“Nobody like him before from whom he copying.
Nobody could sing or compose like Shadow; nobody does think like Shadow”

-Bill Trotman 

Shadow  ( Winston Bailey), October 6, 1941-  

Saluting The Shadow on the occasion of his seventieth birthday anniversary. 

The Shadow is both vernacular philosopher and party leader: he is the  bard who hews closest to Horace’s most durable maxim- that art  must instruct or delight. 

Shadow has a rare ability to instruct and, indeed, to do so in an economy  of words. In Time, one of his many introspective songs, he dwells on the tyranny of the aging process and the inevitability of death, familiar themes

in his repertoire. In Time he sings: 

When it’s time for the next dimension
Time does not allow extension. 

Shadow the performer is the consummate definition of delight; the performing Shadow enters liminal worlds by means of his inimitable “cries”-Ya bay a ya ya way ya ya  ya ya. 

Shadow is the most inventive of our calypsonians; he is the brooding light that illuminates the fringes of our individual and collective anxieties.  He is genius and wholly ghost. 

Long live the Shadow

October 6, 2011

Subject: Shadow "Shadow Columbus Lie"