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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Bewildering imagination in kaiso

‘I tell you my name–Spoiler’

by

Tony Rakhal Fraser
615 days ago
20231027
Tony Rakhal-Fraser

Tony Rakhal-Fraser

In this Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month, let’s take a trip back to re­mem­ber to ex­pose and ex­pe­ri­ence the ge­nius of Theophilus Phillip, the Mighty Spoil­er (1924-1960). He was with­out ques­tion, the ca­lyp­son­ian with the deep­est imag­i­na­tion of re­al­i­ty, that which was vis­i­ble and that not yet thought about. He in­vest­ed it all with hu­mour, at times eas­i­ly laugh­able; and then it struck imag­in­ings and won­der­ings.  

A “Mag­is­trate Try­ing Him­self” in a coun­try dis­trict “where he is the on­ly one there to try it: “Your ho­n­our is it true that you were dri­ving too fast,” look­ing at him­self in “ah look­ing glass … ah have a good mine to take way yuh li­cence book … de charge is twen­ty dol­lars and ah give yuh five years to pay de fine.”

Spoil­er was singing about cor­rup­tion in the mag­is­tra­cy and at the state lev­el in times to come.

The bard, fa­mous for wear­ing straw and Pana­ma hats, per­ceived of lead­ers “go­ing to the bat­tle zone, see Napoleon pelt­ing bot­tle and stone”, lit­er­al­ly fight­ing the bat­tles of their own mak­ing.

Maybe he was pro­ject­ing the emer­gence of a prime min­is­ter such as Ne­tanyahu, steeped in a na­tion­al­ism of­fen­sive to oth­ers but pro­tec­tive of him­self.

“Spoi­lo” al­so cel­e­brat­ed the en­trance of women in­to the po­lice ser­vice “by do­ing every­thing that is right for them to hold me tight, tight, tight”. The con­fus­ing “Talk­ing Back­wards” habits of women “will put man in ah mon­key pants”, pro­ject­ed Spoil­er; his Mad Sci­en­tist en­vi­sioned “peo­ple mak­ing chil­dren by wire­less”.

Spoil­er got me in­to big trou­ble as an eight to nine year old in pri­ma­ry school. I was bold, in­no­cent and stu­pid enough to an­swer my teacher’s ques­tion of my pref­er­ence for a next life by tak­ing on the body and char­ac­ter­is­tics of a Bed Bug: “I want to bite them young ladies part­ner like ah hot dog or a ham­burg­er, if yuh thin don’t be in ah fright, is on­ly big fat women ah go­ing to bite.” Nat­u­ral­ly, I there­after earned the moniker–“Bed Bug”.

In my ma­ture years, I have thought with rude malev­o­lence that Ms B’s vis­i­ta­tion of the strap was be­cause she was thin and so felt hurt for not be­ing a prey of Spoil­er. He trig­gered the imag­i­na­tion with his com­po­si­tions.  

Spoil­er took re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for groom­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans by hous­ing and tu­tor­ing young ca­lyp­so­ni­ans such as Broth­er Su­pe­ri­or and Bri­go. He taught them the unique skill of com­pos­ing with match sticks. “We lived in a small apart­ment along the E/W Cor­ri­dor, and he would of­ten say to me “look the beef com­ing make yuh­self scarce,”” said “Supie”.

Spoil­er, from the deep South, Princes Town, came to com­pos­ing and singing ca­lyp­so notwith­stand­ing his fa­ther’s last­ing dis­ap­proval. Lord Melody told the sto­ry of ac­com­pa­ny­ing Spoil­er to rec­on­cile with his fa­ther, this was af­ter he had es­tab­lished him­self in the world of ca­lyp­so: “We were both chased out of the house,” said “Me­lo”.

Maybe his fa­ther’s treat­ment con­tributed to Spoil­er’s vic­tim­hood.

He got ac­cused of be­ing “de wus foot­baller in town” when it was his twin broth­er who was throw­ing away chances on goal; his life of pover­ty con­tin­ued “even though ah have meh mon­ey in the bank since the age of nine, them big shots put theirs on mine, ah have to wait just a cou­ple years in or­der for them to take off theirs, so I could take off mine”. Spoil­er’s in­sight in­to the de­pri­va­tions of the small man in the cap­i­tal­ist econ­o­my.

His All Fool’s Day ex­pe­ri­ence of an­oth­er man “kiss­ing meh wife … like a chew­ing gum stick on to a warm piece of iron,” and he hav­ing to set­tle for “we on­ly fool­ing yuh Spoil­er is All Fool’s day”.

On Christ­mas Day ex­pect­ing plen­ty of presents, he put out his cro­cus bag, “San­ta bring ah war­rant for me for child main­te­nance.”

In his “Foun­tain of Youth” Spoil­er fore­told a few of the sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­i­ments of mod­ern times in­clud­ing hu­mans do­ing makeovers to wipe the years away: “Mak­ing love with ah woman one hun­dred years old, she ent re­new she bath, yuh mak­ing yuh love, telling she about the moon and de stars above and when yuh hear the shout … she face turn like ah salt prunes in front of you.

“Yuh want to dead when yuh look at what yuh was kiss­ing … yuh can­not move and she ent mov­ing, and yuh trem­bling like ah leaf can’t get away from the young old beast and she telling yuh kiss meh don’t be afraid is for­get ah for­get to re­new me bathe,” Spoil­er at his com­i­cal and imag­i­na­tive best. There are many more like “Mad Sci­en­tist mak­ing chil­dren by wire­less.”

In the age of to­day, when hu­mour in life, like in ca­lyp­so is ab­sent, lis­ten­ing to Spoil­er is rec­om­mend­ed.

Sad­ly, Spoil­er died at the very young age of 34. A num­ber of those who knew him well iden­ti­fied that his habit of con­sum­ing large quan­ti­ties of al­co­hol and fre­quent­ly con­tributed to his pass­ing on Box­ing Day in 1960.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he did not leave be­hind a full first-hand ac­count of his life … “Ah Wan­na Fall–de Spoil­er”.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer tele­vi­sion and ra­dio re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­duc­er and host, and for­mer cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

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