The Catholic News’ Senior Writer Lara Pickford-Gordon interviewed Joseph Vautor-La Placeliere aka ‘The Mighty Lingo’ in October about his entry into the Calypso arena. He also speaks to the perceptions and challenges faced by a blind person.
Fifty-two-year-old Joseph Vautor-La Placeliere was born blind.
His close-knit Barataria family, especially his mother Molly were incredibly supportive in nurturing an independent spirit. Vautor-La Placeliere called his mother “a rock”.
When they went shopping, he went with them and attended children’s parties. “Some blind children are not so fortunate; even when they going cinema, I can’t see anything but most of the times they carrying me,” he said.
He describes his upbringing as “normal as is humanly possible”; at the time there was no internet to research how to raise a blind child. He received support from members of the blind community who shared how they dealt with challenges. “By the time it comes around again, you have the confidence to deal with it,” he stated.
Describing his partially-blind wife, Chanelle as a great cook, he joked that after tasting a dish cooked by someone from the blind community “you might want to put them in house”. “My wife, to me, is one of the best cooks I have ever come across; she always trying something new; if she ain’t poison me, nobody else can,” he said then chuckled. The La Placelieres are the parents of a 12-year-old daughter.
Vautor-La Placeliere is a handcraft worker at the Blind Welfare Association and learned music while attending the School for the Blind in Santa Cruz.
“You had to do something either academics or music, blind sport wasn’t that big at that time, so we used to play the guitar and fool around with all kinds of chord progressions and we used to be singing,” he said.
Vautor-La Placeliere got into entertainment out of boredom. He was visiting friends at the Blind Welfare Association, and they encouraged him to participate in the Blind Welfare Calypso competition. “At that time, everybody was into it, whether you could sing or not.” He was 19 years old and came fourth singing a composition written by Raphael Maule.
He admits lacking the confidence to do Extempo but finally decided to give it a try. He debuted in the Vat19 Anyhowers Extempo competition in 1999 and placed third.
Also in that competition were some well-known names in Extempo today—Lady Africa (Leslie-Ann Bristow) and Black Sage (Phillip Murray). In that year, he was supposed to take part in the prelims of the national Extempo competition but did not because of a death in the family. The following year, 2000, he again entered in the Anyhowers competition and met radio announcer Holly ‘Holly T’ Thomas, who, familiar with him, said: “you gonna buss them up this year!” Vautor-La Placeliere’s response was a confident, “I want to”.
He placed second that year and the winner, Lady Africa, was encouraging of his efforts. He was picked as a reserve in the national Extempo monarch competition 2000.
Through the efforts of Thomas and someone else who preferred to remain anonymous, Vautor-La Placeliere joined the Yangatang Calypso tent with a contract. He was with them for about four years and also performed in Calypso Spektakula, Icons and Klassic Russo Calypso tents.
In 2001, he made the finals of the Extempo Monarch competition. He disclosed that as a competitor, he sometimes felt “stifled” because he was blind. “Everybody thought I deserved to place higher but that wasn’t happening. There were years I was very exceptional, but they still didn’t pick me, people walked out the show and all that,” he explained.
Vautor-La Placeliere told himself whenever he made a final, he was going to go all out because he did not know when this would happen again. In 2007, he was a finalist competing against Black Sage.
“They asked me, ‘when you knew you won?’, from the time they announced the finals…cause I ain’t sure to get back here next year,” he said. Vautor-La Placeliere went on to win three more times 2008, 2009, and 2015 and had a couple “close seconds”.
More blind people have entered the Calypso arena since he began participating. Vautor-La Placeliere said, “I was pleasantly surprised to learn the other artistes, not just in Extempo looked up to me and decide to try their hands”.
How the sighted treat the blind
Blind people in T&T still encounter discrimination and stereotypes and he had no reservations saying, “they treat us like children.”
The remarks from sighted people are both condescending and insulting. He said, “After a certain hour you not supposed to be outside, ‘why you don’t get somebody to help you’; you sitting down in a taxi they asking, ‘if you know where you going?’. Why would I be going if I don’t know where I am going?”. He has been told that as a blind person he should not get married. “Not me alone, I’ve been around blind people all my life,” he said.
Vautor-La Placeliere said people comment about the blind woman who is pregnant that, “the man who do that, he wicked!” And if it is a sighted man with a blind woman, “he taking advantage”. He admits this can happen but not always. “You see a sighted woman with a blind man ‘she only using him for he money, she robbing him,’” Vautor-La Placeliere said.
He recounted seeking a bank loan and being told he had to give power of attorney. “I start to cuss and when the bank manager come and they said [to the manager] ‘if you see how this man was abusive to me’, he says ‘yeah, that is the Mighty Lingo’, all of a sudden they (the employee) change and call me back and say, ‘I never deal with this before’.”
The bank officer offered him the loan without having to hand over power of attorney. She did not know that Vautor-La Placeliere knew his rights and did not have to give power of attorney. He decided to take his business elsewhere.
He said blind persons are in the labour force from banking to law; he gave the example of Marc Terrance Thorne, who was a Deputy Solicitor General. Fr Mikkel Trestrail is the first ordained blind priest in the Archdiocese of Port of Spain.
Vautor-La Placeliere called for collaboration between interest groups representing persons with disabilities (PWDs). “[They] need to be more vigilant with their awareness programmes because the fact that the public is still ignorant towards us tells me these groups are not doing their jobs properly. We need to be better united as disabled people because strength is in numbers”.
He said better legislation is needed to accommodate PWDs. “I don’t know what is the status of the policy for PWDs”. The policy was being reviewed in 2022. Vautor-La Placeliere said PWDs need to be pro-active in how they promote themselves, “how you sell yourself is how the public see you”.