Klassic Ruso roars to life with humour, commentary and kaiso fire

Ian Wa­son

Free­lance Re­porter

Ian1wa­[email protected]

The Klas­sic Ru­so ca­lyp­so tent opened Thurs­day evening at City Hall, Port-of-Spain, show­cas­ing a mix of ex­pe­ri­ence and youth, blend­ing so­cial com­men­tary and hu­mour with par­ty and se­ri­ous ca­lyp­soes at the Fred­er­ick Street venue.

The tent was orig­i­nal­ly found­ed in 1997 by the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) North Zone, orig­i­nal­ly un­der the name Ca­lyp­so Kabarae be­fore be­ing re­named Klas­sic Ru­so.

The high­light of the evening was Shar­lan “Dread Wiz­ard” Bai­ley, whose song, Judges’ Opin­ion, earned him two en­cores from an ap­pre­cia­tive crowd that in­clud­ed Min­is­ter of Cul­ture Michelle Ben­jamin, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Arou­ca/Mal­oney Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne, and his deputy, Abena Hart­ley.

Bai­ley claimed in the song that judges’ de­ci­sions are sim­ply opin­ions, and skil­ful­ly used hu­mour to sug­gest that judges may be in­flu­enced by ap­pear­ance when mak­ing de­ci­sions.

Bai­ley was a true re­flec­tion of his fa­ther, as his man­ner­isms gave the au­di­ence vivid re­minders of his icon­ic late fa­ther, Win­ston “The Mighty Shad­ow” Bai­ley.

Bai­ley lat­er said of his for­tunes, “I can on­ly wish for the peo­ple to hear my song,” as he hopes to re­lease the ca­lyp­so soon.

The Dread Wiz­ard said he was hap­py to be at Klas­sic Ru­so, hav­ing been a fix­ture at Kaiso House, now re­brand­ed as Ca­lyp­so Dy­nasty.

Ju­dith “Jay” Ed­wards was an­oth­er ca­lyp­son­ian who won the hearts of the au­di­ence.

Ed­wards proud­ly rep­re­sent­ed plus-sized women, out­lin­ing rea­sons why men pre­fer plus-sized women and stat­ing why big­ger girls are more en­joy­able than small­er ladies.

An­oth­er high­light of the show was the ex­tem­po seg­ment dur­ing Mark “Con­tender” John’s per­for­mance. He was joined by Ny­ol Man­swell, as well as reign­ing ex­tem­po cham­pi­on Phillip “Black Sage” Mur­ray and peren­ni­al king Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, both of whom are reg­is­tered with Ca­lyp­so Dy­nasty this sea­son.

Gyp­sy warned all po­ten­tial com­peti­tors that his voice is now good—a ref­er­ence to the 2025 fi­nals, when he com­pet­ed while ail­ing with the flu, which af­fect­ed his voice —and told “Sage” to pre­pare for a “beat­ing”. An­oth­er for­mer ex­tem­po cham­pi­on billed to per­form at the tent, Bri­an Lon­don, was not on the show last night as he was re­cov­er­ing from a med­ical pro­ce­dure.

Gyp­sy lat­er com­ment­ed on the qual­i­ty of the ca­lyp­sos he heard.

“I think it’s good. I think all the top­ics are good, that’s what I’m say­ing. I think that peo­ple—every­body—do what they do.”

The con­sis­tent Kyle “KC” Cowie, who has been knock­ing on the ca­lyp­so door for some time, en­ter­tained with What We Fight­ing For, a pow­er­ful so­cial com­men­tary that should put him in the reck­on­ing for a place in the Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nals.

He was in good com­pa­ny with Mark East­man, who, like Cowie, is one of the younger cast mem­bers but al­ready has ex­pe­ri­ence un­der his belt.

East­man en­cour­aged lis­ten­ers to Stand Your Ground, an­oth­er com­men­tary that will give judges some­thing to think about next Thurs­day when they are choos­ing com­peti­tors for Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta at Skin­ner Park on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 7, and for the Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nals on Car­ni­val Sun­day.

Dr Will B brought the spir­i­tu­al side of things with Man in the Mid­dle, ap­pear­ing with a ha­lo over his head as he matched the cho­rus ladies, who were sim­i­lar­ly equipped with the ap­par­el.

MP Robin­son-Reg­is, who has been a reg­u­lar at the show over the last few years, was es­pe­cial­ly pleased with the va­ri­ety of ca­lyp­sos.

“They went in­to dif­fer­ent top­ics, and I thought that was ex­cel­lent. They weren’t over­ly po­lit­i­cal or over­ly satir­i­cal. They were very good of­fer­ings, and I thought that was good. I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked the ex­tem­po.”

Robin­son-Reg­is added that she usu­al­ly goes to the TU­CO tents.

“Well, we usu­al­ly do Klas­sic Ru­so, and then we see where we go from there. The next out­ing should be Iron Park.”

TU­CO North Zone chair­man Mark “Con­tender” John praised what he called “the best tent in the world, with a mix of every­thing. We have po­lit­i­cal, so­cial com­men­tary, and ex­tem­po. We have young and ex­pe­ri­enced.”

Oth­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans who im­pressed on open­ing night were An­dre Nel­son, Garth St Clair, Nef­ta, Broth­er Musa, La­dy Won­der, Ham­midul­lah, Crazy, and oth­ers.

The open­ing night saw a full house of hun­dreds of at­ten­dees, many of whom were in­vit­ed guests.