Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

Lis­ten­ing to the im­pres­sive line-up of the Kaiso House tent last Thurs­day night at the Sa­van­nah, I found my­self wish­ing Body­guard and GB could be there. Then they could both lis­ten to Bun­ny B's Milk, and hear how a skilled lyri­cal tech­ni­cian can hit the brig­ands where it hurts, with­out loutish ref­er­ences to an en­tire re­li­gious and eth­nic group.Milk looked at the nu­tri­tious qual­i­ties of the na­tion­al trea­sury, and their ef­fects on our beloved gov­ern­ment, which seems to be feed­ing fu­ri­ous­ly there­from. Sport­ing a pros­thet­ic gut, Bun­ny B spec­u­lat­ed on the hefty, ro­tund physiques of the min­is­ters. He ob­served that "Mooni­lal fraid to wear tie to work / Cause his neck get so fat he go choke," and how "the PM tell the na­tion we shall rise / But is she who putting on size."There's more, of course, which I can't quote (li­bel, you know).Milk is one of the more mus­cu­lar of­fer­ings, but not the strongest. Com­bin­ing lyrics, de­liv­ery, and sheer force of pres­ence, the best sor­tie of the night came from Mis­ter Shak's Bois, about "all who dance the cal­en­da/With a hid­den agen­da.../ I doh busi­ness with who they are /They get­ting re­al bois" –again, the bet­ter lyrics are a bit, ahem, much to re­peat here. They in­volve politi­cians, ram-goats, tief­ing and in­fi­deli­ty.

The ef­fects of the Bois, though, were in­ter­est­ing to ob­serve on the var­i­ous mem­bers of the Cab­i­net who sat with Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona at the tent on Thurs­day night. Min­is­ters Lin­coln Dou­glas and Prakash Ra­mad­har, and Speak­er Wade Mark sat in the au­di­ence, and for the most part, they took it man­ful­ly. They were no doubt cheered by their Cab­i­net col­league Gyp­sy, wax­ing lyri­cal about fol­low­ing dreams from the stage–yep, Gyp­sy sang. Nonethe­less, the PM would be well-ad­vised to play a video of Bois be­fore every Cab­i­net meet­ing. And the PNM might well buy the rights for the next elec­tion.Pol­i­tics and the gov­ern­ment took up a fair bit of the evening, but there were no­tice­able dif­fer­ences from pre­vi­ous years. Barred from the full-frontal cru­di­ty (to bor­row a term from Prof Rohlehr), most of the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans went the oth­er way, on to high­er ground. The bet­ter ones chan­nelled an­i­mus in­to craft and lyri­cal tech­nique, and were suc­cess­ful in vary­ing de­grees.Karene As­che re­turned to her favourite theme of Jack and Kam­la with her Mal­ice in Won­der­land, sneer­ing cor­ro­sive­ly at the once thick friend­ship now worn thin by the vi­o­lence of pol­i­tics. Kass­man's This is My Par­ty took an equal­ly ran­corous look at a la­dy named Doolar­ie with a big job and a drink­ing prob­lem. The danc­ing girls in yel­low saris were great. One sens­es that Doolar­ie's feel­ings on this might be not so good.

But the tent's ap­peal is that its va­ri­ety goes be­yond statu­to­ry po­lit­i­cal blows. The stan­dard gen­res were es­sayed: black uni­ty, na­tion-build­ing, hu­mour, raunch–and each var­ied from ba­nal to bawdy, to oc­ca­sion­al­ly bril­liant.Through the grass­roots of­fer­ings, ca­lyp­so con­tin­ues to pro­vide an in­ter­est­ing win­dow in­to the mind of its con­stituen­cy–main­ly the black ur­ban un­der­class. Shadrah McIn­tyre opened the show with Dey Doh Know, re­spond­ing to peo­ple who think "we ain't ed­u­cat­ed, and we ain't like we own."Deh Doh Know along with Sis­ter Ava's I Feel Like We Cryin', Mar­vel­lous Mar­va's Black on Black Killing and (Shad­ow's son) Shar­lan Bai­ley's It Won't Done (and a few more), re­capped the ma­jor themes of Tri­ni black pop­ulism–to­geth­er­ness, re­sis­tance, black achieve­ment, what have you. Singing San­dra took the sen­ti­ment transna­tion­al with Madi­ba, a stir­ring trib­ute to Nel­son Man­dela, marred on­ly slight­ly by the "sam­pling" of lyrics from the Li­on King in the open­ing cho­rus.The "black up­lift" genre re­mains (as in pre­vi­ous years) stu­pe­fied at the vi­o­lence in the large­ly black ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties. There was an in­ter­est­ing, self-ex­on­er­at­ing aver­sion of the gaze from the facts of vi­o­lence in­to the tropes of de­spair, pleas for peace, and too-gen­tle self-re­proach. If the vigour of per­cep­tion that ca­lyp­so as a whole brings to ex­am­in­ing the PP's every move could be brought to self-ex­am­i­na­tion of its con­stituen­cy, the grass­roots ca­lyp­so would be every­thing it thinks it is.

There's noth­ing ob­jec­tion­able about be­ing fo­cused on the ur­ban African grass­roots sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion. But it must be record­ed that this is where the con­scious­ness and fo­cus of ca­lyp­so are con­cen­trat­ed, since many peo­ple still be­lieve that ca­lyp­so rep­re­sents the whole coun­try. There are ex­cep­tions: some songs reach out of those lim­i­ta­tions, like the al­ways re­li­able Valenti­no (Re­spect the Icons), who has the gift for mak­ing the inane fresh.The grass­roots songs elid­ed in­to the na­tion-build­ing ca­lyp­soes like Lani K's A Song of Hope, Du­ane O'Con­nor's A Na­tion's Call, Ex­plain­er's On­ly We (can build back the coun­try), which ap­pealed to a crime–and vi­o­lence trau­ma­tised pop­u­la­tion to take charge, and which in­volved a fair amount of off-script preach­ing. The least sat­is­fy­ing songs were com­pe­tent­ly ex­e­cut­ed if ba­nal. O'Con­nor and Bai­ley es­pe­cial­ly are younger singers blessed with pow­er­ful voic­es and stage in­tel­li­gence, which await bet­ter ma­te­r­i­al.Out­side and away from this it was in­ter­est­ing that such hu­mour as there was, once sep­a­rat­ed from the trag­ic po­lit­i­cal and so­cial en­vi­ron­ments, fell flat–as in Al­lan Welch's Soil Tech­ni­cian and Brown Boy's Toi­let Pa­per.

The raunch was un­in­ter­est­ing, with the ex­cep­tion of Spicey's Man in That–a re­sponse to the met­ro­sex­u­al male. Ap­par­ent­ly the new male ad­ven­tur­ous­ness with tight cloth­ing, sex­u­al cu­rios­i­ty, de­pila­tion, and be­ing vo­cal in the midst of the busi­ness, does not find uni­ver­sal favour. It would seem there's a fe­male sub-con­stituen­cy which likes the cave­man thing.And the fi­nal thing worth men­tion­ing about the Kaiso House is its sta­ble of se­nior tal­ent–Roots­man, Valenti­no, Mu­da­da, Pos­er, Ex­plain­er–who present an in­ter­est­ing con­trast with the younger tal­ent, and not a flat­ter­ing one.The old hands are smooth, skil­ful, and ap­peal­ing in a way many of their ju­niors are not. Clear­ly both camps are prod­ucts of dif­fer­ent his­to­ries and so­cial and po­lit­i­cal economies, but the dif­fer­ence and con­trast de­serve much more study than it gets. (If on­ly there were some­one af­ter Rohlehr who could look at ca­lyp­so crit­i­cal­ly and with­out a T-shirt stamped "De­fence!")

And if there's one fig­ure in the tent who de­serves much more than he gets, it's Mu­da­da.

He's known for strong lyrics, which I've ad­mired over the years, and idly won­dered why he nev­er gets much play out­side the tent.His song this year, The Par­lia­ment Tent, is typ­i­cal of his low-key, sub­tle irony (one of the few ca­lyp­so­ni­ans who gets irony). And up­on close ex­am­i­na­tion, his vers­es re­veal much more than is read­i­ly ap­par­ent.Take, for ex­am­ple: "They ent spend­ing a cent/To come to the tent / Is free en­ter­tain­ment / In Par­lia­ment."De­cep­tive­ly sim­ple, un­til you ex­am­ine clos­er–ei­ther four short lines with four end rhymes or two long ones with two end rhymes and two in­ter­nal ones.He does this a lot, and I found my­self lis­ten­ing in awe, as the lines tripped and bounced, pulling you along with them.And as be­guil­ing as the sound tech­nol­o­gy is, equal­ly ac­com­plished is the dis­cur­sive move­ment through the song, which, in one verse, man­ages to link TUB But­ler, Er­rol McLeod, and Pe­ter the Apos­tle.To end where I be­gan, the Kaiso House tent has an im­pres­sive list of virtues–a va­ri­ety of per­form­ers, young­sters, old hands, sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion singers (Shad­ow and Twig­gy's sons are there) over­sexed ladies, vex ladies, eth­nic sol­i­dar­i­ty, tears for the na­tion, jeers for the politi­cians, and bois-men for those who de­serve bois. What more could a ca­lyp­so lover ask?