that we didn't really see.

SPEAKER_01 56:23

Yeah, yeah.

Corie 56:23

Again, painting red always.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

That was a that was a uh concerted effort to try and get that um the wash-in blue, that

Managing Energy: Music As Crowd Control

SPEAKER_03 56:30

the little square blue that is used to rinse your clothes with, to get that blue in paint. Now, and the other thing, as I was telling somebody from Oh, that's going back to the whole Maljo thing too. We need to cut the blight with some good blue, you know. And so we had to get the at that time, nobody was doing body paint. It was actually through mention that body paint started to be was done locally. The year before that, I think he had uh people covered on and painted in white. Right. So we had developed a relationship with the lab in Penta at the time um to develop this paint that could be safe on your skin. And so we were the first Juve band to bring any paint. People used to put actual thing or mud on the skin. So we got them to mix that special blue for us, but we didn't think that we would need so much paint. You ran out of water, we had to we mixed down whatever few buckets we had till it was like watery, watery blue. Yeah, just to make it work. People get all kinds of things happening. People get stabbed in the band, my partner gets stabbed in a Tiffy gold chain. Oh it was terror, it was literal terror. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just anxious for the whole thing to be over. But it uh to people who played it was like the best. Yeah, because it's all the time.

Corie 57:44

Yeah, it's just oh trick and I'll judge as a whole, but our first one, all the people who was there is a woodstock thing, you know. People like to tell anybody I was there, I was there for blue, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 57:53

And a lot of our hardcore players were very upset because they accustomed to us with our little band. We come out in white the first year, second year. We come out and we say um black with a vengeance, right? And then right there we come out red for spite, red, white, and black, and we say, right, we come in blue now to cut the blight. Yeah, but them for people was mad vexed by like who's all these people? Um so that's why that's and they're stomining her, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 58:18

Like we benefited financially from it.

Corie 58:20

Of course, of course, of course. Never that's from the business of business because you take on a whole lot of risk with not much reward financially, at least, you know what I mean. So at no point though, right? When you have your loyal masqueraders, because I play um uh last juve I went was I think clay juve. And it's a nice vibe. And you know, it's a rope juve, getting all your fellas against, and we go on with it, right? And I stray to find the back of the rope with my coward self now, and but the band was a mini version of Trick and I in the back then. So I realize now they kind of close up rope and they go on further forward. So I in the back now, and we haven't had time regardless. I was like a reach drink, struck me inside. Right. And I was I heard them talk when when we reached back by the mask. I'm talking about thing with security and then you're not worried about the loyal masqueraders at that time and thinking, okay, we had to rope this off and make this safer or more.

SPEAKER_03 59:12

No, but our band for the most part, I mean, blue, as I say, was pure chaos, but our band for the most part was kind of safe because we had laid out our band in such a way that um we always did the rhythm, we always had a rhythm section, it was always laventy rhythm section, and they would clear the way at the top of the band. And we always had a good relationship with the DJs to know and to recognize how to take down the energy, how to how to ride that wave. And that's a critical thing because it's very easy to get carried away as a DJ. You're playing and you, oh, you want young yeah, forward, and you go into certain zones, you just had to know what to play because the music will change your mood, it will change the mood of the space. You put on jazz now, people will perform differently, will react differently from if you have classical music playing or hype music. So I remember one year we were coming on by Green Corner and Shell Shock was playing, and um a fight break out right there by Globe Cinema. Um I can't remember, I think it was big um what you are Toro Toro. Yeah, wrong song to reach by Green Corner. I suppose fight start. You say Shock, shock cut this song bam, and put on um a Stalin. The whole place just got calm, and everybody was jumping up. The music has a big part to play, but when you see people drinking and they have plenty, y'all don't know how to manage our energy. So we were we were very, very um intentional about that in terms of these songs that we play, and then our juve also always had a big proportion of the juve was us performing on the truck, so we would perform some of our songs and at a clan would come in and do our thing, and you know, or Mari come and do our stint, and so we always kept it in that kind of zone.

Corie 1:00:58

So, even from then, you're looking at because I heard Santon saying as well that we were the security in a sense, it's like you could control the music, you could control the route, you could control rather than the illusion that you could use a rope to control the yeah, the security.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:12

Yeah, when you're on the truck, you're looking out, you're seeing everything that's happening, and we had our security in the ban, and fellas would walk through. And sure, one year I think they they they came and they presented a whole bag of things that they um they took from people in the bar.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:26

Tools, yeah, tools, tools, boy, tools. Like,

Fame, “Salt,” And Audience Perception

SPEAKER_04 1:01:30

wow, like what is better there?

Corie 1:01:33

Yeah, yeah, people might forget that that was that was just a time. That was that that's not that's not just a trick and I'll experience that was and juve juve is a time of risk.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:41

You go out there, you're taking it's a risky time. That's part of the whole allure of it, that's part of the danger of it, that's part of the whole experience. Yeah, it's not a a safe, safe zone. You can't be going out there stripping either. You can't go there, you know, yeah, yeah. That's stripping us, yeah.

Corie 1:02:00

And even the idea of sort of outsourcing your personal security tab ban, it's like when you look at it a little ridiculous when you think about it. You still have to take care of yourself.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:08

Keep your head on, keep your head on, of course. I used to juvenile than anybody else. I didn't used to get into all that sort of drinking and thing. I did that one year and say, Never me again. Serious. It was in New York, actually. I was so so drunk. I love sitting on the pavement like this.

Corie 1:02:25

How many pictures are that David?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:27

Yeah, lucky. And when that cousin said, No, boy, you can't do that, boy. And grab me and be say, Boy, stricken album, but you can't.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:35

I was so drunk because everybody came, take a drink, take a drink. Uh it I knew up. Yeah, I mean, like myself.

Corie 1:02:42

You gotta be real conscious of that. Yeah, everybody wanna give you a drink.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:44

Yeah, again and other. So now you mustn't be outside there and not be in control, boy. Not at all, not at all.

Corie 1:02:50

Yeah, yeah. So so blue come and juve changed. Life kind of changed too, right? Because now you're, I mean, you're recognizable everywhere. Blue was that thing. As a youth coming up and you see that video. I I always felt it changed the music so much that yeah, like you feel it. The music was real, not that it was good, but real jump and wavy, rel, you know, you talk about it. What was the topic? What was the thing? And I felt like that was the first time I started seeing um like you talk to youths now and they say calypso is about topics and soca is just vibes. I don't know that I grew up in a time where that was true at all. A matter of fact, yeah. Blue boy, I never heard of people call him a soccer artist. He was a calypso. Everybody's a calypsonian, yeah. But you all had us in a grip in a way with a song that really maybe it took me a while to realize this song is serious matters happening in the music, but it just had the energy. What's your life like then when that came out on your superstar now on the streets? I never really considered myself to be a superstar, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:51

In fact, I kind of used to kind of keep that at bay because I like my privacy, I like to be able to go where I want to go and not feel like you know, all eyes on you. But that it goes with the territory, but um yeah, blue really did change things because you start people start just calling you out in the street and they want your signature and chair and coming, and yeah, it was it was kind of gratifying, but uh agreed at a certain point too. You kind of like you feel like you can't really go where everywhere you want to go and just be just yes, yes, right, just be. And then well, we did we did salt a couple years after that, and in that video for salt, I decided I was going to really express a certain kind of energy in salt, and all the school school children started run from me.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:34

It was the exact opposite, you know. Now they thought I was seriously demonic because nobody would go to the schools and they're running by Wendell and standing and they're watching me so and they fade me. It's like that's okay. I was playing a role, you know. Yeah, that's it's not me, you know. You're too good in the theater part of it.

Corie 1:04:58

No, that's all video was really yeah, but you know, that that whole that that energy in that in that period, or maybe I should ask, after blue, you're feeling pressure for hit song and thing like you.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:12

No, no, not really pressure, no. Um, in fact, the following mud madness. I was surprised that mud madness even got the kind of play that it did. I do you see the video? Oh, yeah, the video and then the videos of the channel. No, no, no. No, but come there, I just say it. No, but I'm talking about the song itself. How many people in it? The song itself, Mud Madness was a difficult song for me as a as a singer and as a performer. Whereas Blue was a lot more blue was just blue, just felt a lot more natural and easy. Mud Madness to me was a little more challenging, and I was kind of really pleasantly surprised that we got the love that we got for Mad Madness as we got for Blue. Yeah, almost seems to be. Yeah, but no, as you say, the video was I mean, Waltz decision to go to that quarry. People wondering if we went to Africa to shoot the video, all kinds of thing. And

Loss, Harmony, And Evolving Sound

SPEAKER_03 1:06:00

We have to really give kudos to the people as I say that people think that is about the three of us alone, but it's not. We work with some really good people over the years to help us to take our ideas to the next level. And Walt certainly has been one of those people throughout time. Yeah.

Corie 1:06:14

So mad madness to show my sonnet. Showing them always asking who we have, say, uh Trick and Al. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he said, Well, who's Trick and Al LC? And I show him blue. And I say, he's fascinated by it. He's like, but you're casting which one is them? In the other video, you see. It's just, it's just it's just an energy and a vibe.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:34

Yeah, my man. This was off the chat. So he said your son is your main um researcher.

Corie 1:06:39

Yeah, he's 13. He's a man, yeah. He's with me. That's production. He and David, he's a man. He always have questions, which is nice. You know what I mean? At this age, to see some of this. I enjoy I enjoy sharing that with it.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:50

And that's good because that's the part, that's an a big part of what very gratifying to be able to reach young people and to have that kind of a um that good connection with the music and how it impacts them. And also, you walk the streets and people come to you and say, Thank you for the music and thank you for what it is you have said and what you continue to say about you know life in Trinidad Island to be going the social scene and all of that. So that that aspect of it I really am very, very grateful for.

Corie 1:07:18

You know, but and it's it's important with youths to me. I grew up in a household where I know more Kaiser than I should know from people who was I them pass along before I come. Right. So when he comes and he's come by the computer when I edit it, and he might see Juni Lee, and he says, Well, what yeah, Junior Lee? And then he sees somebody, I say, They're relevant. I say, What? I said, Come and show you this. Well, now it's me and his mother showing him videos and it's nice. He's like, So, yeah, you don't used to see them how we see in Juni.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:45

I was like, Yeah, it's not, it's not the time and thing as a funny thing, but you see what you're saying there, that is so important because a lot of a lot of parents, I learned from what my parents used to play. I know what my mother, my mother used to go and buy she was an avid record buyer. Right. So the music could always be playing. All the merchant and yeah, you're learning, they know you're learning. Kitchener and King Wellington, and she buying the records and playing it, and I hear it. Yeah, but I don't know what's happening right now. I don't know what parents are expos the exposing their children to now. Yeah, I learned from what my parents were playing.

Corie 1:08:20

Well, it's an interesting thing, by me at least, because because of how I learned spoiler and merchant, I learned that music through my father. My tendency is the way I feel about them to show him merchants and spoilers and things. So when he says who's tricky and I was like, I just assume he knows like what I come and see this, you know what I mean? And yeah, I think it's just how we get appreciation of the thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:41

And in this time we live in it, it have more it have more media out there, but people are less exposed in a sense.

Corie 1:08:48

Well, I find that to be particularly here, and I was telling us like TikTok and thing. I hear this man come singing Neil Diamond song, and people you know this, so what we could know them, but we don't really know us.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:01

It's called self-contempt, it's called self-contempt, and it's not willful self-contempt either. It's just something about the way we kind of don't see ourselves as as important. If it's some if it's outside, it's more important. Yeah, that kind of has been drilled into us and we have to unlearn that. It's not, it doesn't, it's not, it don't just happen like that.

Corie 1:09:22

Of course, of course. Unlearn. I hope in that some of these stories start that process of unlearning. Because we have to. I think I think we have to. Yeah. Now you bring up being a singer, right? When Ellen Santon both say they acknowledge the C by CVs chanting, it really coming down to Roger and coming down to John. You put John John Isaacs in the group, and I know y'all all work together in in Mass Camp as well. Soon after y'all start to take off, we I guess all of us as youths too shocked by the idea. I remember it being the first time I ever come to terms with reality that celebrity, people who you love, you know, you love from a distance. It's like pass away. You know, you're seeing us young people, you're seeing them as forever young. Was that like for all you'll know that at that time?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:05

I was traumatic. Because it was in the height of the season and to lose John was wow. It kind of uh put a brakes on everything, but we knew we couldn't stop, we had to continue because he would not want the whole thing to fall apart. Not that we wanted to mash it up either. He meant I was a pause, yeah. But we couldn't pause and we just went through still hard. Right. Um, because John was very fierce, he was a real fierce advocate and actor and singer. John was a triple threat, he would act, sing, dance, he could do everything. TV, he was natural in front of the camera. Yeah, I grew up watching John, you know, when John was in Hoodie Cap Fit and Uly Banyan and Guy, not even Gail Banyan days. Right. Um, yeah, that was that was really, really tough. But we got a lot of love and support from people um making it through that time, and then going

Writing Process And The Rapso Label

SPEAKER_03 1:11:00

on beyond without John as a voice, because John had an incredible kind of quality voice that used to just knit the whole thing together. He would find a harmony that you would never think about and bring it, bring a kind of a richness in his voice that was a kind of part of the signature song.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:16

And there's times when you were in the booth and you swear that you're hearing, you record, everybody record, and then when you're listening back, like it have another voice inside of there. And I swear to God, it was him, his voice finding a way to come through the three of us.

Corie 1:11:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:33

Um, yeah, that was that was that was not easy. I would imagine it's not easy at all.

Corie 1:11:38

Always on the creatively, because as you're going through that now, if they say too well, it was the singers. Now it's on you to carry some of them, carry some of the harmonies.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:48

Yeah, yeah. Most people when it comes to like harmonized harmonies and so on, a lot of you know, sometimes you need to be well, yeah, yeah, and there. And you have to be honest and say, Well, I really hear no harmony for this song, you know. Because this song don't really need a harmony, it's not everything you put in a harmony, right? It's being able to tell when it needs that additional colour.

Corie 1:12:07

If you want to put that additional colour on the canvas, it's a way I listen to like a lot of these songs because I get messages there, and there's a certain aggression that is followed by a smoothness. I always wonder if that's deliberate and really creative process.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:21

Um, not really, not really deliberate, but um balance is is is always part of something that I think is important, but it's not like we decide you're gonna get smooth here at this point in time, but um yeah, I think it's a kind of organic, a kind of organic way it happens. Um and I kind of tend to bring that element of it, these the smoother. It depends on the song too. What does the song need if this song requires because I could do all kinds of vocal gymnastics?

Corie 1:12:51

I was wondering that like if you do different layers, like you do harmonies on three parts for yourself.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:55

Yeah, and then you do a rough vocal, and then you do a smooth vocal, and then you know, like Super Blue used to call us every year to come and do background swim because Super Bloody Time was also with rituals music. And he liked the way we could transform our voices to just back up what he you know, what he was doing. Yeah. So, I mean, and that's part of that's part of training when you're doing your vocal training, you know, how to modulate your voice to create whatever effect you wanted to get. Got you. So when it comes to writing now, how you all typically approach that? Everybody write their own part and come together. For the most, for the most part, I mean, we might have ideas to what it is we want to say for the current year, and Wendell would kind of generally tend to lead in terms of deciding, well, this is what we're gonna say, or this is how with the approach. You come together and you write your own ideas, put it together and put it in the pot, mix it up, not take out this, you put that, you sing this instead, that kind of way.

Corie 1:13:48

I see.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:49

But so that way the collaboration really does work and it helps as a group because you're not always feeling like everything had to come from you. And we have found ways to be able to work together where each person is bringing their own true self to it, and then it becomes the trick and all identity.

Corie 1:14:06

Yeah, that's the thing, boy, because the that trick and eye it shows is so different in terms of the voices, what bring or even sometimes what's being said by each person or who share in the middle of the stage. Right. But there's amazing that over all these years, you'll still keep it as the one thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:20

Yeah, no, and and and it it is funny because if you hear each individual voice in recording, each voice has its own quality. But when we come together and sing together like we might record the choruses together, three of us behind the one mic, it's completely different from if you heard each person sing it. And we've had times where we record the same chorus, but we record it one at a time, and then you record the same chorus with all three voices, and it's totally different. So there's something that kind of joins it up together.

Corie 1:14:53

That's yeah, yeah. Imagine my it's you saying don't here talking to all you know because now when I talk to y'all, I hear all the parts. I was like, oh, you sing this, you sing this part, right? You know, you just kind of hear it from the uh the tone of the voice. No, you come with that button here it's saying rap so, right? That was the intention. You're going in to be a rap so group or artist.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:12

Uh no, no, it was resistance who said what we were doing was rap so we were just making music, was he feeling this kind of music, and and he embraced us, and I like that because the rap so fraternity at the time was not competitive. Soka is a competitive arena, and the calypso is competition, and rap so is the one that I can get, I think, in the sense of the fact that art is not a competition that was kind of true to that form, right? And even though I understand and I respect why there is competition in the Soka and the Calypso, Rapso is the one um arm of it that didn't really have a competitive aspect to it. And it was really about just making that statement it in a consciously and positively, yeah.

Corie 1:15:55

I guess the message, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:57

And when we I mean, we were never really of the fit music. Some of our songs would play in the fets, but we didn't make music for fets. Yeah, we didn't make music for pan. And I find that sometimes that's some that's one of the traps we tend to fall into. You're thinking I go and I go and write the road match. You can't meet time you decide what you start with that decision in your head. I think you're probably going down the wrong track. Yeah, just make a good song. If the pan men like it, they will play it proper when they come up with pan songs. I had a problem with pan songs. You could hear it not really.

The Yard, Black Box, And Teaching

SPEAKER_03 1:16:30

I trying to make a song for pan. Make a good song, yeah, yeah, yeah. Make a good calypso, sing about this. Okay, I go and make the I go and make the word match. Yeah, I don't make a monster.

Corie 1:16:40

No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, but you're encouraging people to start message first. That's where you'll you'll you all started.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:45

I don't know. I don't know if I really encourage it. Yeah, you're just saying your thoughts. Yeah, yeah, people have their own things to do, yeah, and people have their own journeys, and I'm not trying to tell anybody what they should do. But um, I don't know. Sometimes the intention is it the intention that you start with is really key.

Corie 1:17:03

Gotcha, gotcha where you might end up. So if there if there's a case on brother resistance, coin y'all rap so because I had a I I I know rap so, but what y'all did change the due respect to everybody call me for it, changed the feel and the song of Rapso almost completely. You're not going in deliberately to do that, you're just making a good song.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:23

Yeah, I laughing because I as you say we changed the song of Rapso. Um, we worked with Dean Williams in the early sta in the early years, and um the Rapso fraternity had this thing they would do in the savannah every year, and we went with our band and Dean. I don't know if you know Dean, they used to call him Parang because he had a kind of parang strong, but Dean and my man like rock music. Yeah, and we of course exploring and experimenting with all kinds of things in terms of the influences and what we like. And that year, I think it was 1999. It was the same year we did talk your talk. We went into the rapture explosion on the stage performing, and Dean, we tell Dean, Dean, if you're ready, if you want, just rock it out. And Dean started playing a rock, the tiny melee thing, the whole rapture fraternity watch we see. But people say that's the rap, so that's what we're doing, right? And so it wasn't surprising, even if we were in the rapture fraternity, then they didn't think we were doing rap, so but at that point in time, you know. I I do I try to move out of these these tight little boxes that you want to fit into. We just make any music that we feel, and if I mean we want to call it rap, so we call it rap, we call it rap, so yeah. But I I mean, if it if it upsets some people that it's called rap, so well, okay, so be it.

Corie 1:18:42

Yeah, we know you ain't so very well certain. Another thing, only changing rap. So I hear many things like rap so man do die, they multiply, and you know, I mean the rhythm of the world, the power of the world and thing, but rap so man doesn't wine like you, the only rap so man, I know, and all the whole are rap so nobody don't whine. You just went into just whine out the whole rap so I see you in the guys of boost you whine out the whole place, so nobody else does that.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:07

When whining is required, whining is required. So you cannot deny the wine when you wine. If in the middle of your song and saying that's what I'd have a baccanal thing in the song, I get a little back and all you have to show the little baccanal inside, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:20

I remember when I when the foot well was I think it must have been after blue, yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:26

My mother, my mother said, Roger, your aunt called me and she said, Evelyn. Since when Roger is trying to have to be host number one winer boy, because they went to some perform Gigri One and she said, But why Roger wine so much?

Corie 1:19:49

Because you say where writing is required, right? It's a no winning required there, but trying to find the part where the whining required, but you just find no well it have it have this year.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:59

There's um well, if you come when you come to the show, you will see there's um there's a little bit of whining that needs to take place to explain to people the kind of yeah, yeah, there's a kind of little back and all that happening in the society right now, yeah. And sometimes you need to demonstrate it in physically, you know. So David, we're gonna need a wine again, you know.

Corie 1:20:22

Right, we have a volunteer. We have a volunteer, we're gonna start today. You get a job, look at that. No, but I mean, them performances are epic as always. Thank you. You bring up the show, and even before I get there, I want to get to spaces like the theater spaces, the yard, you'll create the black box and so on.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:42

How important is that for you? Oh, that that's absolutely crucial because it's a good catchment area for interfacing with new young artists, as we were at the time. You're coming up there, and sometimes you just want somebody to to song the idea off of or to opportunity to perform on the stage because you ain't getting hired and no, nobody in hiring you for no gig, but you still have something to say. And so we create that platform for new young people coming up there who have something to say. Hopefully, it's something positive. I mean, even if it's not positive, the audience will decide and say, nah, we don't like that. Oh, you know. But the black box and the yard there is a very, very crucial spot, crucial place, a crucial space for the development and for the future and for passing the battle forward.

Corie 1:21:25

Well, it's something that I admire because even when as y'all tell your story, it's kind of surreal

Why They Stopped Juve And What’s Next

Corie 1:21:30

to hear y'all say now. Like I walk in mental yard and they say who knows what color. It's almost like we're living in a place now where the biggest artists today, when I say artists or artists, I don't know if you could walk in a yard and see them or just just join, like I join up as a part of this now. But you're deliberately creating spaces like those. Both Wendell and Sanson said they are teachers. You see yourself the same way in terms of oh yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:54

And people come all the time and they have this, they have an idea for something, but they don't know how to take it forward. And it might be a musical idea, it might be something that they want to produce, something that they want to create, or a t-shirt that they want to do, and they just don't know how to go forward, and they don't have anybody to to guide them or even give them a suggestion. And there's a very welcoming space for that, and we fulfill that role all the time, all the time, so much so that we attract people who yeah, so other people say, Well, why only have all these smart people around here? You know, somebody's somebody described the black box one time as a madman capital. No, seriously, because they have a lot of people out there who really toasty for opportunity, they just want to be to feel seen, and people don't have time for people anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of people don't really have time for you. If you're not about there hustling it to make the dollar, nobody wants to. Of course, of course. But a lot of yeah, a lot of empathy for poor souls out there that's struggling to get by.

Corie 1:22:58

We we get that, we get that, we get that from you. So going into the show as a man on production thing. I know this busy time for you, so just a couple more questions of here. How is how's it going? How the production leading up to it, how much pressure are you feeling right now?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:10

Because it no well, I'm normally under a lot of pressure, but somehow the other this year I kind of adopted a um a stance where I um the outcome is what it will be. Worrying about the outcome is not going to make the outcome any better. In fact, it's actually, I think it does the opposite. So my sister lives in the United States and she called me the other day and said, Roger, how it's going? I say, Hey, going good, you know. She said, Well, how are you songing so calm? I said, Normally, you are in a real stress. I said, Well, and she said, Well, there's something about you in your voice that has a very, very consistent, very um, she's happy to hear that I'm not sounding as stressed out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, because it it is um, I'm gonna say it's a big, big challenge to do what we do, to write music, to do videos, to mentor people, to put on a show, perform in the show, to set up the stage and the um the design elements and all of that is a lot. Yeah, um, and which is one of the reasons why I mean before that it was even including the Juve band. So, in a sense, we were we were producing an entire kind of a little ecosystem there. It was more than more than just what normal regular artists would do. Of course, yeah.

Corie 1:24:20

You know, it's like trying to do 13 subjects, you know, you like the penny thing. I can do CXC three times, but me and I do 13 years. I ain't getting there.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:40

That's scary now. No, no, you haven't really studied now, but yeah, you can study it, we'll study it.

Corie 1:24:46

You're missing the juve, something you want to do again only the other. Well, boy.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:50

This year I was pretty, I mean, we decided that we won't do any juve. And I think if there was ever a year to do a juve banana would have been this year, yeah. Given what the state of the world and what's going on, yeah, and the statement that needs to be made right now. But um, yeah, we've closed our chapter. We've closed our chapter on the juve, and um it it it was not an easy decision to make, but you know, you're looking at it year after year, and you're on the road, and things just seem to be falling apart. Things not I think one of the main things that hit me was the yeah, we're going up towards the savannah, and it was always an incredible experience to see the sun coming up, and all the other banks was heading west. Or you could be turning your back to the sun, the sun is coming up Juventus morning, and the authorities decided that that was the direction the traffic was to go. We go in the opposite way. No, yeah, you know, every year there's change up and all this kind of thing. But we had a specific route that we would take. Yeah, yeah, we would go down uh don't track with the green corner, swing up, so whatever. But the moment of the sun coming up was the moment of the juve for me. That is the moment not crossing the stage. That was gratifying as well. But to see that point when the darkness shifts into the the coming of the light, and to see people's facial expressions and their whole demeanor change because it's a whole journey, you can actually see it as a graph. And that point in time, and I realized now we go into the sun, and everybody going so something wrong, something changed. And I mean every year you're passing bands with the ropes and people roped up, and that had a time they would they a year. They had I saw the con the arrival of the construction net, the orange net that is used to block off construction. And I don't really want a song like I pulling on nobody ban on anything, yeah. But they look like cattle in in a barricade. And all we players there and we charming and they're watching us singing. We singing on each truck, and the members of the band are passing us, watching us like and they want to know like why they're there. And I say, no, something something not jive in here. Yeah. And then it was becoming more and more and more difficult to operate in the whole space like that. Um yeah, and then it's just there's a lot of a lot of elements being juggled. Right. Yeah, not gratifying. And then it was 30 years you were doing it too. It's like that's a whole generation. Some people don't live to 30, no. They're getting shot at 20, 19, 21. So yeah, to do anything or completion over 30 years consistently as a computer. That's easy to do. Yeah, but dying a light. This year, it really felt like nah boy, we should do a juve band this year, but if ever there was a year for a juve band. Just as you gave me a little hope here, we're holding on to that, right?

Corie 1:27:47

You don't respond to that.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:49

No, it's too late for him in Cory. Well, any day Juve is like two weeks away.

Corie 1:27:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:56

Nah, well, you see, the thing is, if you want to do a juve band.

Performing, Legacy, And Closing Thanks

SPEAKER_03 1:28:00

Is not you don't have to have truck and all that, you know. Two different could go. That's how we started, you know. We were just a group of friends, we were not in the road and we find a truck, we jump behind the truck, and then when they get vector like get out of the band, we move and we go to the next band, and that's how we started until we realized now we had to formalize this thing and we put the starter start hiring truck and all of that kind of thing. But the kind of juve I was feeling, and the kind of juve I felt for years is one where there's no amplified song, it could just be a pan site or a rhythm section, or you give people something to think. And I see it was El Salvador, no, so it was Bailey's. I saw a video the other day of this thing coming down the road. Everybody had some kind of percussive instrument and they're singing. Yeah. If you see how incredibly powerful that is, I was like, Yeah. Yeah. What why you can't do that?

Corie 1:28:49

All of a sudden, if you all feel like when you move from this space, because if all the other bands had in the Western only one heading is drop out, it I don't know what it means for the space now. Do we get that traditional juve? Do we get a feel? What's your thoughts?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:02

Well, there's a young, a group of young ladies that are doing a thing called Juve Love. Right. Um, that come out of our camp because they they still want to play Juve, and of course, and I'm very glad and support them. Um there is a void in the space because there's not a single day that goes by that somebody does see. Please come back. Please come back. Juve missing all they all need to be there, and all they could drop the baton. Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, I don't know. I I really don't know. I don't know what the future holds in terms of the juve. I watch it just turn into something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't know.

Corie 1:29:43

What about you? You just played Juve, or you just went no. Oh, you never went back out. You go see you, they would all start pushing that band. You had to be missing Juve when you home Juventus.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:54

Um, I was actually grateful for the break. Oh, I see. Because I didn't really get to play Juve, you know. When you when you when you have a juve band, you don't really get to play Juve, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:04

I mean, especially as a if I come in all this year, I don't know that it's coming out when we bought it.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:13

I mean, I I may you know, I very well may you know. I very well maybe. Yeah, you get a break, you get a break. Yeah, I may I may do it. Um I would like to be able to experience Juve, but I don't know if there's a space anymore for it. For in terms of how I what I know it wants to talk about. I might go out there and get X. You know? It's like if I go to a party now, I'll get X one time. When the DJ started playing, you can't hear the holds, you're hearing one verse. Not even a verse anymore. And as soon as you start to enjoy yourself, they pull it out on it. Nah, I can't, I can't. I'll get X. So I might come out, I might come out with my camera and take two, three pictures or something like that. Try and do like what my boy is doing. Uh used to, uh but used to, but no, yeah. Uh so the future. I enjoy I enjoy my I enjoy playing master, but as I say, um, who knows?

Corie 1:31:06

Yeah, I might come on. What about the future? They continue the the shows, you're still enjoying doing that, particularly productions.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:12

I've always told people that performing is my yeah, is it for me? Being on the stage, being able to articulate and being able to connect with people in performance is the most gratifying thing for me. Yeah, and it's the thing that keeps me going, it keeps us going. I could safely speak for my other two brothers. Is the thing that um keeps us doing it? Yeah, because we get enough stories of people who talk about how transformative it was for them to come to a performance, or maybe it was some struggle they were going through in their life, and the song touched them in a way that we didn't even think it could or would.

Corie 1:31:48

Patrons like audience were most. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But sure, you get the same stories from people who became a part of the production. Yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:54

Some of the artists you all give space towards. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and coming through the years, there's so many of them. I mean, Ola Tunji and so many people. I can't even settle list. I mean, when we were in Rituals Yard back in London Street since 1998, coming up there, so many people when we had the literally what we do, which we call the backyard jam at the black box now. Right. We did it on a much smaller scale at Longland Street at the time, and Shellshock was the DJ and Saucy. Wow, everybody passed through there. Everybody show when Winchester came through and they had a new song. Chinese don't used to come and peep in to see what's going on. And little yeah, you know the yard, you know what the yard, yeah. That yard real people passed through there and and cut their teeth. We had a actually we had a thing called cutting teeth, right? One of the programs that we did. Yeah, cutting teeth, where you come to learn the chops. Gotcha, gotcha. You know, so that that is that's that's very important. And as I say, performance to me is the main is the main thing. Yeah, yeah.

Corie 1:32:52

Well, it's funny, you take us right back to the beginning, because that's that's what that is where you say your father was saying just follow away your love, you know. I mean, from that from that leaving it. Imagine he was in the bank still, we don't miss out on all this. We don't get a little loan. This is this is his sharple, right? Yeah, seriously, yeah. Yeah, I'll tell no better place than that, brother. Well, thank you for not just coming today, but for everything that you all do because there's a deliberateness to what y'all do that me. I always appreciate it, but I feel I have a better appreciation for it after talking to you guys. So thanks a million, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:23

And you too, and keep doing this because I think it's very significant to keep to make this, give these stories a space where they would survive throughout time. Yeah, because we have a lot of talking rum shops and in spaces, but what we document, what we record is what we live on. Yeah.

Corie 1:33:38

So I feel proud to be able to put this on Juventus morning as a precursor to when all it's start back Juve 2027.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:46

Now somebody tell us we have to do um Juventus number 33 because it's tricky. Well, all right, all right.

Corie 1:33:54

You can't record it.