‘Lady Tempest’ credits husband for her calypso success
Stabroek News
March 4, 2003
She is the lone visually-impaired female calypsonian in the country and has won the monarchy once and placed second five times.
Camille Goliah-Basdeo, also known as ‘Lady Tempest,’ emerged runner-up to Vivian Jordan (‘VJ’) this year in the calypso finals, her third consecutive year in second place.
‘Tempest’, as she is often called, credits her success over the years to her husband, who arranges all of her music. She describes him as an integral part of her life and her music.
Bursting on to the calypso scene in 1993, she won the monarchy only two years later with a piece entitled ‘Is only talk.’
In a recent interview with Stabroek News, ‘Tempest’ said that she had lost her sight eleven years ago to an undiagnosed illness. According to her she was totally blind for two years but now has some vision in the right eye.
Before her sight impairment, ‘Tempest’ was a national tennis junior champion, a budding artist, a school teacher and an accounts clerk.
She confessed that the results of the calypso finals came as a shock to her, since she felt that she had won. The monarch ‘VJ’s piece was good, she said, but a little too tame. However, she is hopeful that she can capture the title once again in the not too distant future.
She told this newspaper that she thought the competition this year was of a high standard, and she liked most of the calypsos, some of which had been eliminated early in the competition.
Her own entry, ‘Survival of the fittest’ was a reflection of the times, she said, since one had to be fit in order to survive.
She explained that she had been reluctant to be a calypsonian in the beginning because of the dominant male influence on the art form.
According to her, to become a woman calypsonian involved exposure to some degree of discrimination.
Some thirteen years later she is one of the most respected and competitive calysonians in the field, a reputation, she noted, that came after several years of perseverance.
Believing that she had won the calypso monarch crown on three of the five occasions when she placed second, ‘Tempest’ is confident that things will go in her favour in the future, and probably remain that way for a while. (Iana Seales)
