Kaiso veterans unite at Sunshine Awards

(Trinidad Guardian) Vet­er­an T&T ca­lyp­so­ni­ans the Mighty Spar­row (Slinger Fran­cis­co), Chalk­dust (Hol­lis Liv­er­pool) and Crazy (Ed­win Ay­oung) were ho­n­oured at Sun­shine Awards at the Robert Treat Ho­tel in New Jer­sey on Sat­ur­day night.

Dur­ing a per­for­mance on the night, Chalk­dust al­so paid trib­ute to the late Samuel “Bri­go” Abra­ham by per­form­ing a few of his (Bri­go’s) songs. Bri­go died last year at the age of 76.

Bri­go’s daugh­ter, Janelle Abra­ham, was al­so at the event. In Au­gust, Abra­ham cre­at­ed a Car­ni­val band to ho­n­our her fa­ther named the “Bri­go Cul­tur­al Band.” The band par­tic­i­pat­ed in the New Jer­sey City Car­ni­val and won the prize for Best T-shirt Band of the Year.

Speak­ing about Sat­ur­day’s awards, Abra­ham told Guardian Me­dia it al­lowed her to catch up with Liv­er­pool, her God­fa­ther, Spar­row and Crazy, who had al­so been a ma­jor part of her child­hood.

Abra­ham said she was ex­cit­ed over the re­union and not­ed that she was work­ing on more projects con­nect­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

The Sun­shine Awards, which was host­ed by co­me­di­ans Er­rol Fabi­an and Nik­ki Cros­by, was start­ed in 1989 to recog­nise ex­cel­lence in the per­form­ing arts, ed­u­ca­tion, sci­ence and sports of the Caribbean coun­tries. The event has since ex­pand­ed to in­clude artistes from coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Africa.