Calypso Rose Covers Watina and Films Music Video in Hopkins
Legendary musician Calypso Rose arrived in Belize today where she will be shooting a music video for the first single from her new album, Forever Young. The lead single is a cover of the late Andy Palacio’s Watina, itself the lead single from his eponymous album released in 2007. Calypso Rose, who is working with producer Ivan Duran and the Garifuna Collective for a remake of the hit Paranda song, is recording on Stone Tree Records and it is the second album coming out of that partnership. This afternoon, we met up with the famed, eighty-year-old Calypsonian at the Phillip Goldson International Airport where she was greeted by the Garifuna Collective.
Calypso Rose
Calypso Rose, Legendary Calypsonian
“I am very happy to be back here in Belize to do this video because music has requested me to do because this Watina song is so dynamic and the first time I heard Watina with Andy Palacio years ago, it put me in mind like Africa. As you know, I am from Tobago and Tobago is 99.9% Africa. My great grandmother was kidnapped, bought and sold from French Guinea and ended up in Tobago and this Watina and the movement and the dance it puts me in the flame of African slaves.”
Ivan Duran
Ivan Duran, Producer, Stone Tree Records
“I’ve been working with Calypso Rose for a few years, this is our second album together. The first one was Far From Home and this one is called Forever Young and we just finished like a few weeks ago and we’re very happy to have her come to Belize, her second home, as she calls it, and this time to shoot a video clip for the first single of the album which will be Watina. So we’re going today to Hopkins where we’re going to be shooting the video along with the Garifuna Collective and some of the same locations where we recorded the original version of Watina in 2007 and the video, the original video with Andy Palacio and the members of the Garifuna Collective.”
Calypso Rose
“I am so happy to know that I am here and again I am so happy to know that music has requested this song and although we did a lot of tunes from two years ago and because music selected Watina as the number one track from 2020, from 2019 to 2020. So I know with Watina, we are going to bring a next, because when the album released last year, it was released last year May and the thirteenth of September it became gold, and December it became platinum. So Watina will do much better, millions of copies will be sold in the name of Belize with Watina and I am happy to know that I am sitting by the wayside walking along, oh my God.”
Isani Cayetano
“How did the idea come about to have Calypso Rose cover such a standout piece of music?”
Ivan Duran
“Yes, I think you’re right, Watina is a classic and it’s more than just a piece of music, it means a lot for many of us and when we set out to do this new album with Calypso Rose, of course we did her compositions, most of the songs on the album are her compositions, some old, some new and interestingly the idea didn’t come from us to include Watina or to suggest Watina to Rose, it came from our partners in France.”
