“I love the art form and if I can encourage anybody to that end, I would do so. Like I said, my songs are clean. I speak the truth. Some calypsonians go around and slander people. I don’t believe in that. At the same time, calypso is calypso, but I believe in singing the truth. The truth must be heard. I am the voice of the voiceless.”
Those were the words of Calypsonian Jerome Vanterpool whose stage name is “Ranger”. He was at the time speaking, with The Anguillian on Friday, June 19, just minutes before releasing – on Upbeat Radio – his first song for the upcoming Calypso Competition of the Anguilla Summer Festival. That song is entitled “Awake Your Sleeping Conscience”.
“Why did you choose such a title?”
“Well, as you know in our world today, there are so many problems that people are going through and you wonder why some of them do strange things.”
“Strange things like what?”
“Like the guy who walked into a church and shot down nine black people. Now, if you have a conscience what would lead you to do that? God has given all of us a conscience to be our guide. So I wrote on the topic of conscience because I feel that it is time we recognise who we are; whose we are; and that we should let our conscience be our guide at all times.”
He did not end there. “The other day I learnt of a young lady who gave birth after nine months and then just dumped the child in a garbage-pan”, he shook his head. “Do you think any woman who has a conscience would do something like that?”
Ranger is both a religious and secular singer – singing Gospel, reggae and soul – as his favourite genres. “As I said, I am the voice of the people. I am a messenger,” he stressed when asked how he would describe himself. “These are serious times. People are hurting. People need to come out and sing songs that are edifying and give others hope. So I am the voice of the voiceless.”
Ranger is the first calypsonian in Anguilla to release a song so early with the competition still some time away. “I am a person who doesn’t like to be late,” he stated. “Whatever I do, I try to do it early so that people have a chance to listen carefully to what you are saying. Some people release early, some release late, but I think if you do so early, you have a better chance to be heard.”
“So you will be taking part in the Summer Festival Calypso Competition?”
“Hopefully yes,” Ranger laughed. “I get tremendous support from my fans. As a matter of fact when I told some people I wasn’t going to enter the competition, they went on very bad”.
He looked at his watch. His time for the newspaper interview up, he headed off to Upbeat Radio to release his song “Awake Your Sleeping Conscience”.
Originally from St. Kitts, Ranger won the road-march tune “way back in St Kitts” and was also Calypso King there. He was crowned Calypso King of Anguilla in 2013. How he will perform in the Anguilla Summer Festival this time is anybody’s guess.
