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Calypso from Trinidad, twoubadou from Haiti, and jíbaro from Puerto Rico will fill the Williams Center for the Arts stage when the Masters of Caribbean Music tour makes a stop there 8 p.m. today.
Tickets cost $20 for the public, $4 for faculty and staff, and are free for students with Lafayette ID. The concert is sold out, but standby tickets are available. Starting at 7 p.m., people from the standby line will be seated in the order in which they are standing in line. Often everyone in the standby line is able to attend a concert.
The public is invited to a free, pre-concert talk about the music by tour musicians at 7 p.m.
The limited United States tour of Masters of Caribbean Music includes three of the most popular and authentic legacies of the Spanish, French, and African cultures so richly invested among Caribbean peoples: Miguel Santiago Díaz brings his Grammy-nominated Ecos de Borinquén band; Trinidad’s “living legend” Slinger Francisco—known to his fans as The Mighty Sparrow—performs as the acknowledged “king of calypso”; and the famed Haitian quintet Wanga-Nègès centers on the electrifying vocals of Ti-Coca, backed by accordian, guitars, tanbou, and drums.
In the late 1960s, the Institute of Puerto Rican culture launched an annual contest that crowned the island’s top interpreters of the improvised, sung poetry set to the seis. In 1974, Díaz won this high-profile contest to become the “national trovador” (troubadour) of Puerto Rico.” He has played an important role in driving a renaissance of Puerto Rican roots music.
A retired schoolteacher, Díaz dedicates himself to nurturing music among youth. He appears on two radio programs promoting the music, serves as a judge at many rural festival competitions, and is a consultant to the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture.
Since Díaz formed Ecos de Borinquen in 1978, the group has performed in 78 towns throughout Puerto Rico and has toured in the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, and Costa Rica.
Slinger Francisco, better known as The Mighty Sparrow, has a career that spans over 40 years and counting, having entertained audiences around the world. A brilliant singer and arranger, he is the dominant figure of post-World War II calypso both in Trinidad and Tobago and in the United States, where in the 1960s and 1970s he would often fill New York’s Madison Square Garden. He has been crowned Trinidad’s Calypso King (Monarch) 11 times, won the Carnival Road March eight times, and has recorded more than 100 albums.
He chose the name Sparrow, he says, because whereas other calypsonians got their message across by standing on the spot and pointing at the audience, he hopped around on stage. Mighty Sparrow gained his first Calypso King title in 1956 with the endearing “Jean and Dinah” that celebrated the departure of United States troops from Trinidad and ushered in a new era of politically charged calypso.
“If you really know the true role of the calypsonian,” he says, “then you should understand that somewhere along the line you gonna be treading on somebody’s toes.”
From the mid-1950s into the 1970s, Francisco was a headliner at the Young Brigade tent every Carnival season until the tent was renamed Sparrow’s Young Brigade. He also regularly toured the Caribbean, as well as England and the United States. He has been honored with the Caribbean’s highest award, the Order of the Caribbean, for outstanding contributions to the development of the region.
Francisco continues to tour throughout the world and remains the best-known calypsonian of all time.
Ti-Coca(David Mettelus) is considered one of the best singers in Haiti today. He is one of the troubadours whose style is sometimes referred to as siwel, with lyrics that are as bittersweet as the fruit of the same name. Originally from Port de Paix in northeast Haiti, he formed his first group with neighborhood friends in 1971. Mettelus soon acquired the nickname “Ti-Coca” (little bottle of Coca-Cola) because of his diminutive stature.
For the last 28 years, Ti-Coca and his accordion-led acoustic quintet Wanga-Nègès have created twoubadou music in the traditional style. The group is one of the very few professional ensembles whose music has retained the distinctive character that Haitian historian Jean Fouchard has described as “the gentle Congo pastorals.” Its participation in the Masters of Caribbean Musictour marks the group’s United States touring debut.
Masters of Caribbean Music is made possible by support from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s Mid Atlantic Tours Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the NEA Regional Touring Program. It is organized by the National Council on the Traditional Arts (NCTA). Led by folk authority Joe Wilson, NCTA is the leading voice for authentic folk arts in the country. It produces annual National Folk Life Festivals on the Mall in Washington D.C. and advises the National Endowment for the Arts on its annual fellowship awards to American masters in folk arts. The NCTA has organized previous touring programs that have come to the Williams Center, such as Masters of the Steel String Guitar, American Celtic Masters, and Pueblos, Plains and Tundra, an anthology program of singers and dancers from three different Native American cultures.
The nationally recognized Performance Series at Lafayette attracts more than 10,000 people each season. It has been cited for performing excellence by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, Chamber Music America, Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, Pennsylvania Arts and Humanities Councils, and Association of Performing Arts Presenters.
The 2005–2006 Performance Series is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts.