by MICHELLE SPRINGER

HE PENNED IT 24 YEARS AGO after a striking experience in New York City.

Today, David Michael Rudder's Haiti I'm Sorry has become the global anthem - in his words, "the road march around the world" - as people everywhere mourn in unison for the earthquake-stricken republic.

But the song, Rudder assured Monday's Man, is more than a requiem for the beloved land its people call Ayiti Chérie.

"Initially I realised that most of us in the English-speaking Caribbean don't know what's happening in the French or Spanish Caribbean, and likewise people in the French Caribbean don't know what's happening in the English Caribbean.

"One day I was in Brooklyn with a friend of mine and we took a cab with a Haitian driver, who charged us a little more than we're accustomed to paying," he said in a recent interview.

Rudder said his friend proceeded to hurl insults at the driver, which commenced with "You Haitians . . . ".

"I turned to him and asked him if he knew about the history of Haiti. He said to me he didn't care anything about Haiti. It struck a chord in me and when I went back to [my friend's] home that night, I wrote the song."

That was the year Rudder emerged onto the Carnival scene as a solo artiste and blew away the competition - capturing all the major titles at Carnival 1986 with Hammer and Bahia Girl.

Writing Haiti I'm Sorry was an opportunity for him to express his sentiments on the Caribbean rallying together and connecting.

Two years later it would be the title track of what has been described as his best album to date. The album Haiti also included Engine Room which captures the energy of the steelband, and Rally Round The West Indies, which has become the West Indies cricket anthem.

The Pelham Goddard-arrangement is but one of Rudder's calypsos that rouse consciousness of Caribbean cultural identity. Furthermore, it is the one track that strikes at the core of the Caribbean's as well as the international community's complicity in Haiti's underdevelopment.

They say the middle passage is gone

So how come overcrowded boats still haunt our lives?

I refuse to believe we the people

Would forever turn our hearts and eyes, away.

And while Caribbean thinkers and leaders are considering in hindsight Haiti's participation as a CARICOM nation, Rudder believes the regional body still has a crucial role to play in Haiti's recovery process.

"We have to look forward to the future now. What I would like to see is Caribbean leaders seizing the time to approach the world body to have debt forgiveness for Haiti.

"We shouldn't have [international celebrities] doing it for us. We in CARICOM should come together, seize the initiative and lead from in front. Even though we're small we have mighty things to say.

"It takes little keys to open mighty doors," he added.

Rudder believes that out of the tragedy of the January 12 earthquake, which claimed nearly 200 000 lives, there lives an opportunity for rebirth.

"This is the opportunity for the rest of the world to change the cycle of poverty and need in our region. It's going to take a long time, but in 20 years we might be able to see the results of what we're doing for Haiti today," he thinks.

Rudder performed the song that same morning at a Carnival fête in Trinidad and Tobago.

Wherever he sings the song post-January 12, he says, it evokes emotion in people.

This comes as no surprise, as that very afternoon hundreds of thousands of Caribbean people around the world changed their status to Haiti I'm Sorry and posted the audio or video clip from YouTube.com on Facebook.com while Haitians in the Diaspora and those who could from Port-au-Prince changed their status to Cry Haiti Cry Amwey (sound of mourning in kreyol) to Ayiti Va Leve (Haiti Will Rise Again) today.

But he added, sadly: "I'm glad I'm able through my music to make people aware of the situation. But sometimes I really feel like it's something I should never have had to write."