AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Robert Bailey and I am an original member of the fusion band Osibisa.

We’ve recently recorded an album, New Dawn, after about ten years.

Our biggest hit in Trinidad was Woyaya. “We are going, Heaven knows where we are going/ We will get there/ Heaven knows how we will get there/ We know we will.”

I was born in England in 1950 but Dad moved to Guyana for his job in 1954.

So I moved to Guyana when I was four until I was ten.

My teenage years were mostly in Trinidad.

My parents were MacDonald & Doris Bailey. My father was the famous Trinidadian runner who ran for Great Britain in '48 and '52.

There were five of us children. Christine, me, Richard, Joan – and Rachel came 15 years later. Which was a bit of a surprise.

Mum was English but she was more Trinidadian than Dad. And more clued up.

Mum was deadly serious about not buying anything to support (then apartheid in) South Africa. She listened to a lot of jazz and was well into black culture.

Whereas my dad was trying to be proper English. Which I found a paradox.

There’s nothing wrong with being a dreamer.

To me, you don’t have to say, “I passed this,” or “I’m a that,” to be a successful person. My daughter did a course in social care and she’s a very happy and beautiful person. Your character is what matters.

[caption id="attachment_908909" align="alignnone" width="692"] "I remember to this day the great times I had playing fetes in Trinidad as a teenager," says Robert Bailey. - courtesy cjansenphotography.com[/caption]

And all my kids, Danielle, Jonathan and Jacqui, have good characters, which I’m quite proud of.

I believe there is a spirit, a higher intelligence. If you want to call it “God,” that’s just a word.

I wouldn’t say the higher spirit is in control because you have to connect with it.

My parents were (thinking of) lawyer, doctor but I loved music from way, way back, when I was four, in Guyana, when Dad went to work for one of the early multinationals, Bookers.

And I remember sitting down with the family at a table and Dad and Mum saying only one child, Christine or I, could go when Johnny Mathis came to perform a concert. And I bawled and cried and made sure it was me

Johnny Mathis, how great he was…And then Jackie Wilson, one of the early soul singers, before Otis Redding, came to Georgetown. And I went to that too. I could have been six and I remember Lonely Teardrops.

And my parents realised I would be going to all the concerts. When Louis Armstrong came on a US-sponsored visit to Trinidad, I went to the airport to meet him with Mum and Dad.

Once they realised I was adamant about music, my parents were very supportive.

Dad instilled his drive and ambition in me. When I started my band in Trinidad, he financed everything.

One of Bookers’ perks