I repeat: we already have a World Cup Song

March 31st, 2006 | by: Stacy-Marie Ishmael | Comments(5)

I am incensed. Those two guys from Leeds are at it again.

As previously reported on this blog, the all-knowing Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) sold the rights to the ‘official’ song of the T&T Warriors to – two guys from Leeds, Choque Hosein and Paul Jepson.

According to the Leeds Today Evening post, which broke the original story, “The record is very good, it is a hit. You can hear the Trinidadian input, but it has a European feel.” Pardon me, but if this song is going to represent Trinidad and Tobago on the world stage, why exactly would we want a “European feel”?

Apparently, the “Trinidadian” contribution to the song comes from its reliance on steelpan rhythms. Oh, and the lead singer on the track is “Bradford-based Trinidadian Patrick Beggs.”

The most offensive part of this whole debacle is not merely that we have once again utterly failed to show the world what Trinidad can do, but that we are allowing complete fiction masquerading as fact to be trumpeted around the world. Allow me to cite from the so-called “fact file” at the end of the article:

Musicians started making music with dustbins and paint pots – the first steel pans. Bemused colonial Brits at first refused to believe a pan could make music, instead blaming black magic.

What? What? Dustbins and paint pots? I beg your pardon? And, of course, the black magic again.

I may just have to send Mr. Richard Edwards, the author of the piece, some background reading on the story of steel pan.

Talk done.