Where did you learn patois?
Where I was born, in Arima. When I was small, my grandmother adopted me. So my first language was patois. When my grandfather died, he left an inheritance for my mother. This was an estate but it was in Manzanilla.
So I spent my growing up years with my grandmother. My grandmother was the mistress of the religious ceremony. She would bring people together, the older people, and show them the way to God and all that kind of thing. So my upbringing was sort of rounded out in church and state and language.
Where did you go to school?
Arima Boys’ RC.
But you didn’t talk patois in school?
(Laughs, saying in Spanish accent): ’Good morning teacher. My mother send me to school.’ My teacher was shocked. I was not the only one. There were a number of other boys who had a ’patois accent...’
So was it in Arima that you first became associated with parang?
Yes. Against all odds...
What do you mean by that?
Well, my grandmother, being a fervent Roman Catholic, her presentation of Christmas time celebration was ’canitique de Noel’, which I considered the French parang. ’Bon. Bon’, ’Bon’. Good. Good. Good. Chante Noel. Sing for the Christ child. So I was brought up being taught ’cantique de Noel’. It was more famous then than parang.
Not only would you practise that at Christmas time, but at Christmas mass, the midnight mass.
When you finished fervent Catholics would go to the rectory of the Catholic Church and sing and have a drink, a little wine and we’d go home and in the middle of the morning, like two, three o’ clock in the morning, I would hear the echo of a cautro and a marac coming down the street. I would get up and my grandmother would say ’go back to sleep, boy! Don’t listen to that!’ These cocoa panyol coming drunk. And we not answering the door for them. And just by luck, the Cielto family...they were from Acono Road, Maracas, St Joseph.
They lived next door to us. And they were real cocoa panyol people. So the people from St Joseph came up to sing parang.
This was my first introduction into true parang, when I heard them singing ’The Annuncation’ ’outside the door. And they would sing ’Open the door’’. And the children would all get up. And you would hear so much activity.
The stove would go on one time for the coffee. And the man shaking the chac chac...This happened for quite some time. So I had a clash between ’cantique de Noel’ and parang. But I was attracted more to parang because it was a more vibrant and joyous music.
Did you ever learn to play the cautro?
No. But I sang the songs. I have never been a parandero, eh. I was crazy about parang as well as ’cantique de Noel’. I considered myself a facilitator to parang because as I grew older, it died, in a manner of speaking. Although Arima was the nucleus of parang with the Caribs and the cocoa panyol people and the people from the estate, and they would come down Christmas time and sing. So when I got a little older, I got involved in a strange way. A cousin of mine, who is now deceased, whom you know-Elma Reyes...
Yes. I knew her very well. I worked with her in the newspaper business at one time...
Well, my immediate family connection to the estate was in Manzanilla, hers was in Paria, which is north of Arima, connecting from Blanchisseuse. She came to me once. I was working at Radio Trinidad then. And she said, listen, we haven’t had a good night’s sleep for quite some time’. I said, ’What happen?’ She said, friends came from the estate in Paria and wake them up at midnight. And her mother got very annoyed. But her father said, ’No, no. no.
’These are my friends. These are my neighbours. So let’s open the door.’ She said, ’But it will disturb the neighbours.’ But it didn’t, you know. All the neighbours opened the jalousies and came out. And that parang group stayed for a whole week in the neighbourhood, just playing parang. I said, ’that’s fantastic’. I went to Sam Ghany, who was then the be all and end all of radio.
And he said, ’that’s interesting. I’ll give them a spot on the radio.’ And we gave them a spot on the radio and Paul Castillo, who was the leading parang man from Arouca-he formed the Trinidad and Tobago Parang Association. And I got him as a facilitator in that I created an opportunity for the paranderos to meet the people through the medium of radio.
And then when I went to television and I was doing Scouting for Talent, Scouting ended always just about the last quarter of the year.
So I was able to convince the general manager that we should go into parang. And I must say I was lucky that (the late Trinidad businessman) Ram Kirpalani was in my corner. And he supported me together with a number of other businessmen and we had parang bands appearing on TV...
How long did you do Scouting For Talent for?
I did it for 32 years...It started strangely because when TV began in 1962, I got the station to agree to put on a variety programme. But it was not paying off. And Ronald Goodsman, who was the general manager, said, ’You know I’m a difficult cookie. I’m Jewish by birth. I’m British by nationality. And my wife is a Trinidadian’. He said, ’this station must pay back itself in five years.
So this variety show that you’re doing is not enough, so we have to end it’ after the very first year of television. I said, ’what about a talent contest?’ He said, ’yes. But how would we do it?’ I said, ’well, if you’ll allow me,-and I was sales rep at that time-I will get prizes from people. We went down Frederick Street from store to store. And the first prize was a group of suitcases-a big one, a medium size one and a hand-held one. And I remember, this woman from Venezuela who joined the parang group in St Joseph won that prize. And she said, ’you mean to tell me, you want me to go back to Venezuela?’ She stayed here, fell in love with a Trinidadian, called him ’El Negrito’, made a parang song by that title and died in Trinidad...
So you then started this talent
contest?
Yes. And it built itself to such a great extent that I remember once the accountant saying that Scouting For Talent was paying the salary for everybody in television. And towards the end of the year, we would move on to parang. We started in the studio and then we moved on to locations...But I’ll tell you, I’m a little touchy about Carnival overtaking Christmas. I say it should all come in the manner of the calendar, each cultural aspect in its own right...
How does Christmas of today
compare with Christmas of long ago?
It’s not at all to be compared.
In what sense?
In the sense that as I say, Carnival jump starts Christmas, which is the most obvious and unkind situation. I mean, Carnival being what it is-the bacchanalian thing, which we accept, which we know, which fits into the religious calendar with Lent and so on but to make it jump start Christmas, which is the birth of Christ, is a little bit difficult. Not that I want to be a preacherman or anything. I am a normal sinner like anybody else. But each thing has its place. And I believe the crimes and carnage going on now, the religious obligations that Trinidad once had would have saved this unfortunate situation that makes us look like we’re in a den of iniquity.
So you think it’s a lack of religion that’s causing this kind of mayhem?
Yes. Family values, religion, manners...it’s all gone by the wayside. Just imagine in one weekend, not one, not two, not three but five murders. And in the scenario, children today... Children knew their place and people gave them their space. It was a mutual respect.
Your mother and the neighbour have a quarrel, you dare not pass the neighbour and not tell them ’good morning’. Your mother would tell you that. ’Me and the neighbour have a quarrel. Not you’. The fact that the youths of today want to dress up real fancy. ...they want to live on champagne tastes with mauby budget. That is how the old people used to put it. The vanity of the youth of today supersedes their income. So everybody living above their means and as long as that is operating, you in trouble.
Do you think our prosperity, the oil money and so on, do you think that has contributed to the vanity?
Yes. It’s like the calypsonian says, ’The price of progress is high’. The television, which is a medium I work in and I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth but the foreign environment that is brought in has had a negative impact. That’s why Eric Williams never wanted television. He called it ’the idiot box’. He thought it would ruin the nation...There’s been a whole revolution. The society has gone
beserk...
But you still spread some Christmas cheer around?
Well, when I think of the joy that parang gave me as a child, to get indoctrinated to parang, I feel every child in this country should get that opportunity to enjoy the spirit and the meaning of Christmas.
I intend to do a show in Chaguanas, after doing one in Arima. And I hope to do one in Port of Spain and then come back to Arima to do the final, on or around the sixth of January.
