Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

The “Mighty, Mighty Spar­row”, as he liked to re­fer to him­self, was ar­guably at his peak in so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary dur­ing the 1970s in­to the 1990s.

He launched against the con­tin­u­a­tion of colo­nial-type rule through the 1970 Black Pow­er con­scious­ness; and iden­ti­fied with the ide­o­log­i­cal stance with the strug­gles of the youth and those of a rev­o­lu­tion­ary zeal, which Dr Er­ic Williams and his PNM did not sat­is­fy in the emerg­ing post-In­de­pen­dence era.

Spar­row dis­played that con­scious­ness of Trinidad and To­ba­go which was need­ed. He de­vel­oped an ex­pand­ed ca­pac­i­ty to un­der­stand the so­ci­ety, world civil­i­sa­tion, so­cial dis­lo­ca­tion, in­equity and the pain in­flict­ed on those at the low­er lev­el of so­ci­ety by cap­i­tal­ism, po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion, and the suf­fer­ing of those at the bot­tom of so­ci­ety who at­tempt­ed to raise their heads above the wa­ter mark, but who faced the dou­ble deal­ing of the “Good Cit­i­zens, who in a mil­lion dif­fer­ent ways they vi­o­late the law. It’s the same no-good bas­tards who op­press the poor ... they sell­ing black mar­ket, mak­ing ex­cess prof­it pay­ing star­va­tion salaries these good cit­i­zens are the ar­chi­tects of eco­nom­ic slav­ery”.

Spar­row did not raise the Black Pow­er flag in the mil­i­tant, com­mit­ted-to-the-move­ment way in the man­ner of Valenti­no, Black Stal­in, Com­pos­er, and Mae­stro, but he fo­cused in­stead on the in­ner work­ings of the poli­ty, the econ­o­my and the up­per class­es in so­ci­ety where the “Good Cit­i­zens” had en­trenched them­selves. It was quite a damn­ing com­men­tary by Slinger on the so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal rul­ing class­es of the day.

In the vein of the align­ment of the po­lit­i­cal and le­gal forces, his “Sedi­tion” was in­ter­est­ing­ly placed in the pe­ri­od when his loy­al­ty shift­ed to Karl Hud­son-Phillips and the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion, Hud­son-Phillips hav­ing de­vel­oped the sedi­tion laws in his time as at­tor­ney gen­er­al in the PNM gov­ern­ment post 1970.

“Sedi­tion, care­ful how yuh talk­ing ... care­ful wey yuh walk­ing ... in­com­pe­tent id­iots have peo­ple afraid to talk their mind ... is straight to jail with­out a fine,” as he scold­ed the gov­ern­ment for “be­tray­al of the peo­ple’s trust ... there is much more dan­ger­ous ... wey dey talk­ing bout ... is straight ap­pre­hen­sion in po­lice de­ten­tion charged with sedi­tion ...”

Was there a con­tra­dic­tion in­her­ent in his char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the “Good Cit­i­zen” and his trans­ferred po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty to the Hud­son-Phillips amend­ed Sedi­tion Act, first en­act­ed by the British colo­nial gov­ern­ment of the 1920s?

Con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the mood of the ca­lyp­so was the dark, brood­ing melody in the back­ground arranged by Earl Rod­ney from Gon­za­les, Point Fortin; the mu­sic hangs heav­i­ly in the back­ground.

Far more in keep­ing with the up­beat Spar­row melodies of the 1970s and 1980s came Spar­row’s mas­ter­piece of eco­nom­ic phi­los­o­phy and ar­tic­u­la­tion in “Cap­i­tal­ism Gone Mad”. Not too in­ci­den­tal­ly, it was a ca­lyp­so quot­ed on oc­ca­sion by Ja­maica’s so­cial­ist Prime Min­is­ter, Michael Man­ley.

“It’s out­ra­geous and in­sane, those crazy prices in Port-of-Spain and like de mer­chants go­ing out dey brain ... and the work­ing man like he on­ly toil­ing in vain ... Weh you ever hear, a ny­lon pet­ti­coat three fifty ... and like gov­ern­ment li­cence to steal,” mak­ing gov­ern­ment an ac­com­plice in the ex­ploita­tion of “de poor man”.

“Avari­cious­ness, to be pre­cise, is why every­thing so damn over­price,” Spar­row cit­ed what he con­sid­ered the greed which in part ac­count­ed for “Cap­i­tal­ism Gone Mad”, mu­sic by Art De Coteau. The ca­lyp­so came dur­ing the time of suc­ces­sive oil-price booms when the rev­enues “flowed through the econ­o­my like a dose of salts,” Michael Man­ley.

At an­oth­er lev­el of Spar­row’s prowess and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in types of ca­lyp­so and ca­lyp­so mu­sic, he con­tributed “The Slave”; in con­struc­tion and melody, it seemed to many to have gone out of the bounds of ac­cept­ed ca­lyp­so. That, how­ev­er, was an­oth­er con­tri­bu­tion of Spar­row to take the ca­lyp­so in­to new ar­eas of ex­plo­ration of form and melody. His de­pic­tion of the African brought to the West in the most cru­el of cir­cum­stances re­turned pain to the lis­ten­er and re­called the com­pound­ing of the evil of slav­ery even af­ter the phys­i­cal chains had fall­en off.

“Till one day some­body said

‘Free de bloody slaves’

I was then put out on the street

Ah got no food, got no clothes

And no place to sleep

And no par­tic­u­lar am­bi­tion

This I can­not con­ceal

For­got my na­tive cul­ture

Ah lived like a vul­ture…From de white boss ah had to steal"

The ca­lyp­so con­tains poignant and painful lyrics in the de­scrip­tion of the con­di­tion of the African up­root­ed from Africa. It’s a ma­jor sub­ject in the syl­labus of West In­di­an his­to­ry, which is cur­rent­ly re­flect­ed in the at­tempts at repa­ra­tions for the slave trade and slav­ery.

Per­haps seek­ing re­venge for his con­di­tion, the “Con­go Man” de­pict­ed the African taste for “white meat...I en­vy the Con­go Man ah wish ah coul­da go and shake he hand, he eat un­til he stom­ach up­set...and I..ah nev­er eat ah white meat yet….” Was that an ex­pres­sion of a yearn­ing?

To be con­tin­ued.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er, free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme pro­duc­er, and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er, cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, for­mer cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice, writer for the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona in Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, and from the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, UWI, St Au­gus­tine.