One needs to tidy up these things. It’s all wonderfully over now bar T&T winning the final, but you may remember my writing in that first Champions League column (October 13):

’If you had heard me singing it you’d have known that I was watching it assuming, that is, that you were listening to it as you were watching it: ’Oh-lah-oh-oh-lah-oh-oh-la-oh-la-oh-la-oh,’’ the refrain reminding me of an African chant, although how an African chant could end up being the musical backdrop of a cricket competition in India I couldn’t comprehend, the commentators, thousands of miles away not helping, their eyes and ears on the cricket, relatively unheeding of the chant although, I suspect, Ian Bishop and his colleagues might have found themselves humming, the day’s play over:

’Oh-lah-oh, oh-lah-oh.....’’, the melody infectious to say the least which is where I am leaving it for the while until I can find some way of tracing it or until (better fete!) some music-minded reader of this column writes (ksmith@trinidadexpress.com) to learnedly inform me either that what I thought to have been African was really Indian or (better, better fete!) that, in these ’world music’’ times there is Indian music that sounds African or, as we say here, vicey-versa, not only Trinidad and Tobago having found merit in mixing and matching cultures, not that the one has to be diluted to dive into the other.’’

Well, here I was thinking that nobody ’ketch my height’’, as my father used to say meaning that nobody (meaning me, mostly) had been taking him on, when I came across this e-mail sent to me the very day the column appeared:

’Hey.... in reply to your thoughts on the Oh-lah-oh, oh-lah-oh...’’ melody of Champions league, I thought i should share my knowledge on that tune. Although it does have a strong  African sound to it, it was composed by an Indian composer AR Rahman (who won two Oscars for his Slumdog Millionaire score) especially for the inaugural tournament in 2008 (that was eventually cancelled) ...Hope that helped.’’

The e-mailer, one Richard Strauss, directed the Net-challenged me to a You/Tube site (where else? Ah mean, where else)? where I not only saw a dancing video but read comments like:

’This theme song is very annoying. This music sucks! First failure from Rahman’’. And:

’Wonderfool!’’ And:

’This is stuck in my head and I don’t want to get it out (hear! hear!)’’. And:

’Super theme!’’ And:

’AR Rahman as a rock star. Ha, ha, ha!’’

And here’s hoping this is not a cuss in some Indian tongue:

’Khel bana toucha!’’

Talk about being behind these cyberspace music times? Boy, there I was listening to the house, which is to say the field, music, being played increasingly the more we advanced, and hearing Iwer George’s little brother, Naya, singing his 2002 road march composed by his bigger brother, I caught myself thinking:

’Buh wey dey get dat?’’ as if somebody had had to physically transport said CD to India, realisation dawning that, these days, all it took was a computer click to power just about any song through these huge sound systems, Iwer sure to collect a piece from the organisers if, that is, he was listening and heard his song being played and if he had in his corner somebody like COTT’s St Clair ’Raspo’’ Thompson who, surfacing channels, happened to hear an Explainer song (’Lorraine’’ it was, I think he told me) at some SONY show, the Japanese giant, when confronted, agreeing with less fun than you might imagine to pay a much larger ’royalty’’ than you’d imagine, the sums they pay for a single spin of a song much more than you’d imagine-Eh, ’Splainos’’?

Still for all the personalised, that is to say island-relevant jockeying, the Champions League disc-jockey had to know what Trinbago song(s) to play (and there were quite a few), imagination stretching across the seas to hear, for example, Daren Ganga’s euphoric family egging him on:

’Play this! Play that!’’

Man, the place would mash up (surely all this cricket music and dancing girls must be a Caribbean export) had somebody suggested Superblue’s ’Get Something and Wave’’, continental Indians breaking way and getting on to suit.