He­len Dray­ton

We all have opin­ions about ca­lyp­so, which is un­ques­tion­ably one of our most trea­sured art forms. It be­comes mem­o­rable, pul­sat­ing po­et­ry when writ­ten and per­formed with the skill that, in the words of the ge­nius Rud­der, “could make a politi­cian cringe.”

There are those ca­lyp­soes like Lord Nel­son’s King Liar that have echoed through time when­ev­er you lis­ten to some pub­lic of­fi­cials, and on­ly this Car­ni­val week gone by, there was a ve­he­ment de­nial of sup­pres­sion of Helon Fran­cis’s ca­lyp­so Doh For­get.

When the Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) au­dio went silent dur­ing his per­for­mance, I thought it was a tech­ni­cal prob­lem and didn’t give it a sec­ond thought un­til the video sur­faced of an of­fi­cial clear­ly heard telling WACK FM an­nounc­ers, “We mute Helon’s mic on TTT.” Af­ter­wards, re­port­ed­ly, WACK’s livestream stopped.

It would have been an amus­ing di­men­sion in the most­ly evan­gel­i­cal-like ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion if the NCC had beamed in Lord Nel­son singing his 1981 dit­ty, “You hear lie? That is lie … teacher Per­cy say if you lie you go­ing to hell as soon as you die …” And if on­ly the gi­ant of kaiso, the Black Stal­in, had been in the Big Yard, he would have been heard singing, “Keep the chal­ice burn­ing, look vam­pire pass­ing … Burn dem.”

Con­trary to the Gov­ern­ment’s state­ment, Trin­bag­o­ni­ans love good ca­lyp­sos. Steel­bands’ play­ing of the grand mas­ters’ songs of yes­ter­year is tes­ti­mo­ny to a lega­cy of artistry that tran­scends gen­er­a­tions. Like all art gen­res, there’s the good and the bad. Gen­er­al­ly, it’s true that the mem­o­ra­bil­i­ty and joy of ca­lyp­so lyrics to­day are not com­pa­ra­ble to those of the grand­mas­ters’ works. TU­CO has ques­tions to an­swer. Is it up to the task of ed­u­cat­ing and nur­tur­ing the art form, and of de­fend­ing its mem­bers? The TU­CO Pres­i­dent’s re­mark that the Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta isn’t a po­lit­i­cal plat­form was mis­guid­ed. Like all cre­ative art forms, it’s a voice in a democ­ra­cy, and any ca­lyp­son­ian should be free to sing po­lit­i­cal ca­lyp­so, for or against gov­ern­ment poli­cies and ac­tions, on any ca­lyp­so plat­form. So­cial con­scious­ness is in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to po­lit­i­cal con­scious­ness.

The mut­ing of Helon’s mic gen­er­at­ed an avalanche of com­men­tary, re­sult­ing in pre­cise­ly what hap­pens when­ev­er a vam­pire strikes. Every­one wants the lyrics, giv­ing Helon Fran­cis and his ca­lyp­so wide ex­po­sure. What was strik­ing was not on­ly its rel­e­vance but al­so its po­ten­tial to awak­en pub­lic con­scious­ness to un­de­sir­able so­cial and po­lit­i­cal trends, and it is worth lis­ten­ing to again. It’s a ca­lyp­so for re­flec­tion on how quick­ly the good in­ten­tions and ex­cel­lent work of a gov­ern­ment, any gov­ern­ment, be­come over­shad­owed by un­civ­il be­hav­iour.

The Gov­ern­ment, led by an ap­peal­ing and well-liked politi­cian, came in­to of­fice with a com­mand­ing ma­jor­i­ty and over­whelm­ing good­will. Yet, with­in the short time of nine months, it has de­lib­er­ate­ly cho­sen to ver­bal­ly abuse cit­i­zens, cast­ing as­per­sions on their in­tegri­ty, even in­fer­ring crim­i­nal­i­ty—cit­i­zens who are per­form­ing with­out favour or ill will in their re­spec­tive pro­fes­sions, some with con­sti­tu­tion­al man­dates. It has lashed its vic­tims with stig­ma­tis­ing de­scrip­tors: le­gal pro­fes­sion­als were called “eat-ah-food filth,” the En­er­gy Cham­ber, a “self-serv­ing, greedy body,” banks, “self­ish car­tels ben­e­fit­ing elites.” The HDC chair­man de­scribed the cor­po­ra­tion as a “sick cow rid­dled with ticks” while dis­cussing the non-re­new­al of con­tracts for 26 em­ploy­ees. He de­nied ref­er­ence to them. Let us not for­get that fired CEPEP work­ers were la­belled as “col­lat­er­al dam­age,” in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors were called hyp­o­crit­i­cal, self-pro­mot­ing bootlick­ers and brown-nosers, the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic a low-lev­el PNM func­tionary, the coun­try, a law­less dump aka garbage. Not to be out­done, Min­is­ter Phillip Alexan­der said Care­nage is a “s******e.”

He crit­i­cised West­moor­ings mem­bers, telling them they vot­ed for pot­holes when they sup­port­ed MP Hans Des Vi­gnes in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, and, most re­cent­ly, the Gov­ern­ment termed ca­lyp­so­ni­ans “po­lit­i­cal stooges mas­querad­ing as ca­lyp­so­ni­ans.” Suc­cinct­ly put, dis­agree with the Gov­ern­ment at your rep­u­ta­tion­al risk. Au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism? Per­haps, the out­er con­text of the mut­ed mic.

It gets worse. The Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty ad­vo­cates for a law to re­strict free speech, tar­get­ing cit­i­zens who crit­i­cised po­lice ac­tions af­ter a video show­ing the con­tro­ver­sial killing of Joshua Sama­roo. That fol­lowed an ear­li­er failed at­tempt to have the US re­voke visas of cit­i­zens based on their so­cial me­dia ac­tiv­i­ty. He doesn’t stop there; he re­jects strength­en­ing the “in­ves­tiga­tive” pow­ers of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty, say­ing the po­lice, rather than “an in­de­pen­dent body”, should be en­trust­ed with leg­isla­tive au­thor­i­ty “to dis­ci­pline” po­lice of­fi­cers—con­fus­ing “in­ves­tiga­tive” pow­ers with “dis­ci­pli­nary pow­ers.” In vir­tu­al­ly every de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try, an in­de­pen­dent civil­ian au­thor­i­ty in­ves­ti­gates se­ri­ous po­lice al­le­ga­tions.

“Doh For­get” – If your pol­i­tics start to look un­true

Jux­ta­pose all the above against the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of Par­lia­ment, when she said our cit­i­zens have cho­sen “heal­ing over harm, they have cho­sen com­pas­sion over con­tempt, they have cho­sen in­clu­sion over elit­ism, and they have cho­sen ac­count­abil­i­ty over in­ter­fer­ence.” In her in­au­gur­al speech, she said, “… be sym­pa­thet­ic, love one an­oth­er, be com­pas­sion­ate and hum­ble. Do not re­pay evil with evil or in­sult with in­sult.” That is the kind of con­tra­dic­tion that caus­es the pub­lic to lose trust in gov­ern­ment. Helon sang, “If yuh pol­i­tics start to look un­true / If yuh own vot­ers los­ing trust in you / You could do what you want … / Yuh could bad talk the In­de­pen­dent Bench / Yuh could change the coun­try that we once know / But doh for­get, this is Trin­ba­go.”

“Doh For­get,” he sang, “Ah study to run when I scope out my coun­try / Ah want’ buy a gun / Cause daiz wha dey promise we / A lot’s goin on in de sun / So I come here to bring wis­dom / So we doh burn down we love­ly so­ci­ety / See a new gov­ern­ment has de as­sign­ment / To put we coun­try in­to align­ment / But every time dey read us wid their ego / Is the vul­ner­a­ble feel­ing dat blow / Lord, is it ig­no­rance? / Or is it ar­ro­gance? / I doh know what to call it in this in­stance / Look a par­adise right in front we eyes / But we still want to talk about who we de­spise … Tell me, tell me where else we can go / If we start to mash up the good things we know? … We treat tra­di­tions like pap­pyshow / You could fix every­thing ‘pon we is­land / Put gun­ship on we back like a tyrant / You could put in radar all up Scar­bor­ough / But don’t for­get dis is Trin­ba­go … Yuh could try to stop so­cial me­dia / Or de tap­ing of po­lice mur­ders / Yuh could rewrite a bill like de ZOSO / But doh for­get / Dis is Trin­ba­go …”

As ex­pect­ed, some com­men­ta­tors said that po­lit­i­cal ca­lyp­sos, aka an­ti-gov­ern­ment ones, oc­cur more un­der the UNC Gov­ern­ment. Re­search will dis­pute that. For the 46 years of the PNM gov­ern­ment, its lead­ers and min­is­ters have been mer­ci­less­ly lam­pooned by ca­lyp­so­ni­ans with themes of mis­man­age­ment, cor­rup­tion, ar­ro­gance, and op­pres­sion, from the Mighty Spar­row’s “No Doc­tor No” in 1957 to the spate over the past ten years.

Helon Fran­cis’s song isn’t in the waist-break­ing tem­po, with melod­ic sing-along lyrics, and the hi­lar­i­ous dou­ble en­ten­dre of the mas­ters. Nev­er­the­less, it’s root­ed in the tra­di­tion of speak­ing truth to pow­er. In an in­tense style, he re­minds lead­ers and cit­i­zens alike not to for­get who we are as a peo­ple. “Doh for­get, this is Trin­ba­go!” It’s a de­c­la­ra­tion of our iden­ti­ty. He ac­knowl­edges that he “knows the good in­ten­tions we Prime Min­is­ter have for we,” and speaks to the dis­trust of lead­ers that shifts po­lit­i­cal al­liances, in­fer­ring pub­lic frus­tra­tion with gov­er­nance, po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iour, and the in­creas­ing cost of liv­ing. When he says, “if yuh pol­i­tics start to look un­true,” he’s telling us that our lead­ers are drift­ing from their promis­es. Loy­al­ty is not un­con­di­tion­al, and peo­ple re­mem­ber. He men­tions the In­de­pen­dent Bench, which sug­gests that all the po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vring, at­tack­ing or dis­miss­ing in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions won’t erase pub­lic aware­ness of what’s tak­ing place …“Doh for­get this is Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Helon’s Ca­lyp­so is wor­thy of an­oth­er lis­ten­ing. Doh For­get.