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Cheryl Byron, 56, dies in New York
By Terry Joseph
LESS THAN a month after the death of Ann Marie Inniss, Cheryl Byron, another Trinidad-born artiste living in the US, died at 10.30 a.m. yesterday at New York's Long Island College Hospital.
Byron, 56, had recently been discharged from the hospital but returned last weekend after her health worsened. Having suffered from a stomach malfunction that turned cancerous, her kidneys later failed, requiring dialysis. On Monday night, she suffered a cardiac condition.
Sister Nydia, best known locally as the limbo queen, is also in New York but was yesterday too distraught to speak. Along with Nydia were sisters Christine and Valerie who are resident there and had gone to break the news to their mother, Beulah Byron. Their father passed on many years ago.
New York-based cultural activist Dawad Phillip was just leaving Brooklyn to go visit Cheryl when news of her death broke: “Brooklyn’s creative community will surely miss her,” Phillip said. “Everyone had been hoping, even in the circumstances, that she would come out of this, as she had done in so many other health crises.
“I saw her and we spoke recently. She was feeling well but there was swift deterioration,” he said. “She was a cultural force within the community, especially among youth to whom she was both mother and teacher and, come Labour Day time, mas band leader with a stringband of young people in tow.
It is truly heartbreaking,” Phillip said.
The local arts community was equally astonished. Singer Mavis John was dumbfounded. Opera singer Ann Fridal, whose New York address made her Byron’s neighbour, was reluctant to believe the news. Artist Le Roi Clarke described Byron as “a gift of a wonderful spirit”.
Clarke said: “Andre Tanker, then two breaths ago it was Ann Marie Inniss, s..t, now Sister Cheryl Byron. Another artiste dead in the wilderness, far from home appreciation, alone in the open, seeking a name for self and country. She was a gift of wonderful spirit.”
Long time friend, choreographer Carol la Chapelle said: “I just freaked on hearing the news. I had heard she was taken back to hospital and this morning I was looking at a fabulous picture sitting on my television set of us playing mas. She was there with the broad smile, her round face looking like nothing could go wrong. That is the image that will live with me.”
Byron, an ordained Reverend Mother in the Spiritual Baptist Faith and an adjunct professor at Medgar Evers College and the College of New Rochelle in Brooklyn, came to fame here as a multi-faceted artiste and pioneered the inclusion of poetry in calypso tents.
Flambouyant in dress and overall style, Byron became well-known for her support of black causes and focused her energy on guiding children. Upon migration to the US, she founded Something Positive Inc, a vibrant, inter-generational, community-based, not-for-profit arts and education organisation, dedicated to the promulgation of culture of the African Diaspora and its cross-cultural influences.
She also taught at City College and New York Tech and was completing a dissertation at NYU for a PhD in Performance Studies with a Certificate in Museum Studies.
Byron started her career in visual arts here in Trinidad, studying dance with Neville Shepard and acting with the Caribbean Theatre Guild. While on tour in New York, her artwork won her a scholarship to the New School, where she studied fine art. She then obtained BA and MA degrees in English from City College (CUNY) while maintaining her professional life, including her pioneering work in rapso and dub poetry.
Funeral arrangements will be announced later this week.
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