THE EXPERIENCE calypso tent lived up to its name when it went before both the Pic-O-De-Crop and Soca Royale judges at St Gabriel’s School, Lower Collymore Rock, on Saturday night.Using See The Glory as its theme, the reasonably-sized audience was treated to a diet of sweet, clean kaiso from the tent’s 15 Christian kaisonians who dealt with a potpourri of topics covering diverse subject areas including social, political, and religious among others.Emcee St Clair Browne, who referred to himself as The Saint, did a fantastic job in keeping the action on stage flowing and the audience involved in between acts with the occasional clean joke and at times clever interventions.However, if one were to name an artiste that excited the audience in both performances it would have to be Uncle Orville, who was assisted by grandaughter Shontae in the first half.In the first half he performed Don’t Complain and this went down well with the audience. It was as sweet as Uncle Orville was funny and this was reflected in the audience asking for and being given an encore, only one of few given on the night.However, Uncle Orville’s first-half performance was only the entrée, because in the second half he stepped up a notch with his Party Monarch presentation of Do Not Tell Me. On this occasion, he was accompanied by four dancing girls on stage and he proceeded to put down a hectic, livewire performance that could easily be described as “madness” at large as the crowd became berserk over his performance.Uncle Orville apart, one of the better songs of the night came from Aleph, who performed AIDS. As part of his presentation, Aleph’s face was painted white, apparently representing the devil, and the calypso carried a serious message of the consequences of a lifestyle which could lead to AIDS.This song had strong lyrics and a good melody and not surprisingly the audience called for an encore which, rather surprisingly, was denied although weaker songs were later given an encore.Aleph was also reasonably strong in his second song, titled Gone To De Dogs, in which he claimed, among other things, that education and parenting were among the things gone to the dogs. However, his use of the well known “who let the dogs out” line as his chorus lead was obviously not original.Other singers who went down well on the night included Enobong, De Black Eagle, Sammi Jane and Apache, all of whom got an encore for one of their songs.De Black Eagle was the fourth out of the starting blocks and he was given the first encore with My Heart, which could be aptly described as a calypso love song as he sang “nobody can tear us apart, so I give you my heart”. De Black Eagle was equally solid in the second half with his Blaming Game, in which he sang that teenage pregancies, drugs and other ills in the society were all part of the “blaming game”.Enobong’s This Is Barbados was musically sweet and also packed with good lyrics, and she wore a dress signifying the Bajan flag. The song could be described as another anthem of Barbados and she delivered it extremely well. It was so well received the audience joined her in singing the chorus, and as expected, she was given an encore for her effort.Sammi Jane sang Twenty Twenty in the first half and Do It For Bim in the second half, and both were well received by the crowd.Twenty Twenty was futuristic, as Sammi Jane had gone forward to that time zone and looking back at Barbados and the world at that time, while Do It For Bim was nationalistic in nature. One drawbackHowever, if there is one drawback to Sammi Jane is that she tends to shout her song moreso than sing it, so she has to pay attention to this.Apache also delivered two tight songs. Easily one of the better calypsonians in the tent, his first offering was Wicked Heart and he followed it up with Chalkie Tell Me in the second half, and this latter song caught the imagination of the crowd.Chalkie Tell Me is “oletime” calypso at its best. Despite having a simple structure, its lyrics are biting with Chalkie saying that they like “they does judge the singer and not the song”. But that was not all that Chalkie was telling him, because according to Apache, Chalkie also told him “that a Christian could win the calypso crown”. Not surprisingly, Apache received an encore for this song.Another good performer on the night was Jude, whose songs Declare Yuh Hand and De Power Of Calypso had strong messages.Other performers on the night were De Salt, Prayers For The Nation and Hold Pun De Train; Culture Man with Women Drivers and Dealing With Love; Trouble with Crying Shame and Sing Dis; Punzaa with Fear-Oh and No-Ah; Madame Doso with Dese Are De Times and New Dance; The Shepherd with Emancipation and Times Hard; and Trouble with Put Yuh Hand On The Bible and Sing Diss.
