Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment had just been con­sid­er­ing rolling back re­stric­tions on the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor when the lat­est COVID-19 cas­es arose, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said on Fri­day night.

Row­ley made the com­ment dur­ing his “Fri­day Night” Lime vir­tu­al event. It was part of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s elec­tion cam­paign out­reach and pre­sent­ed Row­ley in a re­laxed at­mos­phere among young en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor artistes. He even played tas­sa.

Dur­ing the lime, how­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter said Gov­ern­ment was cog­nizant that the en­ter­tain­ment com­mu­ni­ty was af­fect­ed by the COVID re­stric­tions.

“We were rolling back things very care­ful­ly and the next area would have been en­ter­tain­ment. (But) ... we have to wait a lit­tle while but we’re anx­ious to roll it back,” Row­ley said.

He said Gov­ern­ment was cog­nizant that en­ter­tain­ment is a sig­nif­i­cant part of the econ­o­my but the sit­u­a­tion had to pro­ceed care­ful­ly due to the high­ly in­fec­tious na­ture of the virus.

“We want to get you back to work. But as we want to do that, we’re con­trolled by the de­ci­sion mak­ing of the en­vi­ron­ment - whether the virus would flour­ish or would be sup­pressed,” he said.

If the re­cent three con­firmed cas­es turn out to be com­mu­ni­ty spread, Row­ley said T&T would have to look at what hap­pened over­seas. He not­ed what hap­pened in Seoul, Ko­rea, with one per­son be­com­ing in­fect­ed at one night­club.

Asked about his child­hood, Row­ley said his par­ents’ mu­sic was gospel and Ne­gro spir­i­tu­als. He ex­plained to his young hosts what a ra­di­ogram and gramo­phone to play records on was. He said a lot of ca­lyp­so was sold on 45-inch records and long-play­ing records. In the 1960s, he said, there was an ex­plo­sion of soul mu­sic.

“It came from De­troit straight to To­ba­go and we grew up on that from the late 1960s to ear­ly 1980s,” he added.

He re­called the week­ly ra­dio mu­sic count­downs T&T had in those days. He re­count­ed Jim Reeves’ mu­sic and al­so re­lat­ed his en­counter with the mu­sic of his daugh­ters’ gen­er­a­tion.

When it came time for his mo­ment with a small tas­sa group, Row­ley first got a short prac­tice ses­sion with the se­nior mem­ber. He caught on quick­ly and then joined the group in a jam ses­sion, af­ter which he put his hands in the air tri­umphant­ly and said,” I played the tas­sa!”