 |
|
| ....... |  |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Reading Rohlehr on calypso
WHAT is the state of calypso today?
So asks Gordon Rohlehr in his essay "The State of Calypso" published in the
Twenty-Ninth Anniversary Special of the Trinidad and Tobago Review.
I have referred to what I consider this seminal piece before (on January 22), but looking
back on the particular column I was glad that I had promised to return to it if only
because I find that the excerpts I selected could have given the impression that the good
professor is among those lamenting the decline of the art form.
Nothing, let me tell you, could be further from the truth. Listen to him, for example, on
the music that is the bane of so many of the traditionalists:
PARTY CALYPSOES:
"Party songs, whose function is celebration, are in their impulse just as indigenous
and traditional as any form of calypso. Carnival, so often presented in calypsoes as 'the
culture of Trinidad', could not exist without them and it may well be that these songs,
whose function is to preserve the fervour of the festival, are the life-force without
which the masquerade itself and even the more serious music which resonates at its
periphery or beneath its mask of gaiety, would cease to exist."
Extending the thought further, Rohlehr offers:
"It is not an unexplainable paradox that Black Stalin who in 1985 placed the winer
woman, Dorothy, on permanent hold ('Wait Dorothy') and in 1991 sang the celebratory and
possibly politically escapist hit 'Tonight the Black Man Feeling to Party' and in 1992
portrayed himself as the typical entertainer who is being cajoled by pleading party fans
to 'come with it': that is, to produce another sweet song of celebration like the previous
year's offering..."
So there! But Prof Rohlehr also agrees with some of the concerns raised, for example, the
decline of:
HUMOUR IN CALYPSOES:
"Insofar as humour is concerned, though the tent MCs and the singers are able between
them to engineer considerable humour each year, there are few true-true comic artists in
calypso. Black Prince, Rio, spring to mind; Funny, Relator and Shadow and a sprinkling of
others. Cardinal, Shortpants, Gregory Ballantyne and Brigo, perhaps...."
But he keeps urging us to look at the evidence and not go overboard and claim, for
example, that:
TRUE-TRUE CALYPSO DYING:
"Every year despite complaints to the contrary that the "true true calypso"
is dying-there are scores of socially relevant, inwardly directed songs, that is, which
locate local and parochial issues at their centre; that are concerned with social events,
political commentary or grass-rooted philosophical statement based on lived experience in
this place and time. Many of these calypsoes are unrecorded.
Some of the best of these every year are sung still, for fun or small reward in the little
unofficial competitions throughout the country so it is possible that the true spirit of
the art form might well exist outside of the public glare in these small contests..."
Well, there you are again and as I go at the end of another work-week I want you to
consider this Rohlehrian observation to do with:
WOMEN IN THE PARTIES:
"...One curious factor of these 'command' songs is that the person on the mike, who
in most cases is male, assumes an almost totalitarian power over the movement of female
bodies in the Carnival fete, a fantastic space in which the woman is supposed to enjoy a
festive freedom and empowerment. Liberation from domestic routine seems to involve both
the unmasking of female sexuality for the ancient fertility ritual that Carnival has never
ceased to be, and the herding of women into a collective space where under the illusion of
empowerment they are still moving to the shouted orders of soca men. And just as soca
invites women to unmask their sexuality through the energetic gyration of waist and
buttocks, it also represents the male as predator and voyeur, waiting at the margins of
the fete for the time when he will pit his own rampant sexuality against what he perceives
as the challenge or threat of the revelling Winer Woman..."
Look, I hope I have whetted your appetite enough to interest in reading the entire essay
in the Trinidad and Tobago Review. A mere five dollars will get you what I consider to be
a truly excellent issue (I wept over Lloyd Taylor's tribute to the late Allan Harris, for
example), and if it is no longer available in your book shop you can check it out at that
other Lloyd's (Best, of course) consultancy office at 24 Abercromby Street, Port of Spain.
Really, I don't see how you could be a serious student of, or even merely interested in
what Stalin calls "this kaiso ting" and not read this penetrating and reassuring
assessment.
home || about me || portfolio || resume || photoalbum || comedy || guestbook || bookmarks || trinidad & tobago