FRANCO REGGAE FROM
A TRINI
By Joan Rampersad
Express
April 13, 2000
Page 30
Lennox Lindsay left Trinidad in 1974 on a French Government
scholarship to study in Lyons, France.
"It was just by chance that I had applied for that because after my
A-Levels at St Mary's College, I had intended to go by my aunt in Boston to
study occupational therapy and just by chance I happened to see in the
newspaper, the French Government offering scholarships to Trinidadian students
who were interested in it, so I applied."
So
at 19 he went, agreeing to come back to Trinidad to work for three years with
the government, either as a teacher or in a relevant ministry.
After
four years, Lindsay got his Bachelor's and Master of Arts degrees in French
Language and Literature.
"I
got married at 22, very young, to a French lady whose mother is from West
Africa. Then upon my returning with my
wife, Gisele, in 1978 as per contract, I was sent to teach in San Fernando
Government Secondary then transferred to Fatima College, ending the three years
stint at St Mary's College, my alma mater."
He
went to the Ministry of External Affairs as a Foreign Service Officer then,
after a year, he decided to go back to France.
"While
I was at school here I always took part in calypso contests, singing in the
choir and generally participated in cultural activities. I always had this knack for being on
shows. I liked to be on the
stage."
He
had a Martiniquan friend, Jackson, who was part of this first reggae band in
Lyons.
"I
was there at one of the concerts where he was performing and I was so amazed
with what he had done. That's when I
told myself that I would love to do this too and that's where the inspiration
to start my own group and get on a stage came from."
At
the same time in Lyons back in 1981, reggae music was extremely popular in
Europe and even more so with Bob Marley's death.
Only
a ear before, 80,000 patrons had turned up for a Marley concert in Lyons.
Lindsay
recalled, "the kids were wild over the music. I really loved reggae too so I decided to get into the DJ thing,
hosting reggae programmes on a station called Radio Lyons, I also deejayed at
stations Sky Rock and Scoop. Although I
did some soca, I mostly did reggae because that was the in-thing. I moved from deejaying to organising sound
systems for reggae parties."
Lindsay
began performing to paying audiences, but still had to go back into teaching
because that was his job with the French government.
He
taught English in French schools and French in English schools.
"The
group Lion dread saw me as the only black among excellent French musicians who
were really into reggae, so our music sounded pretty authentic.
"We
had a lot of success in Lyons and were well known regionally so we were billed
to perform at many shows all over France and then we decided to go a little
further. We wanted to have a record and
get it out with a good record deal but we had to go to Paris."
It
wasn't easy to get a contract, and they soon disbanded.
Lindsay
went on his own, working with various musicians, and has been doing so since
1989.
All
that time he remained a teacher, "This is my livelihood."
Most
of Lindsay's music is reggae because "as an artiste, reggae is the music
that I really feel inspires me, but I do some soca songs and I intend, in my
next album to put down a few soca songs."
Techno
soca is what he calls it.
When
his wife, a diplomat, was posted to Burkina Faso in Africa, he started a group
there, until they were posted to Washington DC, where they have been for the
past four years.
"It's
only this year, I just got fed up of working so much and not doing what I
really liked which is music, that I decided to produce this C'est La Vie CD on
my own."
The
four-track CD has the influences of French, American and Caribbean musicians
and rhythms, which Lindsay has vowed to get on the market here in T&T and
soon in France.
That's
the main reason for his visit home.
C'est la vie!