NIGEL CAMPBELL
Etienne Charles continued his high-quality concert presentations for local audiences, this time allowing patrons to understand the popular Carnival song, the road march, as more than entertainment, but as the tool of the calypsonian and the soca artist to move feet and bodies.
Our physical response, our celebration, at Carnival time and year-round, to this music is measurable, and on February 6, inside the Winifred Atwell Auditorium, Queen’s Hall, St Ann's, Charles and his band delivered music that made dancing inevitable for the sold-out audience.
A simple review could say the show was a sublime concert of memorable road marches with a rollercoaster of emotions and elation, all capped by the two most important artists in soca music of all time. But, Charles always brings a level of deep thinking and analysis in his productions – a cerebral celebration – that reflect history and revel in island genius. Here was no different.
In 2024, the concert celebrated a linear history, the evolution of this music that is measurably the most popular song on the road during the two days of Carnival bands on parade and the creative output of the arranger and musicians.
In 2025, the focus seemed to point towards the singer, that avatar of a kind of hedonism and merrymaking that makes this island a magnet at Carnival time.
Charles explains the reason
d’etre of Road March in Concert II thus: “For me, a big part of why I started this show is because I realised that in my years of travel and performing, everywhere I go, icons get properly celebrated. We don’t really do that in Trinidad because we are all about the new.”
In 2024, it was Pelham Goddard, this year it was the turn of SuperBlue to receive those musical accolades.
The eager and expectant atmosphere of the auditorium, minutes before showtime, was sated by DJ Rawkus challenging patrons to remember and sing along to the early road marches of Mighty Sparrow, Mae Mae (1960) and Lord Blakie, Maria (1962) and the later 20th century winners – Poser, Ah Tell She (1979) and Penguin, Deputy (1982).
[caption id="attachment_1138211" align="alignnone" width="1024"] SuperBlue and Machel Montano in full flight at the Road March in Concert II at Queen's Hall, St Ann's. - Photo by Maria Nunes[/caption]
Charles, always a sartorial exemplar, resplendent in his “amazing technicolour dreamcoat” hand-dyed silk suit, led the five-piece horn section – including his American student Kevin Shinskie – of his expanded Riddim, Brass and Mas band, through a three-hour spectacular that captured the spirit of Carnival music that moved masses over decades,and played a role in supporting dances of joy and cathartic release.
The road march is a song of call-and-response, a New-World anthem of jubilation, in which singer and music, performance and arrangement are equals.
His first guest, tap dancer Lisa La Touche, explored a connection between tap and calypso/soca rhythms unheard and unseen in the canon of that dance form. Charles was commissioned to create a suite of m
