He showed up in a white car with a driver outside Smokey and Bunty. I got into the car. He turned around and said, ’So how are you, my lady?’ His eyes were clear and sharp.
He was searching for a CD. He looked through a bag he had on the backseat next to a blue, military-style jacket. He seemed sober. The only thing was, he spoke under his breath, barely moving his lips. John seemed to understand him perfectly, but I found myself trying to read his lips.
We drove around to a few places. He got out, talked to people, but came back empty-handed. His CDs were sold out at Cosby’s. A few people hailed him out in the street, but most just passed him straight. He walked with the bounce of a younger fella. SuperBlue is not a tall man, but onstage, he seems to grow two feet taller.
It turned out he had promised to perform at a primary school in La Horquetta, and he was looking for a CD of his songs to use as the backing track. While we were driving around St James, Bunji and Fay-Ann come on the radio, singing ’The Lyrics King and The Lyon Empress’, but later, in the gas station in Maraval, he said to John: ’...I doh want to get in her way, yuh know...’
I saw my opening and leaned forward. He turned and said something about going in the studio. I turned on my tape recorder. He got out of the front seat and came to sit next to me on the backseat. And the interview began:
Q: You were saying you don’t want to get in the way of Fay-Ann winning Soca Monarch.
A: Yeah. It’s a beautiful thing to win three- in anything. Because [he pauses, nodding], she good.
You think so?
Yeah [nodding, as if he can’t quite believe how good]. She’s not afraid to try things.
You never thought she would be that good?
No, I never say that. As a child, she said, ’Daddy, I want to sing.’ I know they [my children] woulda end up in the music. How soon, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to pull them into it. They had to get thirsty. They had to get thirsty and really want it because this art form, it not easy.
Emotionally, spiritually, physically, mentally. I never went to school to learn to write songs and rhyme. The trials and errors...I pray. I pray, trying this and trying that. I was fortunate-I came at a time when I had Shorty, Maestro, Merchant. I used to listen to James Brown, all of them-Sparrow, Kitchener. And one of the most beautiful things I had was the Dunlop Tornadoes from Point (Fortin). So I had my own steelband from age nine. I was captain, arranger, caretaker... [We’re driving over the Lady Young, and he suddenly seems very tired.
He leans back in the seat, his eyes start to close, and it’s an effort for him to talk. His speech becomes slurred and disjointed.] Bram. She came to me with a book. I ent know she writing all dem songs-a setta songs. So she wrote the songs and I put the melody to it. I say, I don’t want to rush you into it. So we start and I showing her what to do.
She start to say, My dream is to be Junior Road March (Monarch). I say [laughing], It have Trinidad and Tobago to beat-not me! I say, I will write your first song. Then try to teach allyuh the best way I could. The way to show allyuh the assets are. I will get the first fish and then teach you how to fish-how to bait your hook. How to fish for life. Where to fish. You can’t go in a swimming pool to fish. You have to follow your instinct because you trying thing that was never done before just to get ahead.
[He relates an anecdote about having to light a flambeau in the early hours of the morning to go and take care of the family’s pigs. Pigs, being born blind, have to nose around for their mother’s teats. Sometimes, when the sow is fed up nursing, she might roll on them and crush one, or pull away and refuse to nurse, he says. He goes into great detail telling this story, and I imagine him back in Point Fortin, crouching in the dark with the flambeau, watching the pigs. He comes back to the present.] I use things like that to tell them you have an instinct and it powerful.
But you see, what happen to Fay-Ann...Bunji is she husband. And I guess he have a style. He into the whole rapso thing. She dip into it. And she handle it. But I thought she woulda know, aye, all tha’s decoration because once she do so and say, hey is melodies.... You have to have a melody and a story. And address situations. That’s where the power does come from and the awareness of life in songs and stories. Inform, educate, entertain and heal. The music could do something for somebody.
But coming back now, she ent go straight. She rap certain things in the song. A little bit of me, a little bit of Bunji...and she did a good job. Very good.
Will you be performing with her at Soca Monarch?
If she needs me.
That performance at Army fete made people cry-to see you, Fay-Ann and Bunji together-it was like the Holy Trinity. How you felt?
Well, I wanted to help push the album. It was a beautiful moment...and it was a sad moment too.
It was sad?
It was sad in some ways.
Why did you feel sad?
[Long pause] Because of things that I doh want to discuss. [He looked out the window, just shaking his head slow, fighting his emotions. I tried to change the subject.]
You still have the power. You can still
move a crowd. Where does it come from?
You reach a point where you try and understand how it work... and I always say there is no blueprint for where I went and where I passing. I want to cut some road for other people to pass after. Because where I pass was jungle, with snakes and rats, and I cut a track. People walking from A to B, and they don’t know somebody cut that grass and pave the way. Sparrow, Duke... You see Duke? Before I start to sing, they tell me Duke down by Hi-Lo, driving a red convertible. I in the Savannah and speed! Speed to see Duke. And somebody tell me he just leave.
And I’m sure they will come up with things...so I always tell she (Fay-Ann): Make a lil money, but most of all, make history and make a difference.
So your battle with drugs, it’s still...?
It ent no battle. It ent no battle. There are people who would want to see that. Not everything that bite somebody in the sea is shark, you know? There are things I don’t want to talk about because I want to live to see my children sing.
That’s why I doesn’t want no interviews because umm...[he stopped himself, made a sound of frustration, a tiny, almost-imperceptible steups of regret.]
Say what you want to say.
Unfortunately, I can’t. For years I can’t say what I want to say. I’m serious. You see this is a kind of art form where you can’t say what you want to say because of how things are [he mumbled something to himself that I couldn’t catch]. I just wanted to make soca international.
But you did that. Oh, you mean like Michael Jackson international...?
Yeah, yeah.
[At this point, he seems exhausted. He had performed at the Country Club the night before, and had been to a few other gigs. He nods off there in the back seat of the car. When we arrive in La Horquetta, he wakes up and pulls himself together. He puts on the military-style jacket and steps out of the car. A trio of little boys in the car park gape at him.
For the next hour, he is the old SuperBlue. He stops to take photos with all the children, whose mothers are determined to capture the moment, crouching down to talk to them. We sit down to have lunch, and he seems totally revived. ’Radica’ starts playing on the PA ]
You should do a chutney song.
[His eyes widen and he nods his head] It big. It real big.
Seriously, why you don’t bring out one?
[He nods vigorously] Next year.
[Afterwards, he’s taken to a classroom across the courtyard. Dozens of children line up at the windows for a glimpse of him. When he emerges to the sound of ’Get Something and Wave’, they converge on him. All we can see is the headscarf. Under the blazing noonday sun, in a thick jacket, he moves like the Pied Piper, a swarm of children trailing in his wake, waving balloons and rags as he performs ’Bacchanal Time’, ’Jab-Jab’ and ’Signal to Lara’.
Back in the car, he’s drained. ’I couldn’t get on in that heat,’ he sighs.
[It’s easy to forget that SuperBlue is 52 years old. As we head back into town, I know I have to ask a few last questions before he caps out.]
The way the story goes, you introduced
Fay-Ann to Bunji. What did you see in him?
No, no, I didn’t mean anything! She come backstage to see her father. She wanted to meet him, so I introduced them.
What did you think when you heard they became an item?
[He leans back, reflecting] I say, Bunji? How that come about? [laughing] The girls’ darling? What is this? [pause] What I go say? Let’s see where it’s going.
Musically, what do you think of them
as a duo?
They hadda make it work. So far, so good. [pauses] So far, so good. A king and a queen. The Fireman and the Silver Surfer. They having fun.
You’ve walked among both kings and beggars. You talk about Fay-Ann understanding life and the business and what it takes out of you. What advice have you given her?
She done know the assets which I can’t disclose. Sometime, everything you want in life right around you.
Sometimes, you praying for something and it come, and you don’t recognise it. But you must ask the Father if this is it.
Do you pray a lot?
Not like I used to...but you have to today. From the time you step out the door, you could get killed. Just crossing the road. You driving for you and for others, and you still getting bounce...[his head starts to droop. He mutters something that I can’t understand] but all of my children are special.
How many children do you have?
[He perks up and smiles mischievously...] Ta na na na, ta na na na!
At the last count...?
[He holds up his hands and wiggles his fingers. I can’t quite catch what he’s saying about 20-something 30-something ] Nah, I only have six.
Then, exhaustion overwhelms him and he leans his head on the door. The last thing he says before he falls asleep is:
’You made it fun, made it seem so easy.’
- SuperBlue will be performing tonight at
the Mas Camp Pub in Woodbrook
