Calypsonian ‘The Original De Fosto Himself’ dies

Winston Scarborough, aka De Fosto, during one of his trademark entertaining performances.

Less than a week af­ter say­ing a fi­nal farewell to Win­ston “Mighty Shad­ow” Bai­ley, the ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty is mourn­ing the death of an­oth­er vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian in Win­ston ‘The Orig­i­nal De Fos­to Him­self’ Scar­bor­ough.
Scar­bor­ough, one of this coun­try’s most pro­lif­ic ca­lyp­so com­posers and en­ter­tain­ers, suf­fered a heart at­tack this morn­ing. He was 64. He had been bat­tling heart dis­ease and was hos­pi­talised sev­er­al times in re­cent months due to the con­di­tion.
De Fos­to’s last pub­lic ap­pear­ance was at the fu­ner­al of fel­low ca­lyp­son­ian Win­ston “Mighty Shad­ow” Bai­ley on Tues­day at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and had even joined oth­er mem­bers of the fra­ter­ni­ty in a mu­si­cal trib­ute at the end of the ser­vice.
De Fos­to was aban­doned as a ba­by and grew up in the Tacarigua Or­phan­age. It was there, very ear­ly on, that his mu­si­cal tal­ents were dis­cov­ered and nur­tured. Even­tu­al­ly, he learned to read and score mu­sic.
He made his pro­fes­sion­al singing début in 1976 with Chicks Come Out to Play and over the years had com­posed and per­formed many pop­u­lar ca­lyp­soes, in­clud­ing ones spe­cial­ly writ­ten for the steel­band. Four Lara Four, co-writ­ten with the late Mer­chant, was played by the 1995 Na­tion­al Panora­ma win­ner, Amo­co Rene­gades.
Oth­er Panora­ma hits writ­ten by De Fos­to in­clude Firestorm and Pan Lamen­ta­tion, which helped Trinidad All Stars win the ti­tles in 2002 and 2007, re­spec­tive­ly and Pan­do­ra and War which helped Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra score back-to-back vic­to­ries in 2003 and 2004.
De­Fos­to nev­er won the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch but came close on more than one oc­ca­sion. In 2000, he placed sec­ond with Pan Forever­more and One More Kitch­en­er and in 2007 with Po­lice Mon­ey. De Fos­to al­so placed third in 2010 with In A Palace State of Mind. Source:  Stabrock News