Calypso Rose

Linda McArtha Monica Sandy-Lewis, known as Calypso Rose, was born on 27 April 1940 in Bethel, a village in Tobago. She was the fourth of thirteen children, and her father was a leader of the Spiritual Shouter Baptists. As a child she struggled with a speech impediment, and she discovered calypso while living with her aunt in Trinidad.

She composed her first calypso at the age of 15, in 1955, after seeing a man steal the show from two women performing on stage. It was the earliest calypso written about gender inequality. When she began performing in the male-dominated calypso tents of Trinidad she used the name Crusoe Kid, before the Mighty Spoiler and fellow tent members gave her the name Calypso Rose.

In 1963 she travelled outside Trinidad and Tobago for the first time, performing across the Caribbean, from Grenada to St Thomas. In St Thomas she won the Calypso King contest with her first recording, 'Cooperation', the first time a woman had received the title. In 1966 she wrote 'Fire in Me Wire', the first calypso to run two years in a row at Trinidad's carnival.

In 1977 she became the first woman to officially win the Trinidad and Tobago Road March, with 'Give More Tempo'. In 1978 she won the Road March again with 'Come Leh We Jam' and also won the national Calypso King title, the first woman to do so, with 'Her Majesty' and 'I Thank Thee'. The competition was renamed the Calypso Monarch in recognition of her victory. She won the Calypso Queen title five years running, from 1974 to 1978.

Rose has written more than 800 songs and made around thirty albums. In 2016 she released Far from Home, which won the World Music Album of the Year at France's Victoires de la Musique in 2017, and she was named Womex Artist of the Year, a first for a Caribbean artist. She holds Trinidad and Tobago's Hummingbird Medal, and her songs have tackled racism, sexism and social injustice. She is often called the Calypso Queen of the World.