Mighty Sparrow, the Trinidad and Tobago singer known as the ‘calypso king of the world’, dies aged 91 — SkimNews
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- Slinger Francisco, known on stage as the Mighty Sparrow, died peacefully surrounded by family in New York on Sunday at age 91 after a "brief illness," according to a family statement.
- The Mighty Sparrow achieved his breakthrough with the 1956 hit "Jean and Dinah" and went on to record hundreds of songs over six decades, including "Both of Them," "Congo Man," "Mr. Walker," and "The Lizard."
- Born in Grand Roy, Grenada in July 1935, Francisco migrated with his parents to Trinidad and Tobago in 1937, where the Mighty Sparrow persona emerged and he later performed at New York's Madison Square Garden.
- Trinidad and Tobago honored him with national awards, and the University of the West Indies conferred an honorary doctor of letters on Francisco in 1987.
- Cultural historian Dr. Rudolph Ottley called Francisco "the supreme entertainer, a cultural revolutionary and one of the world's greatest Calypsonians," while the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians' Organisation hailed him as "a defining voice of our culture."
Why it matters: The death removes what the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians' Organisation called 'a defining voice of our culture' — a calypso ambassador who spent six decades carrying the Trinidad and Tobago-born genre to global stages including Madison Square Garden. For a national cultural institution built around one towering figure, the void he leaves has no obvious successor.
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