JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Donric “Master Funny” Williamson: Calypso humorist extraordinaire

by

Gillian Caliste
865 days ago
20230129
Donric Williamson, known as Mighty Funny, the King of Comedy in calypso.

Donric Williamson, known as Mighty Funny, the King of Comedy in calypso.

KERWIN PIERRE

Gillian Cal­iste

"So I tell them: sweet, sweet Trinidad, fuss I love this coun­try bad

I doh want to leave at all, ever since I small

Look I bawl­ing sweet, sweet Trinidad! Broth­er fuss I feel­ing glad

When I dead please bury me, in the cen­tre of the city."

Don­ric “Mas­ter Fun­ny” Williamson meant every word of the ode he wrote to his na­tive land Trinidad and To­ba­go back in the 1950s. Re­leased in 1966 the ca­lyp­so Sweet, Sweet Trinidad is one of T&T's most beloved clas­sics. His feel­ings still hold to­day.

“I mean I was a young fel­la back then. It was one of the songs I had be­fore I came in­to the ca­lyp­so busi­ness...but I wouldn't live any­where else even though I had many of­fers...I just ac­cus­tomed here. It's like if you ask me my first choice of a woman I would say a Trinida­di­an woman be­cause we could com­mu­ni­cate bet­ter. I just like here,” he shared with Sun­day Guardian via What­sApp call from his Diego Mar­tin home.

That's not to say Williamson has not had griev­ances about his coun­try over the years. As a faith­ful ex­po­nent of ca­lyp­so, he of­fered a wide cat­a­logue of hu­mor­ous songs among his pa­tri­ot­ic and na­tion-build­ing ones, en­dear­ing him­self to au­di­ences as a ge­nius of the art form. But de­scrib­ing him­self as one who on­ly spoke out when nec­es­sary, he gave Sun­day Guardian his take on the true feel­ings of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans as one who has worked along­side many of the old guard since the 1960s.

“Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans dy­ing in grief and sor­row. I don't think they feel they achieved what they want to achieve,” he said.

He said it was not just about falling short in terms of mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion. Many were sad­dened that they could nev­er take the art form to its true po­ten­tial be­cause of a lack of con­sis­tent in­ter­est and pro­mo­tion of the cul­ture by the au­thor­i­ties, and al­so be­cause of pow­er­ful peo­ple who con­trol the en­ter­tain­ment busi­ness, he felt. He point­ed out that the Ja­maican PM who pushed reg­gae in­ter­na­tion­al­ly was orig­i­nal­ly a record pro­duc­er who had a gen­uine in­ter­est in the arts, and re­called roy­al treat­ment from swift pro­cess­ing through VIP ar­eas in cus­toms to ac­com­mo­da­tion in Guyana, when he trav­elled for shows in the 80s and with oth­ers like Lord Laro, Mer­chant and Ca­lyp­so Rose in the 70s.

He said ca­lyp­so, steel­pan and cul­ture, as a whole, did not be­long to one man. The en­tire coun­try need­ed to take it for­ward.

Williamson and oth­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans de­cid­ed to stop per­form­ing at ca­lyp­so tents in 2004 be­cause of low at­ten­dance by the pub­lic. He and oth­ers such as Trinidad Rio re­turned to the stage in 2019 af­ter Gyp­sy de­cid­ed to form a tent they named Back to Ba­sics. But it was not very en­cour­ag­ing as the younger gen­er­a­tion was hard­ly in­ter­est­ed in the cen­tu­ry-old art form, he said. Then COVID hit.

A per­for­mance at T&T's 60th in­de­pen­dence ca­lyp­so show and at Lyons last year were some of the most re­cent ap­pear­ances of the com­i­cal and clever ca­lyp­so icon. Apart from hav­ing a few oth­er gigs so far this year, he will ap­pear on Feb­ru­ary 1 at the John Cu­pid Car­ni­val Vil­lage, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, which he praised as be­ing well-or­gan­ised and in­ter­est­ing.

The fun­ny bard who was born on May 23, 1941, and first lived “Be­hind the Bridge” at 130 A Clifton St, East Port-of-Spain, had lit­tle prob­lem re­mem­ber­ing the lyrics to his healthy stock of ca­lyp­soes as he hap­pi­ly rem­i­nisced about his ca­lyp­so hey­day.

Stress­ing more than once that peo­ple were not fa­mil­iar with 80 to 90 per cent of his songs, he said his ca­lyp­soes go back to the late 50s when he first start­ed com­pos­ing. His first pub­lic ap­pear­ance was in 1964 he re­called.

“But I had been writ­ing be­fore that. I used to be on the block with my gui­tar.”

The year was 1946 when Williamson's Grena­di­an-born par­ents moved the fam­i­ly to Mor­vant. He was around age five. Grow­ing up as the third child among five broth­ers and two sis­ters in a “hu­mor­ous” fam­i­ly, with every­one be­ing kept in check by their el­dest broth­er, Lennox, a po­lice de­tec­tive at the time, Williamson nur­tured his artis­tic tal­ent. He picked up gui­tar play­ing and told jokes, en­ter­tain­ing “the boys on the block” who gave him the so­bri­quet "Fun­ny" which was a nick­name they had giv­en to his old­est broth­er ear­li­er.

Williamson was al­so a promis­ing crick­eter in the North league and had hopes of play­ing at the high­est lev­el. From age 15, he learnt to mix paints and paint hous­es with a con­trac­tor named Beres­ford Joseph. But with the songs and ca­lyp­soes he heard on his neigh­bours' gramo­phones and Red­if­fu­sion (lit­tle brown ra­dio trans­mit­ters with two sta­tions), he ful­ly em­braced com­pos­ing and en­ter­tain­ing.

In 1965, af­ter friends told him about a com­pe­ti­tion to be held at Queen's Hall on the Car­ni­val Fri­day night, he ad­vanced to the fi­nals with the Miss­ing Ball and Just Imag­ine; the lat­ter be­ing a wit­ty ca­lyp­so he used to sing on the block won­der­ing what it would be like to be able to un­screw your body parts, put them in a cup­board when they weren't need­ed and bor­row bet­ter ones from oth­ers.

An au­di­ence favourite that night, he re­mem­bered the brawl in­volv­ing the throw­ing of a chair and an up­roar from the crowd when he did not place. Lat­er, the or­gan­is­er's sec­re­tary whis­pered to him that the re­sults were rigged. The next year, he got in­to a tent on St Vin­cent Street run by the Ca­lyp­so As­so­ci­a­tion and de­liv­ered Sweet, Sweet Trinidad. Re­ceiv­ing many en­cores, every­one ex­pect­ed him to make the Sa­van­nah, but he did not.

To ease his dis­ap­point­ment, a high-rank­ing of­fi­cial in the busi­ness ex­plained to him how things some­times worked. In 1968, he took up the Mighty Spar­row's pre­vi­ous of­fer of join­ing Spar­row's Young Brigade and had the spe­cial ho­n­our of singing two songs, one of which was Sup­pose it Hap­pen in Truth a com­po­si­tion about ex­chang­ing the roles of males and fe­males, de­spite be­ing a new­com­er.

Farmer Brown in '69 marked the be­gin­ning of his record­ing ca­reer and in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion.

Out­side of T&T, his first trip was to Bar­ba­dos along­side Ca­lyp­so Rose, Pow­er and Com­pos­er. 1970 was a “hot” year as he dis­tin­guished him­self in the East­ern Caribbean and parts of the French Caribbean. New York was a main venue in 1972 with Kitch­en­er, Re­la­tor, Stal­in and Bri­go, and he be­came well-known in An­tigua, of­ten a tran­sit stop for him on the way to gigs in the US and Cana­da. He worked with oth­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and bands from the re­gion as well, in­clud­ing the Buc­ca­neers.

 Throwback to Donric Williamson's (Master Funny) early singing career.

Throwback to Donric Williamson's (Master Funny) early singing career.

Al­so mem­o­rable to Williamson, were in­vi­ta­tions to per­form at In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions in Ja­maica and Haiti. He was told that his Soul Chick (1973) was the high­est-sell­ing sin­gle at the time which he ini­tial­ly did not be­lieve un­til Ja­maican artist Lloyd Lovin­deer asked him per­mis­sion to re­make it.

Williamson's deep, dis­tinct voice, jokey on­stage an­tics and strik­ing cos­tumes de­signed by his wife and sewn by a tai­lor al­so made him mem­o­rable. His sig­na­ture re­frain “Yeah...ah tell yuh” was first used to test the mic's “pitch” and res­onat­ed with fans, so he stuck to it. He al­so stuck to the com­i­cal dance he would do to make up time dur­ing the cho­rus and lat­er called it “the No Sweat”. Though dubbed “Lord” or “Mighty” Fun­ny, he prefers the ti­tle “Mas­ter Fun­ny” af­ter the Mas­ters Den Ca­lyp­so tent he was part of from 1979 to 1985 along­side singers like Cro Cro, Rio, Shad­ow and Gyp­sy.

Ever up for a chal­lenge, he said top­ics and ideas come to him from every­day oc­cur­rences or from his imag­i­na­tion and he thinks hard about the best an­gle to con­vey his brain­teasers to the au­di­ence who lap them up.

His oth­er hits in­clude Flo­rie, Pick­er Patch, Ding Dong, which en­joyed some suc­cess in New York, Eye Wrist Back Side, Two Knee and Bam about a mac­co­cious neigh­bour who sees every­thing. He posed ques­tions to the coun­try about build­ing the na­tion with Ask­ing? 25 Years Have Gone, How Yuh Feel? tak­ing sec­ond place to Cro Cro in the In­de­pen­dence Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion on the na­tion's 25th an­niver­sary. His cul­tur­al con­tri­bu­tions earned him the 2018 Trinidad & To­ba­go Hum­ming­bird Medal (Sil­ver).

The fa­ther of a daugh­ter and grand­fa­ther of one said while his wife en­joys tend­ing to her many plants, he prefers to spend his time play­ing his gui­tar and con­tin­u­ing to com­pose his ca­lyp­soes.

He said as the ca­lyp­son­ian Mas­ter Fun­ny, he would like peo­ple to re­mem­ber him as they knew him. And as Don­ric Williamson the man? “What I go tell you...as a good boy,” he laughed. 

calypsonians


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored