Sparrow breaks silence
...It isn't me

Statue of Sparrow

July 26, 2001

CALYPSO King of the World, The Mighty Sparrow, has eventually endorsed a popular view that the statue in his honour, unveiled last Sunday at the St Ann's roundabout, does not look like him.

THE MIGHTY SPARROW at the unveiling of the statue (above) at the St Ann's roundabout last Sunday. Photos by ROBERT TAYLOR

Speaking to reporters outside the Mas Camp Pub, shortly before he took the stage for Tuesday night's hour-long concert, Sparrow said: “It doesn't look like me. I know it does not look like me, but you also have to pay attention to some other issues. The wider picture.

“And who can capture the essence, the spirit of Sparrow in a statue?” he asked with a chuckle.

“When I see somebody doing something wrong I have one face and if same time a beautiful woman comes down the street, my whole body changes again. Not even Rannie Babb, the police inspector, could have captured Sparrow when both of us were young and I was doing all kinds of foolishness.

“But seriously, you have to understand that this is calypso. Don't just look at Sparrow. This is calypso, a thing the elite wanted to ban for years. Were it not for the persistence of a few, it would have been banned.

“So now, when it could reach to the stage where it could get the attention of corporate sponsorship, like it was somebody or something worth commemorating with not one statue but two, you also have to look at that as a kind of breakthrough,” Sparrow said.

“And you shouldn't blame the sculptor outright. The man never saw me and was given only a one-dimensional view to work with, when he should have been given pictures with all kinds of angles, so he could develop a three-dimensional image.

“In any case, the way this statue business works, it will either begin to look like me, or I will begin to look like it, if it stays there long enough and people get accustomed to the idea. If you only looking for a mood, then again, you can't blame the sculptor because there are many moods of Sparrow,” he said.

The committee behind the project has instructed sculptor Madan Gopaul to redesign the head and face of the figure.

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