He­len Dray­ton

Cute dim­ples ac­cen­tu­ate a ras­cal-like smile, and when he gets on stage the au­di­ence ex­pects an amus­ing jour­ney in vin­tage kaiso. He mim­ics the sounds of wild Africa, chuck­les mis­chie­vous­ly, lifts up one side of his jack­et and puts down a wicked wine. Back­ground mu­sic pumps, and then:

"Who­day Who­day.../Dis is a sto­ry ladies and gen­tle­men about two love­ly white women/ trav­el­ling all de way to Africa/Found them­selves deep in the heart of the Balu­ba in de Con­go/in de hands of my big broth­er Um­ba/... He cook up one, he eat one raw/Dey taste so good he want­ed more, more!...I en­vy de Con­go man/I wish it was me ah want to shake he hand/He eat un­til he stom­ach up­set and I/Nev­er eat ah white meat yet."

And he could still sing that ca­lyp­so the way he did in 1965, but back then it had a dif­fer­ent mean­ing to dis­cern­ing lis­ten­ers. The Con­go Man is the epit­o­me of dou­ble-en­ten­dre–a satir­i­cal dig at the su­pe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex of the mas­ters of colo­nial­ism and slav­ery. Gen­er­al­ly, the words are tak­en lit­er­al­ly, but it sym­bol­is­es re­venge and pow­er. It is full of commess.

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