Who or what is Shadow? To understand Shadow, one must understand obeah. Obeah, this word tied to resistance to enslavement, refers to the use of ancient knowledge and the engaging of the forces of nature to seek freedom. In his five decades of making music, Shadow took those forces of nature – birth, death, chaos, joy – to make the obeah that forces a confrontation of pain, poverty and the fear of blackness. Shadow is the obeah that helped us to survive. The world barely knows the man whose name was Shadow, born Winston McGarland Bailey in Belmont, well known as a centre of obeah as Carnival practice. The world cannot find on a map Les Coteaux, in the hills of Tobago well known as a place of obeah as resistance to enslavement.

In the five decades that Shadow created music, he challenged calypso, returning it always to a world of ancient magic all while urging us to a deeper understanding of humanity and compassion. Shadow’s obeah is part of what explains Peter Doig’s presence in Trinidad. Shadow’s obeah is reflected in the painting, it is in the use of colour and character, the water’s edge, the strange bits of a story coming together and suddenly making sense. It is the deceptive simplicity that engages you in a lifelong initiation into obeah, a magical world at the water’s edge that reveals some new mystery every time you see it again.