SPIRITUAL STRENGTH
At 77, Trinidad and Tobago’s Queen of Calypso feels vibes from performing the music she so dearly loves
More than 60 years into her career, the legendary Calypso Rose is back in full bloom, with a bestselling album and a tour schedule that saw her perform more than 100 shows in Europe last year.
This year is shaping up to hold a similar level of activity, much of it propelled by her superb 2016 release, Far From Home, recently named 2017’s world-music album of the year in Victoires de la Musique, France’s equivalent to the Grammy Awards.
Winning the award was a triumph for Trinidad and Tobago’s 77-yearold Queen of Calypso, who has survived two bouts with cancer, a couple of heart attacks and a long struggle with diabetes. Today, despite damage to her left ear evidently caused by air travel, she’s in good health, off the diabetes medication and has a pacemaker regulating her heartbeat.
“I’m doing fantastically well,” says the irrepressible singer on the phone from New York City. “Right now, I’m waiting for my doctor to come check my heart and my pacemaker, so thank you, Jesus. My fans are the ones who are giving me the strength and the ability to be so active on this stage up to now. They give me energy on stage, and I give them back the energy from my body. They’re the ones keeping me alive on stage right now.”
The music on Far From Home is what’s getting everyone energized, a collaboration that found Rose joining forces with three musicians: producer Ivan Duran, globe-trotting music legend Manu Chao and Ottawa-bred musician Drew Gonsalves, with his world-music outfit, Kobo Town, as the backing band.
But it all started because Rose wasn’t happy with how things were going in a Belize studio in 2013.
“I wasn’t getting the vibrations that I wanted at the time. The music was already recorded and I just had to do my voice,” she says.
“But some of the music, the tuning, was too low for me, and I cannot get the punch I wanted. After they took a break, I picked up my guitar, my pen, my paper and I went into the inner room and I started visualizing this young female Calypsonian — they call her Saucy Belfon — singing this tune. I’m writing and I’m visualizing Saucy Belfon doing this Calypso Rose tune. After I came out of the room, I said to the guys, ‘I want you to listen to this’ and they all went, ‘Oh my God, let’s record that right away.’”
A while later, she met Chao when he visited Trinidad for carnival season. The two musicians hit it off, talking and playing music for hours. Then he went back to Spain and remixed the music she was working on. “When I heard the album in 2016, I nearly had another heart attack,” she jokes. “It was fantastic. Mr. Manu Chao did a fantastic job.”
He’s also the one who suggested the title, Far From Home, to reflect the fact that she’s on the road a lot. Or rather, in the air.
“I am always all over the world, always up in the air in a plane, and every time I hit the skies, I get so much inspiration,” Rose says. “I always write a little calypso in my mind when I’m travelling.”
Born McArtha Linda Lewis in Bethel, Tobago, Rose began singing calypso at a time when the music wasn’t considered appropriate for a woman to perform.
“I started in the calypso tent when I was age 13. In April, I’ll be 78 years of age. When I came out, I was condemned by my father first, and by church groups and by female organizations. ‘Why are you singing calypso? Calypso belongs to the devil. Calypso is not a woman’s domain. A woman belongs in the house, not on stage singing calypso.’ ”
She said she persisted because she wanted to pay tribute to her great-grandmother and all the other women who were kidnapped in Africa, sold into slavery and forced to work in Tobago, bringing the music with them. Rose has written some 800 songs, including the popular Fire in Me Wire, which tells the story of one ancestor who burned down the governor’s house to free the slaves. It’s been recorded in nine languages. “Women have been condemned for so long, and they have to have someone who will open their mouth and stand up for them,” Rose says. “I am the one who is standing up for the women.”
Rose’s first visit to North America was a mid-’60s tour with Bob Marley, when they performed a New Year’s Eve gig in New York. She remembers the cold — it was her first time seeing snow — but also Marley’s deep spirituality. Both artists would say a prayer before going on stage.
It’s a ritual that continues for Rose, for whom music and spirituality are inseparable. She still loves performing, especially when she sees children dancing in front of “Grandma Rose,” as she’s known to the younger generation. “I always feel the spiritual vibes that the Good Lord Almighty has placed in my body and my soul and my mind,” she says. “God put the light in my body so I could send it to people all over the world.”