By Raffique Shah
February 13, 2023
Every year, ritually, come Carnival, steel pans and drums rescued from the paws of scrap-metal hustlers hunting for a few dollars, or rust that’s threatening to render them useless, join hundreds of cellos, bass and retired hubcaps from derelict motor vehicles, coming together to treat music lovers with the most scintillating sounds and songs that could allow the “mad blood” in all of us to enjoy “we music”.
Continue reading There is hope yet for pan
Raffique Shah
February 06, 2023
If, after thorough investigations into this outrage, the State being ordered to pay approximately two million dollars each to five murder-accused in the Naipaul-Coolman case, stands; if no minister or public officer from the Ministry of the Attorney General’s office is held accountable, placed in shackles, held in jail as their trial on serious criminal charges are conducted; or if no agent of the battery of attorneys we have grown accustomed to seeing daily is charged with grand theft of Reggie Armour’s mystery file; then take notice that I, citizen Shah, shall take whatever action I decide is necessary to dissolve the republic of Trinidad and Tobago, which has proved to be a useless country not deserving the title of sovereign state.
Continue reading One Thousand Patriots
By Raffique Shah
January 30, 2023
I suppose Trinidad and Tobago, being a small-island-state, very literally, has to be thankful for small mercies dished out by the super-powers of the world. In this case, big, bad USA, has finally agreed to issue a waiver on the sanctions it has imposed on Venezuela that will allow TT and Caracas to monetise an estimated 4.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from the Dragon field, which lies close to the international boundary between the two countries, but which belongs to Venezuela.
Continue reading Thanks, USA – for nothing
By Raffique Shah
January 23, 2023
Will the Prime Minister tell the nation what he expects to achieve by staging a national consultation on crime, which he announced recently? When he made the headline-grabbing proposal, which seemed to me an outburst triggered by extreme frustration, Dr Keith Rowley came across as a leader who had nothing more to offer the population on the one issue that impacts their lives daily, although statistics might well reveal that in reality, fewer that ten percent of them have come face-to-face with violent crimes, and far fewer have been victims.
Continue reading Talk Done
By Raffique Shah
January 09, 2023
Upon rereading my column last Sunday, I thought I did grave injustice to Leroy Calliste, the Black Stalin, by attempting to evaluate his immense contribution to calypso, the art form, and culture as a whole in Trinidad and Tobago, or indeed in the Carribbean, by summarizing his works in a few paragraphs. My apologies to the late bard who passed on and was given one of the most impressive funerals I’ve witnessed in my lifetime.
Continue reading Celebrating Our Bards
By Raffique Shah
January 02, 2023
By a strange coincidence, last Tuesday, the fourth day of a very long Christmas weekend, I set up my music system around two in the afternoon, inserted a USB “stick” on which I have, over many years, collected hundreds of tracks from CDs I had bought or recorded music that was freely available for download from several sites on the Internet, and prepared for a treat I had not enjoyed for quite some time.
Continue reading Black Stalin: calypsonian, crusader
By Raffique Shah
Submitted: December 24, 2022
Posted: December 27, 2022
Ever since I became an adult, while I marked Christmas with maybe a special meal, a generous helping of Rosina’s delicious fruit cake (slices did not apply there) and some quality confectionery, I have held that Christmas is for children to enjoy.
The story of the Christ-child, the nativity, the seasonal songs and all the mystery, the excitement that are standard for the festival (if it can be so classified) stir strong “I must have that!” desires among consumers, and in turn target the pockets, wallets and debit-and-credit cards of adults, encouraging them to spend on their loved ones, especially children, what they could ill-afford.
Continue reading A healthy, happy Christmas
By Raffique Shah
December 19, 2022
I shall not be at all surprised if elementary Watson, the Duke of Roxborough, Tobago, fulfils his ambition to become the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago by 2025, or maybe before the due year for the next general election, should he use unconventional means to pursue power.
Duke, who has made no secret of his medium-term objective, has established offices of his Progressive Democratic Patriots party in Trinidad, even as he moves to force yet another election for the Tobago House of Assembly, which he expects will result in him being proclaimed King of Tobago.
Continue reading Duke of democracy or demagoguery?
By Raffique Shah
December 05, 2022
If you know the Caroni River basin fairly well, and you are familiar with the Caroni River, if you have seen it overflow its banks after, say, two days of torrential rainfall, you will have seen floods spread rapidly, inundating everything along its banks for miles. Ever since I came of age and a rode a bicycle, and later acquired a motor vehicle, I have had many encounters with the flood waters of the Caroni, starting with cycling through Madras Road when the water was maybe eighteen inches high, which was challenging, but nevertheless something of a thrill for us boys, to driving through Kelly, St Helena and Piarco villages, having to skilfully use one foot on the vehicle’s accelerator to keep the exhaust functioning, and another on the brake pedal to control its speed.
Continue reading A Flood of ‘Dotish’ Talk
By Raffique Shah
November 28, 2022
As the football World Cup tournament kicked off last week, igniting a global epidemic of “football fever” which strikes once every four years, your humble scribe duly fell in line with the billion-plus people viewing via their local television networks.
Now, I must declare that I am no “football peong”, a fanatic who cannot miss a crucial game in any of the many league matches, especially those played in Europe, where giants of the sport, from owners of clubs who eat, drink and sleep football, to star players who are traded like commodities, many of them valued at millions of dollars, which tells me that this “beautiful sport” is more about money than sport, which I bear in mind as I watch the games.
Continue reading Enjoying the World Cup