KING GYPSYBy SEAN DOUGLAS Saturday, February 13 2010
UNC MAYARO MP Winston “Gypsy” Peters won the extempo calypso final ahead of defending champion, Joseph “Lingo” Ventour-La Placeliere, on Thursday night at the Kaisorama show at Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain.
While Lingo who is blind clearly had a huge fan base in the crowd, other viewers (and the judges) said Gypsy won the sparring of the extempo war.
Gypsy won the $100,000 extempo prize. He last won the extempo crown in 1997 when he had also won the Calypso Monarch crown with “Little Black Boy”.
Thursday night also saw 2009 Calypso Monarch, Hollis “Chalkdust” Liverpool, who defends his crown tomorrow at Dimanche Gras, place third in the “political” class of the calypso categories, behind winner, Winston “De Fosto” Scarborough with “In a palace state of mind”. Kizzie Ruiz won the best social commentary with “Aide Haiti”, while Llewellyn “Short Pants” Mac Intosh won the humorous title with a song about the infidelity of US golfer Tiger Woods, “De Infidel”.
From a field of eight, Gypsy and Lingo battled for six verses on “No topic”.
Gypsy complained of being unfairly beaten by Lingo last year.
Gypsy sung, “If you feel tonight you could advantage me, I’m sorry I going to beat you until you could see.” Lingo sung that his seeing dog, Coco, was said by Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday to be better looking than Gypsy, but he had since left Coco home. At that Gypsy hit back at Lingo, “Anywhere he roam, he leave he Coco home. The first man I see, never take he Coco with he.”
Lingo claimed Gypsy was trying to dress in a suit like his. Gypsy hit back, “In my wildest dreams I’d not dress in a suit like that. I’ll tell my partner Fred, bury me in a suit like that when I’m dead.”
In the semis, Lingo had convincingly beaten Philip “Black Sage” Murray on the topic, “TT, the home of Carnival”, while Gypsy topped Leslie Ann “Lady Africa” Bristow on the theme, “All of we is one family”.
The extempo results were: Peters, Ventour-La Placeliere, Murray, Bristow, Sheldon John, Hezekiah Joseph, Mark “Contender” John and Dion Diaz.
An elated Gypsy told reporters he felt good about winning, and about the future of extempo.
“When I’m beaten fair and square I don’t mind one bit (but) what I mind is when people don’t beat me and they say I lose.”
He explained his win. “When you are extempoing you have to always be alert as to what the other people are saying. You have to be cognisant of the crowd’s reaction, and you feed off of that kind of thing. In fact I think that happened tonight.”
Gypsy said he truly felt he had beaten Lingo, hands down. “Lingo is good, and Lingo under my tutelage is even better. You know Lingo is my cousin and we are very close, so we exchange a lot of things.”
He said he was now very happy, especially as the show had drawn more entrants.
“We are bringing new blood into the field of extempo which is a great thing, and for that alone I am happy. We can bring new people, so this artform doesn’t die.” Gypsy urged that the artform be kept alive. “I was out of it for a couple of years because of my political foray and because of the reaction of the people, I didn’t take part in it. That was their loss, because I extempoed all over the world during that time as I do now. I’m the extempo king of the world. I normally take Lady Africa or Black Sage along with me, all the time. Already we are booked for London and Atlanta and a couple of places. Most of the bookings come through me.”
Gypsy said he was having a great Carnival season with his two songs, “My Trinidad” and “Madoff”. “I was in the semifinals and heaven knows why I wasn’t in the (Dimanche Gras) finals, but that’s okay.”
Gypsy did not back anyone for the Dimanche Gras, but noted some favourites.
“I like De Fosto. I know Chalkdust always has a surprise, Kurt Allen is a good little boy, Kizzie Ruiz is very good. I like them but because of my involvement and closeness to all these people I don’t want to say who I really want to choose, but I like all of them and I wish all of them the best.”
Otherwise, in the social class, Kizzie Ruiz really touched hearts with the power of her music; throbbing drums and light violin strings, lamenting Haiti’s plight after a deadly earthquake one month ago. Brian London, placing second, gave excellent advice to colleagues not to practise race or gender bias in their artform, in “A calypsonian”. Dexter “Stinger” Parsons told police officers to “Make up your mind” as to which side of the law they are really on.
In the political class, De Fosto beat Kurt Allen’s “Too bright”, followed by Chalkdust singing “Eye Problems”. The humourous title was won by Short Pants, ahead of Edwin “Crazy” Ayoung singing “For Carnival” and third place Anthony “All Rounder” Hendrickson singing “Female Lifeguard”.
