Kaiso is said to be a Yoruba word meaning "bravo." It comes from the ancient West African tradition of the griot, who combined poetry, recounting of fables, social commentary and music into one form of expression. The earliest record of a kaisonian (or chantuelle in the period lingo) is Gros Jean.
He was a plantation slave in the very early 19th Century in Diego Martin, owned by the powerful and wily Frenchman St Hilaire Begorrat, who had settled in the area during the Cedula of Population of 1783. Begorrat was one of the most fanciful characters of the post-Spanish era, since he was supposed to be a slave smuggler (the slave trade was abolished in 1807), with a hiding place near the North Post, still called Begorrat's Cave.
He was also a confidant of the brutal governor, Sir Thomas Picton. Once, when asked why he kept close to such a man as Begorrat (whose reputation was already known across the West Indies) Picton said, "He knows that I will hang him forthwith if he fails me." Begorrat lived in a large wooden mansion situated atop a mountain overlooking the Diego Martin valley.
The driveway was so steep that a team of horses was kept at ready when visitors' carriages needed extra animals to reach the house. Begorrat, called Le Diable (the devil) by peers and inferiors, was something of a wit. His favourite slave, Gros Jean, had the talent of being a master extemporaneous composer, and could sing in French as well as strum a guitar.
Naturally, Begorrat was a man with many antagonists. When he wanted to inflict embarrassment on any one of them, he would hold a large cocktail or dinner party at his home, which, notwithstanding his reputation, was always attended by the cream of Trinidad's class-conscious society.
Begorrat was a man with many informants in low places, and before the ball would gather sensitive information on the intended victim, relating to sexual indiscretions, debts, family secrets etc. He would pass on these titbits to Gros Jean. On the night of the ball, Begorrat would announce that live entertainment from his chantuelle would be on the cards.
The latter would be summoned, decked out in garish finery, to deliver his patois composition, which would leave little to the imagination, being both risqu� and rife with suggestive lyrics. The victim would be socially disgraced, although not named outright, and all others made aware that Begorrat held their reputations in his hand. The social rumour mill, then as now, had everyone's business "in de road."
Gros Jean died around 1820 and was interred by the grief-stricken Begorrat in his private family cemetery, which was on the corner of what is now Covigne Road and Richardson Street in Diego Martin. The corpse was wrapped in red cloth and the mouth filled with rum before being buried. The formidable Begorrat himself passed quietly many years later, in 1850.
