Paula Lindo – Our histories, stories, present, future.

Calypsonian Linda Byron’s new song Love Vibes is a positive one which deals with many negative topics currently holding the attention of society. Byron wrote the song with the intention of competing in the National Calypso Queen finals, but unfortunately she was not selected to move forward.

Byron has performed in the San Fernando Calypso Showcase, and has held the title of South Calypso Monarch. She performed many times in the National Calypso Queens competition. Some of the songs she is known for are My Innocence, Whose Child is This and Soca Grandmother. She enjoys writing poetry, reggae, rapso, and calypso, and used to co-write her calypsoes with her deceased husband, Felix “Dr. Zhivago” Scott.

She grew up in a musical family, as her mother taught everyone in the family how to sing and harmonise as children. Her brother, calypsonian Junior Byron, was the most famous of the siblings. “I get involved in singing from a very young, young tender age. But really and truly I got involved in writing poetry from a very young tender age. That’s how I wasn’t first in the line. So I’m born in a family that are singers. My big brother, my next brother, me, I’m the third. My name is Linda Rose Byron. Then I have a next brother after me who could sing, my sister, she could also sing and then I have a little brother who could sing and he could play drums too. Is just a family who could sing. The extended family is the same thing too. We born in Erthig Road in Belmont, then we moved to Morvant. My father died when I was nine, but my mother died in 1991. She lived to a good age.”

Bron said she was living in America for a time, and when she looked at what was going on in T&T she wondered where the love had gone that people used to have for each other. “I was thinking about how Trinidad, the crime situation, the youths, like they going wild, they going crazy, so I said bring back the love vibes. We say we love our country so much and don’t want to go anywhere, but look at what’s taking place. Delinquents, young people killing, shooting each other, shooting down big people, old people, not only killing, raping, you know? Blood spilling on the streets. I’m saying, can we drink the blood that is being spilled on the streets? So I look at all of those kind of things. Not only killing, but, look at vagrancy, people sitting, urinating, excreting on the sidewalks, to me all these things are crimes and it should be looked into and taken into consideration. We shouldn’t be allowing those things to happen in our beautiful country. So I say bring back the love vibes.”

Byron said a lack of opportunity is what turns many youth towards crime. “I say, what’s the problem? Why people getting on so? We blaming the leaders and say they don’t care about Trinidad, but how could the leaders lead when the country is already being led astray? The masses, they’re being taken advantage of and it messing with their head. It messing with their psyche. People who go through university levels of learning and when they come out, you tell them apply for a job, they’re well qualified. But, when they go for the job and they get the interviews, ‘you need some experience’. How on earth could they get experience when they never been in a job, and they fresh, new, searching for a job? I’m saying, all of that, it’s negative, it will corrupt the minds of youths. Because they are highly intelligent, they went to university to get a high degree of knowledge to do things, they would put that knowledge to a different type of use. We’re in a technological age, so they will use that technology to their advantage and explore how you would do this, how you could do that, you understand what I’m saying?”

The song contains verses talking about crime, the decriminalisation of marijuana, lack of education,  the lack of mentorship, domestic violence, and exhorts listeners to stop the killing and strife and bring back the peace, love and respect.