What Joey Ng Wai taught us

Every fond recollection of the late musician Joey Ng Wai by his peers, friends, and fans, spoke of his enthusiasm to help make local music better through tangible support of his community.

A popular aphorism holds that a rising tide raises all boats, and, without fuss or fanfare, Joey became that supportive surge to generations of aspiring young musicians.

Joey came from powerful musical stock. His father, the late George Ng Wai, was lauded after his passing in 2013 as a bedrock of the local music community. The elder Ng Wai performed as a pannist with the Dixieland Steel Orchestra and Silver Stars Steel Orchestra, as a percussionist with Andre Tanker and The Flamingoes, and did extensive work behind the scenes in other combos and bands, before founding the band Second Imij which vaulted his son and other new musicians, such as Joey Gonsalves and Tricia Lee Kelshall, to local fame.

George Ng Wai's example of selflessness and generosity would prove to be a model for his son's ascendancy in local music.

With a respected repertoire that jumped easily from hard rock to blazing soca, Joey was the musical equivalent of salt; essential to everything, critically important to improving the product's quality.

In a startling number of band photos, Joey appears, often with the signature mullet fashionable at the time and always with an impish grin, as a man enjoying every moment of his time behind the guitar.

He would go on to work with Atlantik, Frantic, and multiple versions of Imij & Co, before settling into smaller band configurations playing to audiences at social and hospitality venues.

The bands and audiences might have grown smaller, but Joey's ambitions remained large. He worked constantly at his music, challenging himself to improve his guitar skills against international standards, recorded projects and rehearsed his final band, Jimi Flipp for gigs until he couldn't do it anymore.

Far too many of his bandmates preceded him in death.

He'd worked with Johnny Gonsalves for decades and with Ricardo Drue, but he continued working with enthusiasm until the final months of his life.

Leaving on the cusp of Carnival, he's another local creative taking their final bow before the annual festival.

Aldwyn, "Lord Kitchener" Roberts left us in February 2000, Kenwrick "Kenny J" Joseph, and Clifton "Bomber" Joseph in January 2022, followed by Dexter "Blaxx" Stewart in March of that year.

In the last fortnight, TT also lost the steelband enthusiast and commentator, Dalton Narine, and Christian Holder, son of the late Boscoe and Sheila Holder, who passed away before a major concert in April.

Joey Ng Wai lived by a simple truth that as a community in TT we are more together, helping each other and supporting our own. Without him, we are a little less.