SUNDAR - The Story Behind the Music

The play SUNDAR is set against the socio-political issues of the thirty-year period of Sundar’s career as a performer. Hence, the Black Power Revolution (1970), the Sugar Workers protest and riot (1975), the death of Dr. Williams (1981) and the continuing contestation and confrontation between Africans and East Indians for cultural space in the landscape, form its background.

The play’s main focus however is the arc of Sundar’s performing career as he blossoms form a Caroni Nightwatchman into an internationally recognized performer. In the play his rise to fame is juxtaposed with events in his personal life in an attempt to demonstrate that many of his songs were derived from real life experiences.

Sundar is portrayed as a tragic hero whose personal neglect in pursuit of a bourgeoning performance career results in his death at age fifty-six. Sundar must be credited for creating a genre of music and for creating the environment for the development of a whole cadre of performers. In the second half of the play the music of Drupatee Ramgoonai, Rikki Jai, Black Stalin and Brother Mavin is featured.

The play ends with Sundar’s funeral and uses Black Stalin’s “Sundar” as the funeral dirge.

The production is a ‘must see’ for all music, culture and theatre lovers.