Slinger Francisco’s addition of quality to Trinidad and Tobago’s contribution to world civilisation was ahead not only of other calypsonians but also beyond the conception of social scientists, politicians, and governments. He picked up the theme expressed by PM Dr Eric Williams at independence: “The future of the nation is in the school bags of our children.”
“Education, education–this is the foundation to be recognised anywhere you go to have your certificates to show … to enjoy any kind of happiness, knowledge is the key to success, children go to school and learn well; otherwise, later on in life yuh go ketch real hell. Without an education in your head, your whole life is pure misery, yuh better off dead …”
The totality of the lyrics and underlying objectives of that calypso are even more relevant than when Sparrow sang them, reportedly, in 1965.
The bard, however, did not accept for himself what he considered the colonial education of the period, especially in the textbooks produced by the British education official in T&T at the time, J O Cutteridge. For Sparrow it was anti-education, devoid of reality and incapable of engaging his own thinking capacity: “How I happen to get some education, me ent know, all they teach me was about Brer Rabbit and Rumpelstiltskino. They wanted to keep me down indeed, they try their best but did not succeed, yuh see, meh head was duncy and up to now ah can’t read.” Sparrow in the genre of calypso mimicry and ridicule.
His own career indicated a man highly educated in the ways of the world and his own ability to propel himself over the many hurdles he faced in life.
One of Sparrow’s seemingly natural gifts along the education continuum has been his capacity for language learning and adaptation. He sang in Spanish, French, Creole Patois, Hindi and mastered the T&T version of English.
Sparrow, in his movement forward, perceived a role for himself beyond what was previously achieved by the generations of calypsonians who, before him, settled for accommodation within the status quo which had been established and bound generations before him.
In an interview, he noted that while his colleague, Lord Melody, went to the USA to find Harry Belafonte, who had sung his songs and to derive benefit from that, “I wanted Belafonte to introduce me to the right people in entertainment.”
Sparrow, while not being the first calypsonian to take the calypso as a form to the US, Canada, England, and throughout the Caribbean, did perform in those countries in a manner which opened opportunities not only for himself but also for generations of calypsonians who followed. He took the calypso back to Africa in a new form and was hailed as Chief Omo Wale of Ikoyi by the government and people of Nigeria.
King David Rudder marks the spot where Sparrow distinguished himself abroad, following the likes of Lion, Executor, Kitchener, Beginner and Terror in Britain, along with “Fitzroy Coleman fingers dancing on the fret.” But it was Sparrow, according to Rudder, who had the greatest impact at one of the most spectacular entertainment centres in the US: “Carnegie Hall graced by the presence of Sparrow, oh ho ho, and when Slinger done with dey tail hear them shouting don’t go, Sparrow don’t go … Calypso!”
Sparrow, presumably given his contact with the United States early in his career and life, travelling to America, regularly singing to the Trini and Caribbean Diaspora and having experienced the appetite of Americans for entertainment, expressed in a couple significant calypsoes his ideological support for the USA and, by extension, Western political ideology in competition against the Soviet Union bloc.
“Ah say to tun them ships in the opposition direction, Kennedy is the man for them,” was Sparrow’s response to the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) when the Soviet Union under President Nikita Khrushchev attempted to spread its influence into the Americas through the landing of missiles in Cuba, the US Backyard, into which non-hemispheric countries could not intervene in any hostile manner, so declared by President James Munro, 1823.
“Stop them, search them, or sink them to the bottom of the ocean … any retaliation will be met with explosion … meh mother said she rather dead than live in a world of communism … together with Canada, England and France, Nikita Khrushchev ent stand ah chance.”
But even before the Missile Crisis, Sparrow took the American side in the propaganda war between the two superpowers in their individual attempts to capture outer space: “They trying they best but they making a mess with the Russian satellite, they should be all sent to prison for the dog that they poison in the Russian satellite … two sputniks in the sky have everybody hypnotised; I am very sorry for the poor little puppy in the Russian satellite.”
He compared the Russian attempts with the intervention of the ‘discoverer of the New World’: “Columbus was a man very hard and grim; he never sent ah dog to look out for him.”
To be continued.
Tony Rakhal-Fraser is a 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.
