Miami Herald - Friday, October 04, 2002
Jacqueline Charles, jcharles@herald.com

"Rupee. . .Why have you decided to get involved in the battle against AIDS, and, secondly, what would probably be your most important message to young people?" the female caller asks.

Soca fans listening to Rupee's new CD, Leave a Message, never get to hear a response from the six-foot two-inch, twentysomething Barbadian heartthrob who will be featured at Miami Carnival festivities including dates at the Coconut Grove Convention Center Oct. 11-12 and the Official Miami Carnival Party at Billboard Live Oct. 12.

For that, you have to catch Rupee, a k a Rupert Clarke, offstage.

That's when he tells you there is a mission in his music, whose "happy, festive sounds" have female fans 'winin' " their waistlines on dancehall floors. That's when he candidly tells you about his personal tragedy with AIDS, the epidemic that is ravaging the Caribbean and Barbados, his father's birthplace and the land he calls home.

"I remember a couple of years ago, being at home in Barbados going about my everyday life. You would hear about AIDS on TV and read about it in the newspaper. You would hear people talk about it, and they would attach this stigma to it, that it's a homosexual disease.

Then I had one of the most traumatizing things happen to me," Rupee says, recalling the day his life changed.

It was his final year in high school, and his mother, who after years of silent suffering with the disease, revealed she was HIV-positive. She had gotten it from his father, who also was infected but "somewhat in denial."

"Knowing that your mother is going to die is such an unfortunate situation for a human being," says the German-born singer who moved to Barbados as a teenager with his brothers and German mother.

'My mother eventually did die and that was like 'Whoa.' That was almost it for me," he continues. "I lost the will to do everything. I had to seek therapy. I couldn't drive or do what I was normally accustomed to doing on a physical and mental level. It almost destroyed me."

All of this is what has lead Rupee, who doesn't have the disease, to use his stature as one of the most popular up-and-coming soca artists to champion a not-so-sexy subject in a very sexy venue.

Second only to sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean is the region hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic, which has killed more than 20 million people worldwide, according to the the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

And in Barbados, where government officials and AIDS activists are in a race against ignorance, Rupee is lending his voice to the cause. He is among several Barbadian athletes, artists and entertainers who have been tapped to champion AIDS education among young people.

"We've heard of Magic Johnson and Arthur Ashe, but they are outside of Barbados," says Alies Jordan, director of Barbados' National HIV/AIDS Commission. "We need to understand the experiences of persons in Barbados, those infected by this disease and affected."

Rupee, she says, brings that perspective.

He also brings the experiences of many families affected by the disease -- those who shroud the truth with a veil of secrecy.

"Being that there was a serious amount of ignorance, we had to keep it to ourselves," Rupee explains. 'People are asking questions, you can't tell them the truth because Barbados is so small.

Unfortunately there is so much ignorance, that some will say 'Your father was a homosexual,' or you got AIDS too. I had to play the denial role, the cover-up role."

No longer willing to cover up, Rupee has taken his message on the road, reaching out to fans through regular radio interviews with DJs, like Giselle, "The Wassi One," of 96.1 FM, a local pirate radio station that includes soca programming.

"He's using his leverage in a positive way," Giselle said at a recent pre-carnival warm-up concert in Oakland Park, where Rupee performed.

With his hit songs, Jump and Blame It On The Music still making the rounds on soca charts -- and airwaves -- Giselle says the multifaceted performer is not only poised to take soca to the mainstream, but also to have his message about AIDS heard by a larger audience.

"I call him the Soca Messiah," she says. "He's so real."

Rupee, who regularly gives thanks to the Almighty in performances and in interviews, is flattered by the label. But, he says, he hopes that when fans see him, they know there is a "message behind the music."

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