Deb­bie Ja­cob

Cre­ative­ly speak­ing, the worst thing to hap­pen to ca­lyp­so is gov­ern­ment-spon­sored Car­ni­val ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions. Any time I make this state­ment, peo­ple ar­gue with me as though I have said some­thing sac­ri­le­gious, oxy­moron­ic as that seems. But it's true, and I have known this ever since I read a book en­ti­tled Chang­ing the World: A Frame­work for the Study of Cre­ativ­i­ty writ­ten by David Hen­ry Feld­man, Mi­haly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi and Howard Gard­ner.

For the au­thors, cre­ativ­i­ty meant "the achieve­ment of some­thing re­mark­able and new, some­thing which trans­forms and changes a field of en­deav­our in a sig­nif­i­cant way." They con­clud­ed that true cre­ativ­i­ty stems from in­trin­sic mo­ti­va­tion–the need to pro­duce for its own sake rather than some ex­ter­nal re­ward, is as­so­ci­at­ed more with cre­ative in­di­vid­u­als, and that in­tel­li­gence and ed­u­ca­tion were on­ly "mod­est­ly" re­lat­ed to re­al cre­ativ­i­ty.

Psy­chol­o­gists study­ing cre­ativ­i­ty re­alised that cer­tain so­cial and his­tor­i­cal con­di­tions sup­port an en­vi­ron­ment for cre­ativ­i­ty. In­jus­tice, for ex­am­ple, in­spires cre­ativ­i­ty. That is how we get the Ma­hat­ma Gand­his, Mar­tin Luther Kings, Vic­tor Hu­gos and the Charles Dick­ens­es of this world. The au­thors al­so note the feel­ing among most cre­ative peo­ple that they are mar­gin­alised from so­ci­ety.

They see them­selves on the pe­riph­ery of so­ci­ety–on the out­side look­ing in–and they want to ef­fect some type of change. Feel­ings of mar­gin­al­i­ty re­sult in cre­ative peo­ple want­i­ng to prove them­selves. They want so­ci­ety to know they have worth and their ideas have worth. Cre­ativ­i­ty can­not take place if an in­di­vid­ual is in har­mo­ny with his en­vi­ron­ment.

There must be dis­cord some­where in one of three realms: the fam­i­ly, the so­ci­ety, or the cul­ture where the so­ci­ety re­flects so­cial net­works and the cul­ture rep­re­sents be­lief sys­tems. A brief ex­am­i­na­tion of mile­stones in ca­lyp­so mu­sic seem to sup­port this the­o­ry of dishar­mo­ny in one of three realms as well as the no­tion that true cre­ativ­i­ty can on­ly come from peo­ple who have an in­ner de­sire to cre­ate change.

Piles of mon­ey of­fered as prizes can­not in­spire cre­ativ­i­ty. In­stead, prize mon­ey seems to do the op­po­site. It sup­ports mun­dane mu­sic that falls with­in a cer­tain ac­cept­able realm so that it is el­i­gi­ble to win those prizes. When I think about how this re­search on cre­ativ­i­ty re­lates to ca­lyp­so, I think of these ca­lyp­so­ni­ans:

1. The Mighty Spar­row. Spar­row's up­tem­po ca­lyp­soes ush­ered in the mod­ern age of ca­lyp­so as well as the mod­ern age of ca­lyp­so per­for­mance with his Jean and Di­nah. His wild stage per­sona chal­lenged the mores of so­ci­ety, the British mod­el of prop­er be­hav­iour. Spar­row was a rebel mu­si­cal­ly and so­cial­ly who qual­i­fies as a ground-break­ing, cre­ative per­former. Most of Spar­row's ca­reer has been ded­i­cat­ed to fight­ing the sta­tus quo.

His an­ti-colo­nial stand evolved in­to his an­ti-Gov­ern­ment stand which was voiced through his mu­sic. When Spar­row fought for bet­ter prize mon­ey for ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, it was a no­ble cause.

2. Lord Shorty. Twice in his ca­reer, Lord Shorty re-de­fined ca­lyp­so mu­sic. He crossed cul­tur­al and so­cial bound­aries by blend­ing In­di­an and African rhythms with Om Shan­ti Om, and he ush­ered in the so­ca age along with Mae­stro and Shad­ow.

Lat­er in his ca­reer, as Ras Shorty I, he fused re­li­gion with so­ca to cre­ate Jah­moo mu­sic with clas­sics like Watch Out My Chil­dren.

3. Shad­ow. Shad­ow's scin­til­lat­ing bass lines, first de­fined by his Bass­man, helped to de­fine the dri­ve and rhythm of so­ca mu­sic in its in­fant stages.

No ca­lyp­son­ian was ever so un­der-ap­pre­ci­at­ed for his orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion to mu­sic. Ca­lyp­so judges re­fused to give him the ca­lyp­so monarch crown that he de­served in his ear­ly ca­reer. Shad­ow is a vivid ex­am­ple of a tal­ent­ed singer who chal­lenged what was mu­si­cal­ly ac­cept­able. For most of his ca­reer, Shad­ow was a mu­si­cal rebel on the out­side look­ing in.

4. Lord Kitch­en­er. In many ways, Kitch­en­er har­nessed the cre­ative en­er­gy of pan and so­ci­ety's bad boys to make a mu­si­cal state­ment that earned him a place as the all-time road march king.

5. Blue Boy. Austin Lyons was an­oth­er per­former on the pe­riph­ery of so­ci­ety who bat­tled his way to the top, mu­si­cal­ly speak­ing, by syn­the­sis­ing and pop­u­lar­is­ing Bap­tist rhythms used through­out ca­lyp­so's his­to­ry. As an un­known fish­er­man from Point Fortin, Blue Boy tried and failed to get in­to a ca­lyp­so tent un­til Shad­ow recog­nised his tal­ent and took him in­to the Mas­ter's Den in 1980 to sing So­ca Bap­tist. He rev­o­lu­tioned so­ca once again a decade lat­er with Get Some­thing and Wave.

6. David Rud­der blurred Car­ni­val cul­tur­al bound­aries by step­ping out of the fete zone and en­ter­ing the tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so realm with his as His Bap­tist-in­fused Bahia Gyul and trib­ute to the late Rudolph Charles in 1986. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ad­vo­cat­ing the sing-for-a-bot­tle-of-rum days of ca­lyp­so. Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans should be well-paid. The prob­lem comes when the point of mu­sic is win­ning a con­test.

Yes, ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion is a na­tion­al tra­di­tion, but it just might have kept ca­lyp­so mu­sic from reach­ing the heights of oth­er mu­sic like reg­gae. Worse yet is hav­ing a ca­lyp­so con­test spon­sored by the Gov­ern­ment. This lim­its cre­ativ­i­ty.

�2 Next week: Three so­ca singers who could be on the verge of re­al cre­ativ­i­ty.