Baby Cham 'wah wows' National Park
Stabroek News
November 11, 2006

Related Links: Articles on culture
Letters Menu Archival Menu

"Wah wow" Baby Cham's famous calling card was greeted by much adulation, cat calls and screams from the ladies as he stepped to stage front among falling confetti, blazing torches and lighters last Sunday night.

Cham by now an internationally acclaimed artist with several regional hit tracks under his belt plus this year's mega hit "Ghetto Story" looked well within his element as he took command of the National Park arena as the feature artiste last weekend.

Coming onstage around 12.45 am doing "Man And Man" one of his top songs from back in the day Cham followed this up with a slew of hits like, "Many Many", "Dugga Dugga" and "Joy Ride". Later he did "Vitamin S" while entertaining the ladies with some sex tales.

At some point, possibly inspired by the females on and at stage front who were attempting to get their hands on him, Cham stripped down to his vest and as expected drew "oohs" and "aahs" from them as he continued with his set. He launched into "Hands Off My Property", "Bun A Fire", the original "Lean On Me" before doing "Kill Them With Originality".

By the time he got around to doing "I Cannot Forget" the park was in a frenzy. As Cham began to do his mega hit tune "Ghetto Story" somewhere around 1.40 am gunshots began to lick out. The police made an appeal for the revellers to stop firing the guns, which fortunately the gunmen heeded and the show went on. Celeste 'Backs it up' on Sunday night

In the opinion of The Scene crew at the event, the moment of the night was when Cham requested a Guyanese to do the R&B star Alicia Keys segment of his remix. Budding songstress Celeste David, was in the right place at the right time and she took the microphone. She began a bit shakily at first but then gaining confidence from the crowd's response, began to use her honey-coated pipes. Video, cell phone and still cameras came out from all over the place to capture the moment. The Guyanese artiste, who earned the title "diva" with that performance, looking fine in her all-white outfit, took even Cham by surprise with the way she excellently handled the song. Asked to do it again, Cham congratulated her and reminded the fans "this is your own".

Cham, the mega star, then went on to close the show doing "I'm a Hustler" somewhere around 1.50 am on Monday thanking the fans for helping him to be nominated for two BET Awards.

The night started late after the promoters encountered rough waters getting permission. Early on, the venue was in a chilled mode as the sound engineers were having all kinds of problems with the system, which did not go away until well into the show.

The Scene arrived at the National Park before 10 pm to find the place disappointingly flat as the crowd was sparse.

Slingerz Family however took over and began to warm up the place till about 11 pm. After which DJ Face from Stereo Sonics took the controls and rocked the party for ten minutes. The X Factor Dancers followed, and then came Rhythm Squad sound system that put in a hot ten-minute segment. The X Factor dancers had both a male and female squad, but they let the girls do the talking. Interestingly, they chose a local selection to dance to which kind of proves that GT music is at least being more appreciated by Guyanese and this is a good sign for things to come.

Stone Wall, a sound system out of Linden, then did their thing hyping up the venue further.

The live programme began with an appearance by Alabama who brought the Buxton fire, then came 24K one of Guyana's hot new acts who turned the ladies on with their selection '"You Keep Turning Me On". Three female performers took it up a notch with Shelly G appearing first doing her hit track, "Touch Me".

Lady of the night Celeste David did her new single and followed that up with "Back it Up". Her "Back it Up" video was then previewed for the first time by a wide audience, it is a hot sexy video featuring beautiful close ups of the diva, lots of belly skin and power bikes.

Timeka Marshall then took the stage and got the crowd interacting with her new single "Nothing at All". Timeka is showing some determination to overcome what originally appeared to be a bit of timidity.

Also run off during the course of the evening was a ticket drawing featuring the show's MC H. H. Franklin and DJ Bevon. They handled the administration where several persons won gift hampers and a lucky shopper received an F150 truck courtesy of Gizmos and Gadgets. basstone@lycos.com