Ratchie: The Determined One

Meindad "Ratchie" Raggie

Meindad ‘Ratchie’ Raggie’s sudden, violent and untimely end last Saturday, apparently by the guns of thieves in the night, sent me on a search of my meagre and disorganised personal ‘calypso archive’ for whatever information was available on his calypso career. Ratchie’s murder is as shocking as that of any other young, talented person, but it confirms that the scant regard for life by a ruthless generation of deviants puts everybody else’s life at risk something as routine as minding your own business; going to work; or as in Ratchie’s case, going home from a hard day’s work.

I did an unforgettable interview with him (‘Age Of Maturity’; Mirror 6/20/2008), with TOT Executive Cecil Charles by his side, during the 2008 calypso season, when he appeared confident enough to see the senior, calypsonians as equals.

I had called Cecil Charles to enquire about Ratchie’s mobile phone number in order to arrange an interview to allow him to share his music story with readers. I liked what I was hearing during his performance in the tent. Emcees were introducing him as the future of calypso because he penned his own songs. That made him a rare species in modern St. Lucian calypso, as song-writing calypsonians here, particularly 24-year old ones like Ratchie at the time were, and are uncommon.

But I had an ulterior motive as well for interviewing Ratchie. My wish was that a story about Ratchie in the paper would energise him further towards his goals in the 2008 season and beyond. What struck me during performances at TOT in the three years leading up to 2008 was his persona on stage. He moved freely but frowned just as much as he delivered lines of feisty social commentary, which the tent emcees would repeatedly remind the audience he wrote himself. I thought that he was on the right track but needed to relax and look like someone who was enjoying his calypso, if he needed to go further.

But after our interview he came across as a person so determined to look inward to achieve success that he was being too hard on himself. His sense of purpose, therefore, would overwhelm his general stage presentation, destroying the harmony between singer and message. Once he was groomed into enjoying the stage and the audience (like Ashanti or Invader), I thought, he would have easily come of age. And he seemed well on his way in 2000, helped by his Groovy Soca song, ‘Crazy for you’, which had the bubble-gum sort of lyrics that brought out the adventurous, fun-loving youngster in him. At least that song brought the audience alive and made the female patrons giggle. I don’t know what happened during his audition for the Groovy Soca Competition. I wasn’t there but gave him a chance. Unfortunately, his name didn’t appear on the list of finalists.

In 2008 Ratchie told me that he would be playing the game of averages, by making himself available for all song competitions. In the end he qualified for none, but that season had a great impact on his ambition to be a singer/songwriter. Shortly after the season ended he was on a related mission to make some kind of compilation CD of his songs, calypso and other genres, which he had written from 1998 while he was a student at the Sir Ira Simmons Secondary, where he was crowned monarch in 1998, having placed third in the National Junior Calypso Competition the year before. He had a consultant, but like most ambitious young entertainers and artistes before him, he found out that the thing called ‘connections’ was the main criteria for raising funds in St. Lucia.

Mine, I must admit, is not always a dependable calypso archive because of the limited timeline of material. My stuff on calypso is in two forms. There is a plastic folder of bits and pieces collected or scribbled during the calypso shows that I’ve been able to cover; and there are a few CD’s containing photo and story files assembled over a broken period dating back to just 1993. I should have had information going further back, as I have been covering calypso since the early 1980’s -- give-and-take time-outs for study and urgent matters. But along the way I didn’t take the time to file stuff or I lost some notes during transition between jobs.

This week, as I tried hard to make any sense of Ratchie’s tragic passing, there was a little positive I can take comfort from: his memory is reminding me of the value of proper record-keeping -- which means record-keeping that is as detailed and orderly as possible. The memorial statement earlier this week from his tent says he joined TOT in 2003, and from then until 2005 he performed the songs he wrote himself. So, I tried checking my bundle of papers and CDs to see whether I had notes or tent programmes stating at least the title of the songs he did at TOT shows until last year. But I had to abandon that paper chase after coming up empty-handed most of the time, except for 2005 when he is listed as doing ‘Killing our future’, ‘Devil’s playground’, and ‘Blame for all’; and 2006 when he sung ‘Ah done wid dat’ and ‘Fireman’; 2006 when he performed ‘Love is an investment’, ‘Coo coo’ and Crazy for you’; and his 2009 pieces ‘The best within’, ‘Look into it’, and ‘One chance’.

Ratchie’s fighting spirit and determination in the calypso arena must be promoted as an example of a means in which young people can advance their personal development through peace and non-violence. He believed that writing competitive songs a key to success. And he was right; songs last for more than a life time and TOT should justify that claim with the tunes that Ratchie wrote.

David Vitalis is the Assistant Editor with the Mirror Newspaper - This article originally appeared in the 29 January 2010 Edition