Lord Kitchener

Aldwyn Roberts was born on 18 April 1922 in Arima, Trinidad, one of six children of a blacksmith, Stephen, and a housewife, Albertha. His father taught him to play the guitar and encouraged him to sing. He was educated at the Arima Boys Government School until he was 14, when his father died and left him an orphan, and he became a full-time musician.

In 1943 he moved to Port of Spain and joined the Roving Brigade, and was spotted by Johnny Khan, who invited him to perform in his Victory Tent. There he met the calypsonian Growling Tiger, who decided that he should be known as Lord Kitchener. In March 1946 he won his first Road March title with the leggo calypso Jump in the Line. He toured Jamaica in 1947 and 1948 with Lord Beginner and Lord Woodbine, before taking passage to England.

On 21 June 1948 he arrived at Tilbury Docks on the Empire Windrush. Within minutes of stepping off the ship, he was filmed by Pathé News, singing a calypso he had just composed, London Is the Place for Me. The song expressed the hopes of many of the passengers, and has become the soundtrack of Caribbean migration to Britain. He recorded it in 1951 and worked with the record producer Denis Preston at Abbey Road, and within two years was a regular on BBC radio.

Kitchener returned to Trinidad in 1962 and dominated the calypso scene. He won the Road March ten times between 1963 and 1976, more than any other calypsonian, and the Calypso Monarch title in 1975 with Tribute to Spree Simon. His compositions were hugely popular with the steel bands who played them at the annual Panorama, among them Pan in A Minor. In the late 1970s he turned to soca with Sugar Bum Bum, one of the earliest major soca hits.

For about thirty years he ran his own calypso tent, Calypso Revue, nurturing younger artists such as Calypso Rose. He was known as the Grandmaster of Calypso and the Road March King, and shares with Mighty Sparrow the title of the world's best-known calypso singer. He died in Port of Spain on 11 February 2000, aged 77. His former home, Rainorama Palace, is a museum, an auditorium bears his name at the National Academy for Performing Arts, and a street in Arima is named Lord Kitchener Avenue.