In his great work Of Human Bondage, W Somerset Maugham tells of the king who asks his philosophers to explain the meaning of life. They work for a decade to produce a hundred 1,000-page volumes, but the king tells them to shorten it.Ten years later, they cut it to ten volumes. He sends them away again.
A decade later they have a single 1,000-page book, but it's still too long, so, ten years on, they finally return with the meaning of life reduced to a single line comprehensible even for royalty and Wall Street bankers: he was born, he suffered, and he died.Or, as the old blues song affirms: Life is hard. And then you die.
Life isn't designed for happiness. Not with Haiti. Not with Rwanda. Not with the Holocaust. Not with Gaza. Not with the PNM and the UNC. You look at all of that and you know there could not be a God.Certainly not the God imagined by religious folk, to whom you can pray for a winning lotto ticket or good weather for the cricket.But there just might be a fragile God.One who needs us more than we need him.
One who would collapse and vanish if we failed him, not the other way around.That kind of God can't do much for us, apart from love us and put what little hand he can.Though the most powerful multinational organisations on Earth–its organised religions–are founded on the lie, God does not send us prophets or saviours. Instead, the father, in his mercy (and wisdom) sends a little music.And we're better off with the music than the messiah.
The gods, and their messengers, have always let us down. But music never fails us. From the time we have, as a species, tried to find a way forward together, there have walked amongst us a handful of people we could count on to alleviate the suffering.To make it even good for a while.And, in Trinidad, David Rudder walks at their head.
For a full anthropological generation now, David Rudder has brought us music to wash away all our unlovely. With a tirelessness exhausting just to contemplate, he has returned to the fray year-after-year, album-after-album, gig-after-gig-after-gig, offering up better versions of ourselves for us to celebrate.And he's made us dance while doing it.
His musical celebration of his 60th birthday, 6.0, at the Savannah a week from tomorrow, will be the musical event of the year, no doubt, probably of the decade, possibly of the century. The faithful will be assembled en masse and their high priest will be magnificent; the hair on my body stands on end, contemplating the prospect.
For this is what King David brings us in his psalms: a handful of magic moments we can keep, forever, in our upraised palms; a cradle of moments that can carry us all together just a little longer. And allow us to lift up our frail little God to become the Most High.
I cannot hear the opening notes of Calypso Music or Rally without my heart soaring.
From the big hit songs like Bahia Girl and Bacchanal Woman through The Ganges and the Nile to the unnoticed masterpieces like Tuesday Night Lover, Department of Percussive Energy and Once Upon a Time/Exile, in a catalogue of songs written for–meaning "on behalf of"–the Caribbean, David Rudder has recreated the lives and spirit of everyone who's ever lived anywhere, and given his predicament, and his privilege, some thought Frank Sinatra and Aristotle could check David Rudder's groove and nod their heads.
From the Catholic Church, which preferred to protect sex offenders than their victims, to an American vice-president dunce who couldn't spell potato, David Rudder's songs cover the world and constitute a veritable armoury from which he can pull out and put together the weaponry to blow us away. And, in concert–in church–these songs bring us all the closest we will ever get to the best parts of ourselves. This music, is not about rum, poom-poom, leggo or wine down (though they all may come into delightful play in a single chorus).
This music is us. And God.At a David Rudder gig, we gather in the name of the thing the Bible calls "the Word"–because not even God could express that untouchable thing that we, as Trinidadians, as sufferers of the W Somerset Maugham school, as human beings, all plug into when David sings his songs for lonely souls and brings ours together in joy.
I'm not a believer. I see the suffering in the world and know that no God could exist who could put a hand but refuses to lift a finger. But when King David returns to the Savannah, if I'm lucky enough to be there, when those first keyboard notes of Calypso Music (or Madness, or Dus in Dey Face, or Panama or High Mas) rise up, I will not believe.
I will know.That, even though life is hard and then we die, before we give up the ghost we can put up a finger; that, before we die, we live.We declare to the universe that we are here.And we not going home until half-past nine!And to hell with all who don't know where we going, or how we getting there. Give praises. Even if the man who collecting them forget to bring the bucket. Again. Life is hard. And then you die.
But, in the Savannah for David Rudder 6.0, you hold eternity in your upraised hands.And, for that little while, everything is all yours.It could carry you forever.
�2 BC Pires is on a Bajan plantation but is heading for the Big Yard. E-mail your backstage passes to him at bc@caribsurf.com