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Dr. Winston Bailey, Shadow, aka The Bassman, journeyed home to the ancestors October 30, 2018. Shadow left us on the cusp of receiving a well-deserved Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of the West Indies (St Augustine campus).
Born in humble beginnings in Belmont Trinidad, Shadow grew up on his grandfather’s farm in Les Coteaux, Tobago. An occasional carpenter by trade, Shadow lived in some of the poorest areas of Port of Spain. The Bassman’s intimate familiarity with marginalization is graphically depicted in “Poverty is Hell”, one of the finest of social commentaries.
The Bassman, who began singing calypso at 8 years old, celebrated his 77th birthday, October 4, and passed on October 23, bequeathing us a treasure chest of some of the finest calypso literature.
Tributes have been overflowing throughout the region and around the world. Vincentian community activist and social commentator Renwick Rose posits that perhaps what best characterizes Shadow is his unconventional use of “a simple expression to put forward a powerful social message, a message of resistance, challenge, struggle for a new vision. [Shadow] reminds us that ‘Everybody is Somebody’”.
Grenada’s Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell reminds us that “Although [Shadow was] Trinidadian, as Caribbean people, we embraced him as one of our own. He [is] part of our collective legacy.”
Saluting Shadow, Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams reveals that his earliest introduction to music was the “captivating sounds and energetic rhythms of soca and calypso, including [Shadow] that was played in his home.”