Now, at 60, looking back, Rudder says his career has mostly been filled with joy. “Lots of ups, but even the downs were good lessons. I can’t complain. The connection to people through music and people talking about songs that never even saw the light of day like Into the Night, made it all worthwhile. “Sometimes you write a song on an album and think no one is going to take that on and people write and say how it touched them. If a song touches a single person in a meaningful way, Rudder counts it as a success. The success of Hosay, the song he wrote about the 1990 coup attempt, has turned out to be the biggest surprise of his career both for its popularity and for it being discussed in academic circles by people like calypso experts and retired professor of literature Dr Gordon Rohlehr.
“Yes, there are people who mention many different songs as their favourite, but Hosay surprised me because there were a lot of people from different classes who said Hosay was their favourite song. That coup attempt was something we all experienced together, and it was a Carnival song that wasn’t just about Carnival and jumping up,” says Rudder. Shakedown Time became another surprise success so he counts it as one of his favourite songs. “Up to today people talk about Shakedown Time. Young people and older people talk about it and it never got played on the radio. To me, that shows people are listening.” The memory that stands out the most in his career is a performance in Trincity Mall, just after he made calypso history in 1986.
“While performing, we promised an album to someone who could sing Bahia Gyul. A little girl came up and started mumbling her way through the lyrics. People started to laugh. I said, ‘Give her a round of applause. She did a good job.’ Afterwards, her parent said she knew the song, but she was almost deaf so she couldn’t really speak. I have never forgotten that.”
It is still the most touching moment he has experienced in a career filled with accolades and great performances on a worldwide stage. While Rudder is based in Toronto, Canada now, he says it really doesn’t affect his closeness to T&T. “I’m in Trinidad virtually every month. I have all the newspapers and every radio station on my computer. It’s all like following a soap opera. You could leave a soap opera and come back six months later and know what’s going on. “It’s the same with Trinidad. When you’re in Trinidad you’re up against the wall. When you’re away, you can step back from it all. And when you come back in you see the wall; feel the vibe and see the mural.” David Rudder, an artist as well as a musician, has made a career of seeing and singing about the whole picture. Over the years, there has been a glimmer of hope that soca music would break through in a big way in the world market. “I always thought I would have more success internationally, but I feel my music could match up to anyone,” says Rudder. “I opened for a lot of major acts over my lifetime, and when Charlie’s Roots were done on stage, it couldn’t happen for those acts we opened for because their music didn’t have the energy and power that ours has.”
Rudder says T&T doesn’t understand its own energy and power so we tend to throw it away. Commercialisation is another problem. “The disappointment for me is when you get to a certain point, you could be Beethoven, but if classical music isn’t the music of the time, it doesn’t matter how good you are. It’s not like sports. Brian Lara could say, ‘I’m better than everyone’ and that’s the brilliance of sports. You can stand up to anyone next to you, and you have a chance to beat him. “Not so in music. You could feel your music is amazing and people could tell you it’s amazing and if it’s not “in”—especially as the world gets more and more commercial—then it doesn’t matter how good the music is.” Rudder says soca music only has a chance to get to the next level if people start to envision success. “It’s almost as though we don’t envision the next step. I feel uncomfortable when people say things like ‘If the Soca Warriors reach Germany I good.’ I think, why wouldn’t you want us to bring the World Cup back? We have to aim for more.”
Rudder says we fail to realise how the rest of the Caribbean view us. “Up the islands, they look at us like a leader and somehow we don’t understand that. We just look at all the foolishness eating up the place. We don’t look at our true potential.” If the music seems lost, Rudder says it is because it reflects society. “You might want to hear horns and congas like in those days, but those times were a different time. If people complain the music isn’t growing, you have to watch the society. If the song has no value, ask yourself where is the value in society?” Still, Rudder sees hope. “There are always good and bad things happening in music, and whatever happens will create a new sound. The future of our music depends on the nation. “I think something is coming to a head in society and that will manifest in what the music will give out. I just hope it will be a good sound. If it keeps going there will be a fire and hopefully out of that fire will come a good song.” The future, he believes, always holds something good.