Two members of the Historycal Roots team attended the next in the planned series of Windrush 70 events recently. Hosted at the welcoming MAA MAAT Cultural Centre in Tottenham High Road, the event was led by Arthur Torrington, ‘Mr Windrush’ himself.
There were informative talks about Haiti (Cecil Guzmore) and Reparations (Esther Stanford-Xosei). Both speakers were deeply knowledgeable about their subjects and their talks were thought provoking but would it be frivolous of me to confess that the contributions from the several calypsonians present (including Alexander ‘D’ Great and DeAlberto) were the highlight of the day?
I mentioned to Alexander during a break that I hadn’t been able to fully enjoy his contribution in Windrush Square on Remembrance Sunday because one of the WW2 veterans had asked me to use his i-pad to take photos, I’d never used an i-pad before so this was rather nerve wracking as there was only one chance to get the shots he wanted. When Alexander was asked to fill in a brief gap in proceedings while the IT was set up for the next session he reprised his calypso from the previous weekend and graciously agreed that I could film and share it. What a trouper he is, keeping his focus while people scrabbled around with the IT behind him!
This song was used for the closing credits of a BBC programme ‘Fighting for King and Country’. If you share a love of calypso and would like to know more about Alexander’s work you can find him here: http://www.alexanderdgreat.net/Home.html