Trinidad Guardian
Sunday 25th February, 2007
Cro Cro damns colleagues
by Debbie Jacob
No one claimed that Cro Cro pulled his calypso crown out of a hat, but minutes after he was crowned the National Calypso Monarch of Trinidad and Tobago, calypsonians began to cry Cro Cro had dipped into his “Suitcase” for the song he performed on Dimanche Gras. Cro Cro’s winning calypso, they claimed, had been sung in Shadow’s Master’s Den in 1989.
“Don’t mix me up in those young people soca bacchanal with people who can’t write songs and thief lyrics and music from old pop songs. I don’t steal from anyone—including myself. I’m too big for that,” says Cro Cro about the accusations that surround him.
Cro Cro dismisses allegations against him as “wickedness and mischief... It can’t be as soon as the results are in Aloes comes up with this weird idea that it was a song from the past. I sang my winning kaiso Nobody Eh Go Know the whole season in my Icons calypso tent.
The song, about how Trinidadians pressure their friends to deliver goods abroad when they travel, was going down great and no one ever complained. No one ever claimed it was an old song.”
Up to now, Cro Cro says, he can’t even fathom what an “old” song is.
“Some calypsoes take six years to complete. Sometimes you write a song and you don’t feel to use it for some years.”
To make a long story short, Weston Rawlins, the Mighty Cro Cro, says there is no truth in the claim that his winning calypso is an old song.
“What Aloes, Gypsy and Skatie are doing is dangerous,” says Cro Cro.
“It makes you wonder who your friends are.”
Not that there is any love lost between Cro Cro and Aloes, the last two generals, so to speak, in the calypso war tradition. Their bitter rivalry reaches back to when they sang in Kitchener’s Revue.
“Aloes was always my junior in terms of writing calypso and winning.
He can’t write. He just likes to win. I sang that in a song before. I said, ‘Whenever you sing, you always have to take a position behind the short man.’”
Past feuds aside, Cro Cro says Aloes’ accusations on Dimanche Gras came out of the blue.
Medical problems
“Aloes called me about two weeks before the show. He was friendly. He didn’t mention anything about my kaiso. Now, I feel all of these accusations on his part could be due to his medical problem. Because he’s been sick, things could seep in his blood stream and go to his brain so it could just be a medical problem,” says Cro Cro.
Cro Cro feels jealousy and bitterness played a major role in criticism against him.
“It’s a hate thing. Aloes is a devil. I always felt to be safe is to stay far from Aloes.
“That’s the reason why as soon as Jazzy Pantin died (the manager of the Revue). I took a side immediately. I was in front to run that tent. I was the man after Kitchener in the track record and everything, but I wasn’t staying in the Revue because I knew Aloes was never a person to be trusted. The dotishness he indulges in never works.
“Aloes and all of them who accused me should apologise, but there are calypsonians who can’t do that because they don’t have much schooling. They know cutlass and gun. Still, they afraid to come behind me.”
All calypsonians, Cro Cro says, should take a lesson from him. The difference between his competitors and himself, Cro Cro says is his humility.
“I am humble. Vagrants talk to me. I take my time and listen to them.
Many times I reach my home in Buenos Ayres late because I was in Port-of-Spain discussing my calypsoes with vagrants.”
Cro Cro sees himself as the saviour of traditional calypso, an art form that some fans claim is in danger of dying.
“It’s not dying as long as I’m alive. I just wrote a calypso for my daughter, Kerise, and she won a competition. The best thing going for calypso right now is me. Me, me, me. There isn’t much else going for it.
“Kaiso is my life. I live kaiso. I go to sleep at 7.30 pm and I get up at 12.30 am and I write the whole night until 4.30 am. I say to all calypsonians, ‘Instead of fighting, go and write a calypso.’”
Cro Cro is already writing a new calypso:
“I ask Protector and Tuco to buy an ambulance for calypsonians who are in the finals with me
Because it going to have plenty more casualties if they tangle with me.”
Right now, Cro Cro says, he doesn’t like anyone in calypso.
Not buying drinks
“Well, I like M’Ba and Johnny King. They’re good boys, and I like the people in my tent. But the others, when they see money they go bad. I don’t know if they’re owing people or what.”
The 2007 Calypso Monarch’s plan is to cut off any contact with fellow calypsonians.
“From now on calypsonians will not be able to come by me and drink my Guinness. Even Skatie. He used to drink half of my Guinness and I don’t even like him. No more. I’ll stay by myself and I’ll have more time to write and I’ll have more money because I won’t be buying drinks for them.”
“The bottom line is this,” says Cro Cro. “Gypsy is a green verb king; Aloes is a green verb queen and Skatie doesn’t even know a verb from a noun.
“Aloes, Gypsy and Skatie could never beat me in calypso. They’re weaklings. Aloes was fairly all right at one time, but God stopped him.
Gypsy got stopped politically and Skatie should never even be in a final.
He was never good and he has nothing to work with. The whole world knows what I’m saying is true.”
When all the Carnival dust settles Cro Cro is betting he will retain his crown. In the land of calypso, Cro Cro is now a king fish.
