SAN­DRA L BLOOD

Mindup.slblood@gmail.com

The word Stal­in de­rives from the Russ­ian word for a ‘man of steel’ (stal), and black, all artists or colour spe­cial­ists are aware, is the most pow­er­ful, and strength­ens every colour un­der the sun. The late hand­some­ly-recog­nised ca­lyp­son­ian for­mer lim­bo dancer, that hailed from south Trinidad, Black Stal­in (Leroy Cal­liste), was the epit­o­me of both.

With an ex­pect­ed ocean of trib­utes flow­ing through Trinidad es­pe­cial­ly his home­town, one of the in­di­vid­u­als who is reel­ing un­der his pass­ing but is stand­ing strong from her mu­si­cal re­la­tion­ship with him for decades in the ca­pac­i­ty of duet and back­ground vo­cal­ist, La­dy Adan­na, has mus­tered the strength to dis­sect one of the favourites of all times, Black Man Feel­ing to Par­ty, as mem­o­ries sur­face from re­hearsals and per­for­mances.

“The pass­ing of the leg­endary Leroy Cal­liste stage named Black Stal­in is a cul­tur­al loss to Trinidad and To­ba­go; one that I am cer­tain will be wide­ly and deeply felt as he has im­pact­ed many lives. And while we mourn his phys­i­cal pass­ing, his mu­sic, how­ev­er, will live on in our hearts and minds for years to come. Be­ing one of those per­sons touched by his mu­sic, I de­cid­ed to take a look at one of his many great songs of which I was a part of pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Black­man Feel­ing to Par­ty, just to re­mind us all of his ge­nius, and to com­mem­o­rate a great artist.

“Ac­cord­ing to ca­lyp­so his­to­ri­an Er­rol Hill, a great ca­lyp­so should ef­fect some sort of trans­for­ma­tion in its lis­ten­ers, and the mu­si­cal style should en­rich the po­et­ics by mak­ing it more en­tic­ing. And with Black­man Feel­ing to Par­ty you get that ide­al bal­ance, wrapped in irony. You see, al­though the rhythm con­jures up a fes­tive mood, the song can be viewed as a so­ci­o­log­i­cal ed­i­to­r­i­al about male and fe­male re­la­tion­ships and fam­i­ly life. Stal­in, by nor­mal­is­ing mar­i­tal ro­mance in his ca­lyp­so, changed the ex­ist­ing norm and in­tro­duced a new male-fe­male dy­nam­ic. In the ca­lyp­so, Stal­in chal­lenged the very mas­cu­line no­tion that a man should be hav­ing fun with an out­side woman.

“Stal­in sings about tak­ing his wife out for the date, at a time when par­ty mu­sic favoured a Stranger in the Night sto­ry­line. He makes a com­pelling case for his need for both his plea­sure, and his wife’s, al­so. He es­tab­lish­es the role of the woman, sug­gest­ing that she over­sees tak­ing care of the chores and is re­spon­si­ble for tak­ing care of the chil­dren, but they both should leave the house to go out to par­ty to­geth­er. This is not a pity date ei­ther; his in­ten­tions are made ap­par­ent in the cho­rus when he tells her to put on some­thing sexy. He ar­tic­u­lates that it is time to cel­e­brate, jam, boo­gie, and wine; all while em­brac­ing his love and ado­ra­tion for his wife un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly.

“With this Ca­lyp­so, Stal­in as­sures men that it is ac­cept­able to have ro­mance, dance with, and wine and jam with their wives. With phras­es like hang on to yuh woman and tell yuh woman yuh love she. Black­man Feel­ing to Par­ty is both a ca­lyp­so love song and a so­cial com­men­tary ca­lyp­so. In his win­ning per­for­mance from 1991, he con­fess­es in the fourth verse that it is the woman’s sup­port that makes him great, ac­knowl­edg­ing that she is the source of his courage, and that she is the mo­ti­va­tion be­hind his pro­fes­sion­al achieve­ment. In this way, Stal­in ad­vis­es men to love, re­spect, and take care of their women. That is one of the things that sticks out most in his live per­for­mance of this clas­sic song.

La­dy Adan­na said, not on­ly does she clear­ly re­mem­ber singing duets with the Black man, but he told her to nev­er stop singing. She al­so re­mem­bers singing back­ground vo­cals for him, and the fer­vour he brought to the stage from the be­gin­ning of Black­man Feel­ing to Par­ty, was re­mark­able.

“Dur­ing his per­for­mance, I dis­tinct­ly re­call him say­ing to us, the cho­rus singers, to be qui­et as he turned his mi­cro­phone to the au­di­ence who with­out be­ing prompt­ed, re­peat­ed every word in the cho­rus as if in a trance-like state. Added to that, he used the rhythm to cre­ate a mood of lib­er­a­tion which nor­mal­izes hav­ing fun with the wife. It is no won­der that this song has main­tained a lev­el of dom­i­nance in the Ca­lyp­so genre since it was first per­formed more than thir­ty years ago and has been ac­claimed as a clas­sic by many. It is plau­si­ble that this ca­lyp­so, Black­man Feel­ing to Par­ty, earned the rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing a clas­sic and clas­si­cal ca­lyp­so not on­ly be­cause of the vo­cal and mu­si­cal style, but al­so be­cause of Stal­in’s han­dling of the top­ic. These char­ac­ter­is­tics have made Black­man Feel­ing to Par­ty time­ly and time­less. It is a mes­sage we still need to hear. Thank you, Black Man. Sail on to the ce­les­tial shore. You have gone from work to re­ward. Rest in Pow­er!”