On stage at Calypso Revue Tent, Lady Tallish sings: “ Every child that is born/Has purpose under the sun/It is the Master's plan /Procreation .”

Hers is one calypso with a strong message this year. She looks at ease on stage at Calypso Revue, allowing the power of the words to speak for itself. She does not become overly passionate and that, perhaps, is the strength of her performance.

Off stage, she is demure and believes every word of her calypso. Her purpose under the sun is doing what she is doing this year – singing out in support of life and against abortion in the way she is doing it – through the medium of calypso.

She admits that the first verse is in part her own story. At 19, she was pregnant and unmarried. Some people were encouraging her to have an abortion. Her parents were surprised but supported her, and she decided to have her baby.

Some two years later, she got married and now has six children. She beams every time she announces this. She names them and gives their ages: Shanelle , 13 years, Shakhail, ten years, Nahailiya , seven years, Shanaqua , six years, Aaliyali , four years and Nassar , two years.

Francelia Adams-Jackson, aka Lady Tallish

She recalls that she graduated from Pleasantville Senior Comprehensive School as the Best All-Round Student.

Her calypsonian father (Calypso Tallish) brought home magazines with the lyrics of calypsoes every year. She fell in love with those magazines.

“I used to get lost in those books, I used to study the structure of the verses and chorus,” she says. “I never knew why until now.”

She grew up in a Catholic family and admits that at one time she wanted to be a nun. She recalls that when her grandfather died she was very angry with God. When she got married and her husband invited her to go to church she told him she did not want to hear about God.

Some time later, she was “slain in the spirit” and that was her turning point. As a guitar player she used to compose songs and always found herself composing calypsoes, although she did not at the time want to hear anything about calypso.

Eventually she told God, “I am going to submit to you. If that is what you want me to do, you have to open some doors for me.”

The doors were opened and her calypso made it to the finals of the Gospel Song Festival, the first calypso to ever do so.

She took a break from singing while she took care of her children.

When she wrote this song last year, she used the names of her children. Her father advised her to use names that listeners could relate to and which would give some international appeal to the song.

So, she exchanged her children's names for Kitchener, Spree Simon, Ras Shorty I, Sparrow, Dr Williams, Cipriani, Butler , Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Mandela AND Gandhi. So she sings: “ If Mandela was aborted, if Gandhi was aborted/who would have fought for their people to be free?”

She has heard her friends half-teasing each other, saying “Boy, if you was aborted what we would ah do?”

But her greatest satisfaction came from a programme on Gayelle TV, when a young woman called in saying that two of her friends were pregnant and were planning to abort, but that on hearing the calypso Procreation she was going to advise her friends not to do so.

Lady tallish's children are proud of her and are always singing the calypso. Her husband Garvin and father, Calypso Tallish, accompany her to the calypso tent most nights. They were both there when I interviewed her at the Revue two Fridays ago.

Lady Tallish, Francelia Adams-Jackson, is anxious to send her message out. She is ecstatic about the work being done by the Emmanuel Community and is full of praise and admiration for Violet D'Ornellas , with whom she has spoken.

She has not made it to the final round of any of the competitions but is not fazed by this.

“I have now started and I have to pay my dues,” she says. Just getting past an audition for the tent was enough for her. She also does not judge any of the calypsoes that other calypsonians are singing.

“That person that you are judging may turn around tomorrow by you being a good light to them,” she says.