Brands must be relevant. Relevance to the “target group” it wants to attract, fall in love with and marry is a mandatory requirement of the brand/human contract. When I was in my late twenty’s, Calypso was made more relevant by a fellow by the name of David Michael Rudder. Chalkdust’s response to Rudder’s coming was that there were too “too much quacks and invalids, the kaiso boat over-crowded”.
Machel has made Calypso more relevant to my children. I can’t document here (there is not enough room in cyberspace) the negative things that have been said about Machel.
I started thinking about this last night at the “We Beat” Vintage Kaiso Show. As expected, given the cast, the crowd looked like a TTARP convention. (I even saw Colin Murray there!) And there’s nothing wrong with people visiting museums to see where we came from. But we must also allow new life forms to breathe and prosper.
