Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

I can do noth­ing bet­ter than to reprint ex­cerpts of four columns I wrote about Spar­row start­ing 12 years ago, con­tin­u­ing over the last 12 months; be­low are ex­cerpts of the first of such columns.

… “Then it hap­pened: Spar­row’s voice from in the Hall in­ter­vened and car­ried around the Cen­tral Bank au­di­to­ri­um; the work­shop was trans­formed in­to an in­ti­mate ex­pe­ri­ence with Spar­row’s voice in “Mod­el Na­tion”, his In­de­pen­dence song. It was not an ac­ci­dent. Spar­row of­fered his voice to us to re­flect on our en­try in­to, and pas­sage through, the pe­ri­od of In­de­pen­dence, when we are still strug­gling to find our­selves.

“That voice–West In­di­an in its be­ing, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of our­selves, our as­pi­ra­tions, of our tra­vail through the Mid­dle Pas­sage, the Kala Pani, the oceans of Eu­rope and Asia; by our joie de vive, our tri­umphs, our saucy, provoca­tive na­ture, our love for life that was iron­i­cal­ly fash­ioned out of slav­ery, in­fused in in­den­ture­ship and vil­i­fied dur­ing the pe­ri­od of colo­nial­ism.

That icon­ic voice raised at the Cen­tral Bank sig­nalled to the 400-plus per­sons who had come to see Spar­row in the flesh that one of the most sig­nif­i­cant sym­bols (voic­es) of West In­di­an civil­i­sa­tion had re­turned home from his hia­tus in the US.

Im­me­di­ate­ly heed­ing the call of the voice, we stood and did obei­sance; the voice had called us out and re­newed the con­nec­tion be­tween us and Spar­row, our long-lost son. As Pro­fes­sor Rohlehr and oth­ers have demon­strat­ed, King Spar­row stands out in his range of com­po­si­tions and those which have been com­posed for him: the sweet melodies; his taunt­ing and provo­ca­tion; his love-hate re­la­tion­ships with jamettes and bad­johns on the street; his praise and cas­ti­ga­tion of politi­cians; and at times, his deep and un­com­fort­able (for many of us) prob­ing of our so­ci­ety.

This is not a su­per­fi­cial ad­mi­ra­tion for Spar­row’s voice and singing in the tra­di­tion­al sense of tonal qual­i­ty, the abil­i­ty of the singer to reach high and low pitch­es; it is about what Ka­mau Brath­waite, the Bar­ba­di­an po­et, refers to as the “Na­tion Voice”. It goes be­yond ap­pre­ci­a­tion and ac­knowl­edges that there are Caribbean voic­es which are re­flec­tive of us and the civil­i­sa­tion we are part of.

Through his voice, Spar­row has been able to cap­ture and dis­play the sav­agery and sex­u­al avarice of the Con­go Man; but then he turns it plead­ing and lov­ing: “Rose, gyul ah love yuh bad…ah go­ing star­ing mad, oh lard.”

Then the mock­ing tones of the non-con­formist who re­fus­es to sub­mit to a colo­nial ed­u­ca­tion: “How ah get an ed­u­ca­tion, me ent know….”

The Voice in “Jean and Di­nah, Rosi­ta and Clementi­na” seeks to ad­mon­ish and gain ad­van­tage on the “girls in town” who, af­ter a pe­ri­od of pam­per­ing and com­fort­able work­ing con­di­tions, now, “by the sweat of thy brow, thou shall eat bread, no more ho­tel to rest they head.”

Spar­row’s West In­di­an voice is loud and pained by the fail­ure of the Fed­er­a­tion; the lost op­por­tu­ni­ty for a re­gion­al na­tion­hood to cre­ate anew from the shred­ding ex­pe­ri­ences of British, French, Dutch, Amer­i­can and Span­ish usurpa­tion of an iden­ti­ty.

Then there is the voice of tri­umphal­ism of West In­di­an so­ci­ety in Sir Garfield Sobers, this “hand­some Bar­ba­di­an lad who re­al­ly knows his job, bat­ting or bowl­ing, he is the crick­et king….” Lis­ten not so much to the lyrics but to the na­tive voice of tri­umph of a civil­i­sa­tion over­com­ing the “mas­ter civil­i­sa­tion” at its own game.

The mock­ery of the tones, the vic­ar­i­ous iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with Mr Fa­gan who reached in­side the British citadel to take re­venge: “this im­moral scoundrel, son of a com­mon scoundrel, speared me through and through.”

I once played for and ex­posed this gold­en piece of mock­ing in ca­lyp­so (Phillip, My Dear) to a few Ugan­dan col­leagues, where I was cov­er­ing a Com­mon­wealth Sum­mit. They were hor­ri­fied by the sub­jec­tion of the Queen, their Queen, to such vul­gar in­de­cen­cy. They could not lis­ten to the pained and cel­e­bra­to­ry voice of the West In­di­an ca­lyp­son­ian seek­ing jus­tice for the bru­tal sav­agery foist­ed up­on gen­er­a­tions of African women turned in­to slaves, and to ful­fil the de­sires of plan­ta­tion own­ers. In Lon­don Bridge is Falling Down, Spar­row’s mock­ing voice takes re­venge on the once colonis­ing force of the “Mighty Eng­land”.

Spar­row is ab­solute­ly alone in the abil­i­ty to use his voice to cap­ture and re­flect so much about us as a peo­ple in all of our mad­den­ing va­ri­eties, and the pulling and tug­ging in which we en­gage. He nev­er fails to amaze with his ca­pac­i­ty for lan­guage: French, Span­ish, the rich Pa­tois/Cre­ole of our an­ces­tors and African and In­di­an lan­guage ex­pres­sions, and of course the lan­guage of the street: “Spar­row Dead! Is de woman he fool up in BG, is she who wuk obeah on he…is de Dev­il who take he soul for ca­lyp­so … Spar­row Dead. Big bel­ly Ang­ie … she ban she bel­ly telling every­body, Spar­row Dead.”

Every song and per­sona, every nu­ance of feel­ing cap­tured and pre­served in the record­ings of his voice, he has left us. Con­tin­ued in Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er, free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme pro­duc­er, and news di­rec­tor at TTT; pro­gramme pro­duc­er, cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, for­mer cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice, writer for the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona in Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, and from the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, UWI, St Au­gus­tine.