“Them Grenadians making we hoot, one just come here and he start to shoot, his name is the Mighty Sparrow, the man does sing calypso … I waiting on the judge and jury as soon as they finish with he, ah posting him back in a box mark handle with care ….” Lord Blakie.
Blakie, notwithstanding his biting satirical portrayal of Grenadians, who migrated to Trinidad in droves on the windjammers of the period, nevertheless placed a wall around Sparrow, acknowledging “the man could sing calypso”, and so the need for him to be placed in a “box mark handle with care”.
The above tale of the calypso and the calypsonian is how I have chosen to begin to say something about Slinger Francisco–the Mighty Sparrow, the acknowledged King of Calypso, as he approaches his 90th birthday.
This preliminary adventure into Sparrow and his work reflects on the subject matter of his calypsoes, how he saw the society emerging, the nationalist pathway, the politics, the leaders, his love and belief in “William the Conquerer” and his advice to the detractors of the Premier to “Leave de Damn Doctor”.
No review of the early period of his career can miss his central focus on the man-woman relationship of the period. He responded negatively in many calyposes with fury, self-righteousness and something of a moralist position, while he decorated himself with the “Village Ram” appellation.
But in contradiction of his status, he admitted to Sandra, Rose, Theresa, the Winer Girl from Princes Town having him bazodee. His capacity for pretence at not being unfaithful was headlined in his Lying Excuses, at the same time that he yearned for “Margarita” from “down de Main”.
Sparrow’s Congo Man has been one of his most dramatically presented calypsoes; while that of a completely different nature, the Slave indicates his understanding and feeling for the African replanted in the Caribbean shorn of his cultural roots.
Perhaps in revenge for the British colonial impositions and disregard for humanity outside of their own, Sparrow had fun with “Phillip my Dear” and “London Bridge Falling Down”. He placed responsibility for the latter in what he saw as effectively the erosion of male superiority: “Top men like Trueman and Hutton, Churchill and Horatio Nelson, ever since these gallant heroes are gone, London Bridge is falling down.”
In the critical 1970s and immediately beyond the period, Sparrow sought to unmask the “Good Citizens”, the capitalist system which worked at making the place unlivable for the small man; he even attacked those who wanted to stand in the way of the great West Indian cricketers looking after themselves–incidentally, the latter is one which continues to have life in the contemporary period.
In Uganda, on an assignment, someone there asked me about Sparrow and the songs he sang. I thought I would be provocative and told him about and recited the lyrics of Phillip My Dear, he wanted to have me evicted from that country for repeating Sparrow’s “disgraceful approach to the Queen”. A sense of what colonialism had achieved in creating loyalty amongst its victims.
Going back to the start of his career, the 1950s (and as the reader will notice, this is not a chronological review), one of the first indications of Sparrow becoming a calypsonian who would seek to demolish the lowly status quo into which the calypsonian was placed came a year after he won his first calypso crown in 1956.
In the following year, he made known his position against the lowly status in which the calypsonian was placed: “So I intend to keep my calypso on de shelf; let dey keep de prize in Savannah for dey own self, let de Queen run de show without steelband and calypso if you want to go, you could go up dey, but me ent going no way,” he sang against the organisers of the Jaycees Carnival Queen show.
In so doing, Sparrow planted a stake that the calypsonian and his contribution had to be respected; he not singing for no Icehot and a bottle of Fernandes rum. It should not be left out that Sparrow’s brother calypsonian, Lord Superior, joined him, refusing to sing for “A Brass Crown”.
It was an important start to Sparrow being an influence in the direction where calypso and calypsonians would stretch into the future. “We looking for better conditions; they making false allegations, say what they want, do what they like, Sparrow is one calypsonian strike.”
Sparrow attempted to scrub clean the image and instances of the reality of the calypsonian in the period singing for a bottle of rum and a pat on the back.
And we must never forget Brother Superior (I feel ashamed that we have, I included, not sat down with bards such as Supie to get a full appreciation of what they had to overcome in the “good ole days”. Superior once told me of his embarrassment when he took a foreign guest to the then Lotus Hotel in downtown Port-of-Spain only to see a sign saying, “Dogs and calypsonians not allowed”.
I shall continue with Sparrow’s first major intervention to protect the “Glamour Boys”.
Tony Rakhal-Fraser–freelance journalist, former reporter/current affairs programme host and news director at TTT, programme producer/current affairs director at Radio Trinidad, correspondent for the BBC Caribbean Service and the Associated Press, and graduate of UWI, CARIMAC, Mona, and St Augustine – Institute of International Relations.
