The National Cultural Centre came alive on Saturday when some of the best Caribbean vocalists lit up the stage courtesy of King Solomon’s promotions.

The show featured live performances from opening acts Jasmine, Winsome Benjamin and Althea Hewitt all female backup singers for the evening possessed with competent vocal pipes that served as sweet appetizers for show patrons.

Later, a side-splitting skit based on an old joke was put on by a local trio including Linden ‘Jumbie’ Jones and Andre Wiltshire.

The feature performers came forward and did their thing at some points prompting the crowd to dance, clap along and get jiggy with it. One of the bigger and better patrons in the house got into the groove during the night springing the professional and personal photographers into action.

Ken Lazarus made the first appearance with rhythm guitar and along with the Dwight Pinkney band took the patrons back to another era when songs such as “Hail the Man”, “You Gonna Walk”, “Girl” (written by Ernie Smith) and “Cecelia” were chart toppers. The velvet voice of Boris Gardner charmed the audience that incidentally or maybe expectedly was filled with lots of ladies across the ages. Gardner of course had to do his much rated tracks “Let’s Keep It That Way”, “Someone Loves You”, “This Old House”, “I Want to Wake up with You” and “Commanding Wife”.

Ernie Smith the legendary singer songwriter waded into “Pitter Patter”, “One Dream”, “Sonny”, “Duppy Gunman” and “All for Jesus”, which he revealed was written after a night of particularly hard partying, among several others.

It was vintage reggae at its best, inspiring a celebratory mood at the NCC and proving that the ‘King’ may have been correct in selecting the three wise men to provide the soundtrack for ringing in the New Year.

basstone@lycos.com