Well deserved honours
We applaud the honours and awards bestowed upon two of our cultural icons on Wednesday. Slinger Francisco, universally known as the Mighty Sparrow, and Peter Minshall have served our culture and our country for decades. Each with a repertoire that has won worldwide acclaim for his respective talent, Sparrow and “Minsh” have represented, presented and brought honour to our country with their unique cultural genres in their inimitable styles.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced that Sparrow would be given the nation’s highest honour, the Order of Trinidad and Tobago, and that all of his medical bills recently incurred would be settled by the State. She also announced that Peter Minshall would be given the State-owned home in Federation Park, where he has lived for several years.
These awards are both symbolic and practical, even in Minshall’s case, for a home in which to live, especially in one’s own land, is an important symbolic “attachment” to one’s homeland. So handing him the Title Deed to the house in which he had created so much beauty was a right and proper thing to do.
For Sparrow, the award of the Order of Trinidad and Tobago is fitting tribute to the man whose longevity in calypso cannot just be remembered in chronological years, but also by the masterpieces he had sung through those years.
From “Yankees Gone” (Jean and Dinah”) when he burst upon the scene in 1956, Sparrow has described, satirised and mesmerised us with his wit, his biting sarcasm and the sheer joy of his countless performances.
But while this award is an honour of which we are all very proud, it would have been inappropriate to hang this Medal upon him while a huge debt of hospital bills also hung over him. As we all know, Sparrow was recently in a coma for several days in a New York hospital, and while the nation prayed for his recovery, huge bills were mounting for his care.
Our prayers were answered, and then some! Few, if any of us really expected to see the Sparrow singing on stage again so soon after the fearful news of his coma. We applaud his resilience and are certain that with the cloud of his medical bills blown away, we will see an even more vibrant “Birdie” through this Carnival.
“Mas’ Man Extraordinaire” is an expression which can only be uttered or understood by our people. And that unique description fits the man who created art out of people.
Peter Minshall’s talent for costume design is matched only by his vision of portraying street theatre through massive parades of unrehearsed people dancing. And putting these costumes—some of them really massive structures which literally dance—to “work” to the music and the theme of the portrayal demonstrated the unique talent of “Minsh”. His amazing talent saw him design and present the opening shows for Olympic Games and World Cup Football. He too would have had a weight lifted by knowing that he has a home to call his own in his homeland.