Calypso is one of several music genres with roots on the African continent. Growing up in Guyana, calypso was one of the most popular music heard everywhere in the country. I grew up listening to the Mighty Sparrow, Lord Kitchener, Lord Superior, Lord Melody and Guyanese calypsonians King Fighter and Lord Canary. Whenever I visited my aunt’s family in Mackenzie, the celebration of welcoming “Christmas morning” was not complete without Mr. Anthony’s jukebox blaring Lord Kitchener singing “Mooma mooma, would you like to join your sonny?
I am over here, happy in the mother country
Darling, for the Christmas, your son would be really jumping
Listen to the chorus of what we all will be singing.
Drink a rum and a punch a crema, drink a rum
Is Christmas morning
Drink a rum and a punch a crema, drink a rum
Mama, drink if you drinking!
Drink a rum and a punch a crema, drink a rum.” That calypso was as expected as the decorated Christmas tree, gifts and pepperpot every Christmas morning on Mora Street.
Murphy Browne © June 1-2021
JUNE IS BLACK MUSIC MONTH 1979-2021
I'm a slave from a land so far
I was caught
And I was brought here from Africa
Well it was licks like fire
From the white slavemaster
Everyday I down on my knees
Weeks and weeks before we cross the seas
To reach in the West Indies
And then they make me work
Good lord no pay
I toil, and toil
So hard each day
I'm dying...
Yeah I'm crying...
Oh Lord I want to be free!
Excerpt from the 1963 released “The Slave” by calypsonian and songwriter Slinger “Mighty Sparrow” Francisco
June is “Black Music Month” celebrating music with roots from the African continent. Calypso is one of several genres of music with African roots. African Caribbean scholars including Carole Boyce Davies have opined that “The calypso, which has attained its highest form of expression in Trinidad, is recognized as a re-interpretation of a traditional African topical song.” Errol Gaston Hill, thought that “Calypso originated in West African griots and developed alongside other traditional Caribbean songs to incorporate ‘elements of digging songs changed by people at work; belair and calinda songs when they play; shango and shouter baptist revival songs when they worship; and insurrectionary songs such as were sung by slaves in revolt.’” Enslaved Africans used various means, including music, to protest and resist their enslavement. They sang songs to arrange secret meetings and songs which encouraged escape and sabotage. Enslaved Africans sang about their desire for freedom and sang to warn other enslaved Africans of impending danger. They covertly and overtly protested their enslavement. In the 1963 released “The Slave” the Mighty Sparrow sang: “We had to chant and sing to express our feelings
To that wicked and cruel man
That was the only medicine to make him listen
And is so calypso began”
Calypso is a popular Caribbean genre of music that was created by Africans enslaved in the Caribbean. Calypsonians like the Mighty Sparrow and Dr. Hollis Urban Lester Liverpool (Chalkdust or Chalkie) are masters at this artform. With their evocative and witty singing style, and sometimes satirical, scathing, and provocative lyrics, they have educated and entertained for decades. Music was an avenue for enslaved Africans to express their feelings. The calypso was used even after slavery was abolished, to voice grievances against colonial overlords and even government after independence. In the 1963 calypso, “Dan is the man in the van,” the Mighty Sparrow criticized the British colonial education system as he sang: “But in my days in school
They teach me like a fool
The things they teach me
Ah should be ah block-headed mule.” Sparrow lambasted the British colonial Director of Education, J.O. Cutteridge, the author of the West Indian Readers, “I ain't believe that no one man could write so much stupidness. Comic books made more sense; you know it’s fictitious without pretense; Cutteridge wanted to keep us in ignorance.”
Calypsoes were also used to criticize and mock those in political power. Calypsonians risked much to speak out for working class citizens as they criticized the powerful. As Hill pointed out "The one great leveller was the calypsonian. He sang with courage and wit, debunking and defending the small." In his 1965 released “Get outta here” Sparrow gave voice to his disagreement with Prime Minister Dr. Eric Williams who had reinstated Dr. Patrick Solomon as Minister of External Affairs and was doubling down despite objections by members of parliament.
when he sang “I am going to bring back Solomon
Who don't like it, complain to the commission
None of them going to tell me how to run my country
I defy anyone of you to dictate for me.”
Solomon allegedly “took advantage of his position as a government minister in order to rescue his stepson from police custody,” and the Mighty Sparrow made his displeasure with the status quo evident with the calypso “Get outta here.”
Similarly, in a 1971 calypso to protest the “Sedition Act,” calypsonian and scholar Hollis “Chalkie” Liverpool sang the protest calypso “Ah Fraid Karl.” The Sedition (Amendment) Act 1971, and the Summary Offences Act 1972 was part of a Public Order Bill authored by Karl Hudson Phillips in 1970. He was the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs at the time. The original Sedition Act passed in 1920 throughout the British Caribbean was seen as “colonial weapons enacted to control and police black and brown bodies and create a society to mostly suit European and elite interests.” In post independent Trinidad and Tobago “Chalkie” sang: “Like my friends and them don't like me, they want police hold Chalkie. For the things they want me sing 'bout, this government go jail my snout.
But not me, ah 'fraid Karl, ah 'fraid Karl,
I 'fraid he jail me like he jail Rex Lasalle.”
Lasalle was a lieutenant in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment who was accused of leadership of mutiny in April 1970 as part of a Black Power Revolution. Following a five-month trial (October 1970-March 1971) Lasalle was found guilty but won an appeal which set the 26-year-old free. The Mighty Sparrow also protested the Sedition Act “The people of a country shouldn't 'fraid to talk their mind
If you guilty here is straight to jail without a fine
Betrayal of the people's trust, to me is much more dangerous
Than what they talking 'bout.”
Music has sustained Africans dealing with myriad oppressions as expressed by the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 - 1906) in his poem “Sympathy” (published 1899) “I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings — I know why the caged bird sings!” June has been “Black Music Month” since June 1979 celebrating the many genres of music with African roots (regardless of who sings) including the blues, gospel, hip hop, jazz, merengue, reggae, rock and roll, ska and zouk.
Murphy Browne © June 1-2021
