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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Calypso is without wit and sting

by

Guardian Media
2317 days ago
20190302

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

My col­league and friend, out­stand­ing tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ist Neil Giusep­pi (re­tired) in a Face­book post an­nounced to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty the “death of ca­lyp­so”. One re­sponse by an­oth­er “Face­book­er” to Neil was to the ef­fect: “stale news, ca­lyp­so died some time ago”.

My thought was don’t be too quick to lay this ven­er­a­ble cit­i­zen in the ground, as there are a few vis­i­ble stir­rings in ca­lyp­so’s very close rel­a­tive, so­ca, which can serve to re­in­fuse its old­er and more ven­er­a­ble cousin with vigour, and a rea­son to keep fight­ing for sur­vival.

Over the last ap­prox­i­mate­ly three years, there have been a half dozen so­ca pieces which com­pare quite favourably with the best of the genre cre­at­ed in the 1970s when Shorty, Mer­chant, Mae­stro pa­rad­ed ca­lyp­so’s most rhyth­mic and pop­u­lar form.

Amongst the “new” artistes, com­posers and per­form­ers: MX Prime and the Ul­ti­mate Re­jects—“We Jam­min Still”; 2018 was de­clared the “Year for Love” by Voice, a beau­ti­ful melody with mean­ing­ful lyrics which Rene­gades won the Panora­ma with. Kees has this year fol­lowed a cou­ple of melo­di­ous pieces over the pe­ri­od—Ex­o­dus con­tro­ver­sial­ly dropped Su­per Blue for Kees’ Sa­van­nah Grass, it must have some melody and space for arrange­ment for Pel­ham God­dard to be­lieve he can pro­duce a win­ning Panora­ma arrange­ment in two weeks–that must al­so say some­thing about the qual­i­ty of play­ers in the band; but that’s an­oth­er sto­ry for an­oth­er col­umn—the amaz­ing skills of to­day’s play­ers.

Su­per Blue had a re­vival year, 2013; his Fan­tas­tic Fri­day re­mind­ed us of the Blue Boy who came up from Point in 1980 and blew the town apart with his So­ca Bap­tist melody and char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the Shouters. There have been a few oth­er au­then­tic so­ca pieces con­tain­ing melody, un­forced rhythm with great sto­ry­lines and colour­ful lan­guage rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the mul­ti­fac­eted char­ac­ter of ca­lyp­so/so­ca.

In 2019, Na­dia Bat­son has demon­strat­ed her out­stand­ing ca­pac­i­ty as com­pos­er/singer; Hookin Meh and So Long have out­stand­ing melodies and sto­ry­lines that have cap­tured the spir­it of the Car­ni­val, and have been eas­i­ly in­ter­pret­ed by both the so­phis­ti­cat­ed “big band arrangers” and orig­i­nal small bands such as Tripoli with un­com­pli­cat­ed sweet melod­ic lines em­a­nat­ing from the pans. Tripoli’s ver­sion is the kind en­joyed on the J'Ou­vert morn­ing jams of the 1950s and 60s; then when mas­quer­aders eas­i­ly sub­mit­ted to the jam. These are a few of the vi­tal signs that give hope that rig­or mor­tis has not yet set in the ca­lyp­so/so­ca of the age, notwith­stand­ing the deep wounds in the body of the art form.

How­ev­er, I agree that ex­clud­ing a few of the qual­i­ty true, true ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and ca­lyp­soes still ed­i­to­ri­al­is­ing in qual­i­ty lyrics, sweet melodies and with the “rapi­er touch”, the lyrics cut­ting on both sides like the “doc­tor shop knife”, tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so has gone dull, bor­ing, mo­not­o­nous with dirge-like rhythms, which in­flu­ence ca­lyp­so afi­ciona­dos, such as Neil and oth­ers, to pro­nounce on the church­ing of the dead.

In a large num­ber of the “best” ca­lyp­soes se­lect­ed from the 40 and then 16 sung on Thurs­day last, there is an ab­sence of melody and tune-full sweet­ness de­signed “to turn ah woman body in­to jel­ly”. No imag­i­na­tive cre­ation of sto­ry­lines with a sting in the tail. Dou­ble en­ten­dre, clever word­play, and satire are un­known arts in to­day’s ca­lyp­so com­po­si­tion. No mem­o­rable record­ing of the his­to­ry of or­di­nary peo­ple (Duke).

Cre­ative lan­guage found in the vo­cab­u­lary of or­di­nary peo­ple in their in­ter­ac­tion with each oth­er has been re­placed by long bor­ing dis­cours­es that sound more like im­i­ta­tion aca­d­e­m­ic es­says.

Hu­mour in ca­lyp­so has been ex­tin­guished by the crass­ness in the so­ci­ety and the suck­ing out of the joy and laugh­ter that Chalk­dust once said was nec­es­sary for sur­vival in this place.

Wins­ford Devine is a com­pos­er who draws in­spi­ra­tion from the “ground”; Mer­chant and Pig­gy Joseph were sim­i­lar­ly an­chored.

The com­posers and singers of to­day have con­clud­ed that ca­lyp­soes for the “Big Yard” have to be laboured dron­ing verse and cho­rus emp­ty of hu­mour, wit and clev­er­ness and en­chant­i­ng melody.

Stal­in, Valenti­no, Su­pe­ri­or, Bri­go and oth­ers have talked about the fin­ish­ing schools of Spoil­er and Kitch­en­er and oth­ers who passed on to them crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion about com­pos­ing, styling and the art of fin­ish­ing the ca­lyp­so.

We too of­ten leave be­hind our best tra­di­tions and adopt meth­ods and process­es with­out a his­to­ry to them; we need to re­turn, as Rio once sug­gest­ed: “Back to Ba­sics”.


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