IslandMix - Soca, Reggae, Zouk and Caribbean Entertainment

a flashback by Gabby

http://www.islandmix.com/avroom/audi...hdiplomacy.wma



salty

CHUNEE...
LISTEN TO DE PHASING..DE MAN IS BOSS

Did you know gabby is an accomplished actor?

i think he stopped right? only did it in his 20's or so?

for those interested....some info. on the man's biggest songs...

http://www.icerecords.com/Gabby.htm

salty

or for the lazy folks.

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BOOTS

Boots, he says was created in 1984 after a 2 am encounter outside Government House in Barbados. "I was walking along with another singer named Pompey when we heard this strange and distant sound. There was no particular national crisis at the time so we were amazed when we came upon these soldiers with back packs marching through the streets. To me it’s a waste of tax payers money. I was angry. When I got home I kept hearing in my head "left, right, left, right the government boots." This stayed with me for a couple of days and about three weeks later, the Grenada Invasion took place. In 35 minutes all verses and the melody of Boots came to me."


HIT IT

Amusingly, Hit It, the hit song of 1983, was created on a dare. Gabby says’s "Initially, I had written the song Jack for a singer called Sir Don. Soon after I gave him the song we were together at home and he said to me, ‘you wrote Jack but I bet you can’t write Jill.’ I wanted to show him that I could, so I sat down and wrote, Jill was playing cricket with me on a pasture one day. Fifteen minutes after he left my house, I called him to say that I had Jill. He was so amazed that got on his bicycle and returned to my house just to prove me a liar.

JACK

"Jack" Gabby say’s "came as a reaction to an action. It came after Jack Dear, a corporate lawyer for the Barbados Board Of Tourism made the decree that hotel owners had the right to bring their property down to the waterfront. The idea for the song came one night while I was singing a hotel. This white woman said to me, ‘could you play some local music.’ Jack was at the hotel that same night and the entire encounter led to the creation of Jack."

CADAVERS

When Gabby heard that the Barbados government had agreed to accept and store dead bodies from the U.S, this became the topic of his 1985 contribution, Cadavers. "Grenada had refused to take the cadavers but Tom Adams said yes to the request from the U.S government. Medical people were concerned because they wanted to know what these people died from and all that. But everything was kept secret. Thus Gabby wrote: "Barbados is a big joke, with dem big boy in dey big tie and coat." The song was eventually banned from the Barbados airwaves and became the subject of a law suit which never reached the courts because of the death of Tom Adams.

THE LIST

The List, with its infectious music, is a potent and timely social commentary. In 1988, the deadly AIDS virus began pounding the Caribbean with hurricane like fury. Gabby was one of the first calypsonians out to bat with his musical comment on the issue. "The way people were dealing with the problem wa by spreading rumors about one another. I was at a friend’s home and overheard these women talking about all who they heard had AIDS. It was all he say and dem say. I decided there and then that I would write a song because I wanted to stop people from spreading rumours.

WEST INDIAN POLITICIAN

This compelling political commentary is one of the few in Gabby’s arsenal that took a long time to compose. "The first two verses" he say’s, "came like lightening but then the next two took almost a year to complete. I had done a lot of research about West Indian politicians and realised that while they said one thing they practised another. Most of them were also lawyers trained in London and they never associated with the common man. Their only concern was power. When I first heard the melody in my head it sounded like a symphony. It was definitely not a calypso melody but I thought that it showed our connection to colonisation and slavery. To me it showed everything."

EMMERTON

Emmerton, is a song with a character all its own. It’s patriotic dirge: a song with such passion that the late governor general of Barbados Dame Nita Barrow requested that Gabby perform it at her funeral. Emmerton, Gabby’s hometown, was a place where the villagers praticed the barter system and often traded salt for sugar. "It was a place where neighbours were each other’s lookout. "In 1978, when I found out that we had to move, I was very hurt. People’s houses were torn down and it was very heartbreaking to see the destruction of that community. They also destroyed the environment and ecology of the place. Emmerton meant everything to me. It was my homeland; it was the place I learned to swim. I had to remember it in song. The song took me just 35 minutes to write."

DR. CASSANDRA/DEBRA

Dr. Cassandra and Debra, two of Gabby’s most recent hits, were the toast of Trinidad’s Carnival 1995. Both songs are unique in that they were not inspired by true events nor were they comment on some hot social/political issue. They are both just creations of the genius of the mind of Gabby. He explains: "I was scheduled to go in the studio but I had not written anything new. Eddy (Grant) told me that he wanted something special. We were on the plantation in Barbados and I took up Eddy’s guitar, went outside under a tree and started composing. Just like that Dr. Cassandra came to me and Debra followed right after."

GISELA

Gisela, was written for a Cuban "Princess" who touched Gabby’s life in 1979. "She was our tour guide on my trip to Cuba and she was so kind to us. She had so much work but she never once complained. She said she was doing it for the revolution. She was fluent in English and very committed to her work. I wrote Gisela as a tribute to her and in memory of her kindness. I wrote the song in 1981 and as my mind flirted with reality, I forced myself to imagine that she was living in Panama. If so then it would have afforded me the opportunity to see her again." Unfortunately, Gabby’s dream lives only in his song, Gisela from Panama.

CHICKEN & RAM

Chicken and Ram is one of the most witty and provocative of Gabby’s contributions. An impressive social commentary, the song is as catchy as it is humorous. It was written in 1988 and centers around a controversy involving a rich East Indian businesswoman in Barbados. "I thought she was an exploiter and I wanted to write about it. She had already sued a lot of people for saying that she was selling dead chickens so I had to write the song in a way that she could not touch it." The businesswoman owned a farm called McDonald’s Farm, so Gabby cleverly got around a law suit by playing on the old childhood jingle, Old McDonald.
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salty

he and eddy grant did a movie in guyana,about fives ago. i think they only released in africa.

braxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx tune