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Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Tourism, Culture and Sports, Dr. the Hon. Denzil L. Douglas (l) and Professor Hollis Liverpool, the Mighty Chalkdust. |
BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, JULY 26TH 2005 St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Dr. the Hon. Denzil L. Douglas has issued a challenge to Trinidad and Tobagos cultural icon, Hollis Liverpool, The Mighty Chalkdust, to ensure that the calypso art form remains alive in the Caribbean.
Welcoming the regional legendary to the Federation when he paid a courtesy call on Monday afternoon, Prime Minister Douglas congratulated Liverpool for winning the Calypso Monarch title for the seventh time earlier this year.
Dr. Douglas gave the assurance that that his St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party Government will continue to give priority to the cultural art form .
We will do what we have to do to strengthen this relationship in the future, said Prime Minister Douglas to Liverpool, who is in St. Kitts, at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture to conduct workshops aimed at revitalising the calypso art form in the Federation.
We are depending on you to keep this Caribbean art form alive. So you have a challenge to do that, Prime Minister Douglas told Liverpool, a Professor at the University of the West Indies.
As everything else, there is a need for training right through the Caribbean. I am happy to be here and to conduct a number of sessions starting from the beginning, so that at the end of it all, we will actually compose a calypso, said Liverpool.
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Minister of State in the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sports, Sen. the Hon. Richard Skerritt (l) and Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Tourism, Culture and Sports, Dr. the Hon. Denzil L. Douglas watch as Professor Hollis Liverpool, the Mighty Chalkdust, autographs the book he presented to the PM. Photos by Erasmus Williams |
He told Prime Minister Douglas, the Calypsonians will be evaluated. We will have them critique each other, like we do in the CXC examinations.
Director of Culture, Mr. Creighton Pencheon said the workshop is part of the Ministrys Calypso Revitalisation Project being undertaken through the Department of Culture.
He has come to give us that jump start. We recognise that there has been a decline in the number of persons participating at both the junior and senior level and this is an important opportunity that we do not want to lose, said Mr. Pencheon.
We need to get our young people expressing this cultural art form and turned on to calypso. This is where the concern is as some of these Caribbean islands are becoming so Americanised and the young people are more into the other forms of music, said Minister of State for Tourism, Culture and Sports, Sen. the Hon. Ricky Skerritt, who also sat in on the brief meeting.
Mr. Liverpool used the opportunity to present to Prime Minister Douglas, a copy of his latest book on From the horses mouth - Stories of the history and development of the Calypso.
