Her quiet passing two Sundays ago at age 85 went largely unremarked in the media.

But Thelma Lewis, who was honoured in 1992 by NJAC for her contribution to calypso, was a remarkable woman who broke many barriers and opened many doors for women today.

She was born Thelma Lane on September 18, 1914 to Barbadian parents on George Street. Like many Bajans, she knew music and at an early age she joined a group of comedians/singers called the Matchless Boys. They'd go out on launches to entertain tourists aboard visiting cruise ships, being paid literally in cents.

King Radio (Norman Span) heard her and invited her to try singing calypso. He trained her and in 1935, when she was 19 years old, she became the first woman to sing calypso in a tent.

Thelma made her debut in the Crystal Palace Tent on Nelson Street, which had been founded by the great Railway Douglas but at the time was being run by one Mr. Wilkinson. Those days it was difficult enough for a man to become a calypsonian, far less a woman.

The three calypsoes she sang at her debut were "Nora, Nora" (not Kitchener's), "Old Man's Darling" and "Advice to Young Women":

I'm advising every young woman

to be careful of the young men

of this island (repeat)

First they pretend that they

love you true

Using up their brain, ring tactics

and screw

But when they get you as

a lamb, baby

Is then they does make you

see misery.

"Even though she'd get more encores, promoters gave her less than the men," says her daughter, also named Thelma Lewis.

Once at a show in the countryside, after her calypso about how men mistreat women, the other calypsonians came on stage and began attacking her in extempo. The audience, disgusted at their behaviour, booed them and walked out.

On another occasion, when Eduardo Sa Gomes was sending calypsonians to New York to record, he considered including Thelma. The Roaring Lion advised him, however: "Look at how beautiful she is - if she go away some man will fall for her, she'll get married and you'll lose your money."

So she stayed home.

And yet, when she entered the Crystal Palace Tent, she left the door wide open, because the following year two women entered. They were Lady Baldwin (Mavis Baldwin) and Lady MacDonald (Doris MacDonald). That would only have happened if Lady Trinidad was considered a significant addition to the revue.

Thelma's feminism was not based on either envy or resentment of her menfolk, because she was not only self-confident and talented, she was also beautiful.

In her same debut year, Port of Spain Mayor Captain AA Cipriani asked her to portray Queen Mary in the King George V Silver Jubilee pageant. She was chosen because of her presence and her beauty.

Lady Trinidad also became the first female calypsonian to make a record when she recorded her debut songs plus a duet with a singer/comedian at the Rialto Theatre, St James, for the Akow Company in 1937. She received 15 dollars for each song recorded plus half percent royalties.

Sydney Benjamin, who sang calypso under the sobriquet Gibraltar and was nine years her junior (but hard as a rock), became briefly involved with Thelma. Today, Gibraltar recalls her with a laugh and a rhyme as "hard and bad". "If I drink my tea and I eh put the cup in the kitchen, she making noise!" he says, adding, "But she had class."

Later, however, she took her own advice in "Old Man's Darling" and married Hamilton Lewis, who was 12 years her senior, and she gave him two sons and a daughter.

I don't want no young man today

To [bear witch] and put me out of my way

I don't want no young man today

To [bear witch] and put me out of my way

I want an old bull for food and rent

And when he work will bring home every cent

But not if he bebe me like a bee

Because I don't want no more family

She left the calypso arena a few years after entering it, but she continued singing in various clubs. Thelma also set up little food stalls. "She had a sweet hand," describes her daughter, because, as Thelma once sang "I cyar live on macafouchette".

"And," continues Thelma junior, "she could sew - she'd sew clothes without a pattern, she'd just see something and she could make it."

For all this domesticity, Thelma remained an iconoclast unafraid to break tradition. "She was a builder," recalls Gibraltar. "She take she cement and sand and put down bricks, mason work, and build she two houses."

It is her work on the house of calypso, however, for which she will be remembered because it will last forever.

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