Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

When Karen As­che sang "They try all kind of trick and jadoo / But he is now the world first black Hin­du"-"he" be­ing the bat­tling Min­is­ter of Works-on Di­manche Gras night, I changed the chan­nel. Of course this, and her Be Care­ful What You Wish For, even­tu­al­ly won the $2 mil­lion prize.This dol­lar amount, and the State's en­dorse­ment, make the song and singer di­rect­ly rel­e­vant to the is­sue of ed­u­ca­tion. And at 24, Ms As­che al­lows a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty for an as­sess­ment of what ed­u­ca­tion in the last decade has pro­duced. (She is al­so a post-UNC "child of Um­bala", but more on this lat­er.) Even with­out this jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, I'm cu­ri­ous to see what a $2 mil­lion ca­lyp­so looks like.

"Wish's" open­ing vers­es are a rhetor­i­cal stag­ing of the main theme, "be care­ful what you wish for," and its ve­hi­cle: mar­riage-lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive. The pri­ma­ry theme of the song then be­gins: "This tiny lit­tle In­di­an girl leave she child fa­ther who she swear was wot­less / Move in with a younger man al­so from Guyana / Hit she more bat than Sar­wan when she feed him chan­na." Then fol­lows "the man...mash in she ba­by skull." The moral: "So why you up­set / you ask for it / you take what you get."

But in­fan­ti­cide is a pre­lude to the heart of the song, and a lead-in to the main theme: "We went and vote the oth­er day / And for the winds of change we stain we fin­ger / But how quick­ly things de­cay / Now an odour strange be­gins to linger." Then a cat­a­logue of the gov­ern­ment's ills-labour trou­bles, Fazeer Mo­hammed's uh, thing, punc­tu­at­ed by the re­frain "Be care­ful what you ask for / Be care­ful what you wish for / Bet­ter the dev­il that you had than the one you did not know", and so on.

First, as po­et­ry, the in­ver­sion of "an odour strange be­gins to linger" to rhyme with "stain we fin­ger" jumps out, as does the string of clich&ea­cute;s ("winds of change," "you ask for it," "bet­ter the dev­il you know" etc). The at­tempts at orig­i­nal phras­ing are clum­sy, ie, "In­di­an girl leave she child fa­ther who she swear was wot­less." Nei­ther does she or­ches­trate the clich&ea­cute;s in­to any kind of poignan­cy or lin­guis­tic or ver­bal clev­er­ness (ie, she can't "make it new").

As per­for­mance (it's on You Tube), As­che's ges­tur­al ac­com­pa­ni­ment com­mu­ni­cat­ed a sense of cor­ro­sive re­sent­ment pos­ing as folk wis­dom, an un­in­ten­tion­al par­o­dy of moral in­dig­na­tion-the broad sweep­ing arm and body move­ments, the par­o­d­ic flour­ish­es and the arch fin­ger-point­ing. Then there's the per­for- mance's wrap­around/wall­pa­per-the man and woman do­ing the lit­tle "skit" in the back­ground -she in a wed­ding dress, him wear­ing a cape and beat­ing her. (OK, I ad­mit, I'm stumped by the cape.)

The ar­gu­ment, or nar­ra­tive con­tent, is sim­ple: a young "In­di­an" "Guyanese" woman left her hus­band for a younger man, al­so "Guyanese," and her ba­by was mur­dered. Then we elect­ed the present gov­ern­ment, which hasn't gone as we thought. Lead-fist­ed al­le­go­ry is one thing, but jux­ta­pos­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­sult­ing in in­fan­ti­cide and elec­tion of the fum­bling Part­ner­ship is old-school pro­pa­gan­da. It's like Nazi movies show­ing im­ages of Jews, then cut­ting to rats. Very pop­u­lar al­so with the Hutus-who called the Tut­sis "cock­roach­es."

So (if you're still not with me) this song can be para­phrased as fol­lows: the elec­tion of the PP Gov­ern­ment and the dis­missal of the PNM is best un­der­stood via im­age and anal­o­gy of vi­o­lence among In­di­an peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly of Guyanaese ori­gin. When the known and le­git­i­mate hus­band (PNM) is left, the young, promis­ing (PP) one turns out to be a child mur­der­er.

But even more re­veal­ing than the text are the la­cu­nae. We hear about the Fazeer Mo­hammed is­sue, the labour move­ment's dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the PP and so on. But we hear noth­ing of the thou­sands of mur­ders, a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors of which were non-Guyanese; the PNM's open "truces" and "sum­mits" with crim­i­nal gangs; thiev­ery on an epic scale; the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of hos­pi­tals, schools, roads, and com­mu­ni­ties -and so on, and so on. (This is what we should have kept, be­cause is the dev­il we know.)

Clear­ly, giv­en its so­cial re­al­ism agen­da (as op­posed to irony, or par­o­dy, or any oth­er genre which ac­com­mo­dates this kind of dis­tor­tion, and "sar­casm" is not a genre, it's a pose) the la­cu­nae, or will­ful blind­ness, is dis­turb­ing. Clear­ly Ms As­che is not a big be­liev­er in, prac­ti­tion­er of, or seems to have any aware­ness of, the crit­i­cal think­ing so as­sid­u­ous­ly pro­mot­ed by the now Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, and the UWI, dur­ing the last decade. As an artist, singer or writer (whether or not she com­posed it, she owns the song) the com­po­si­tion is clich&ea­cute;d, un­o­rig­i­nal, and even its ges­tur­al-per­for­ma­tive ac­com­pa­ni­ment of­fers no in­sight in­to the sit­u­a­tion it ex­am­ines. Its main pur­pose seems to be to equate the PP Gov­ern­ment with an In­do wife-beat­ing child-killer.

I have to won­der, did the judges hear this song? Did they un­der­stand it? Did the louts and touts who swal­low tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to study this stuff (UWI and UTT aca­d­e­mics) even no­tice, far less study, these lyrics and their im­pli­ca­tions? OK, we all know the an­swer here.But there's more: what about the lines "Bet­ter keep your bird in hand / Than pur­sue your heart's de­sire / Be­fore you jump from the fry­ing pan in­to the fire." What does this say about her at­ti­tudes to gen­der? Women's is­sues? Ro­man­tic love?

To be con­tin­ued