Nuff respect, Mr Rudder

DR GABRIELLE JAMELA HOSEIN

I WAS SO emotional after David Rudder’s concert on Saturday night that I thought it was just me. I sit down and cry in my living room, not even sure for what. I didn’t know if I was left up or down, cleansed or struck by dread.

I started this column many times, each beginning different, and would pause at the paucity of words to express the tumult of visceral memories still rocking my body.

Rudder lit by coloured stage lights, looking into the eyes of his congregation like he was searing the moment into his memory as much as we were scorching it into ours. Crystal-sharp, back-up vocalists, Karla Gonzales, Natalie Yorke, Carol Jacobs and Sarai Rudder, whose harmonies kept lifting those who might have otherwise fallen into overwhelmed weeping. Horns powerfully punching the air.

“Blessed musicians” led by musical directors Kenneth Baptiste and Jeremy Ledbetter, and special guests Machel Montano, Andy Narrell, Vaughnette Bigford, Destra Garcia, Kees Dieffenthaller, Voice, Mical Teja, Roger George, Isaac Rudder and Carl Jacobs buoying Rudder through his five-hour journey. Sound men Victor Donowa and Robin Foster. Verna St Rose Greaves ringing a bell. It was dizzying.

All now I think this drama, like I catch a spirit, is just me.

Sunday morning, I woke with my heart brimming, wondering if I should talk about the gratitude that one can’t help but feel for Rudder’s calypso, and pride we could make music so.

It makes everything bottled up to stay sane and survive in this place – our dreams and faults, togetherness and alienation, sweetness and corrupt slyness – come flying from one’s chest in song and praise and disappointment and confused feelings like the whole country is Pandora’s box.

All the ugliness and loveliness documented like an anthropological text, news daily, Naipaul novel, holy book or “group of ghetto woman around a standpipe discussing.”

Indeed, you could wine with your hands in the air, throat open to vibrations rising from the singing crowd like dust at Brass Festival. Just as much, you could sit and study Rudder lyrics for their poetic distillation of history, politics, philosophy, ethical truths and descriptions of the peculiar Trini character.

Music for heady celebration. Songs about sobering reality, detailing what we would rather be too distracted to see. His reminders are serious joke of the grim and unjust. We have "the goods and the bads,” he sings, and “half the country mad.” “Make a liar of me,” he provokes, and you reckon with violence from Soweta to Bogota, but mostly you reckon with yourself.

It’s like that surreal moment, when the whole crowd is repeating, “somebody letting the cocaine pass” in celebration of Rudder the griot and prophet who nails it now as much as he did then (Madman’s Rant was released in 1996). An astounding irony which everyone knows, that only laugh could prevent cry, and what feels like collective anger at state officials and elites’ constant and boldface mamaguy, is mixed in. Yesterday, cocaine. Today, guns. Big, big men dying, and no one expects anything will be solved by millions spent on a crime symposium.

Those five hours were a generous gift, reminding that David already said so much that we need to hear, whether out of love or ache for his country and people. He brought calypso in its most ideal form, crafting a mirror from detailed and attentive notes, both musical and written. What might we change if we really listen?

He has been public with his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis. There was, therefore, a kind of heartbreak haunting the sweat and passion of the night, even as the spirit of joy had its way with us.

I wondered why we didn’t fill the Oval or Grand Stand to pay tribute to the man. How could we not call for encore after encore? How could we not refuse to say goodbye?

Half the time, I didn’t know if I should be mourning an orator making his last major speech, even though he was still on his feet. Whole night I was just trying to stay present though the hours felt like an unsettling foretelling of a cosmic cycle closing.

Forget King Charles and his family of thieves. Here was our King chantwell, crowned by the people, causing us to wrestle with our lonely souls and contemplate our beauty in this strange land.

For leaving fire in your wake, for awakening our spirits, for urging us to never surrender, thank you, bless and nuff respect, Mr David Michael Rudder.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 504

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