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By
Caldwell Taylor
"Calypso is a product of Caribbean people's
struggle to articulate an identity in response
to numerous attempts at fragmentation"
-Carole Boyce -Davis
"Radical transformation of any society is
unthinkable without the active participation
of those engaged in creative and productive
work".
-Noam Chomsky
Fifty years ago this month, the "Sparrow Revolution"
was brilliantly sung into existence when "the Mighty
Sparrow", then rated a "B" calypsonian--seized the
calypso crown and with it the commanding heights of
calypsodom. The "laddie" was merely 20 years old
and his "B" rating
had to do with the fact that his calypso singing
consisted mostly in "hustling tourists" in the "Gaza
Strip" area of Port of Spain. But B rating or not ,
the Sparrow " takeover" of February 12, 1956 was no
fluke, for fifty years later he remains the dominant
figure in calypso-a truly astounding achievement in
the quirky world of popular music .The Sparrow
Revolution triumphed on a "manifesto" named "Yankee
Gone" (Jean and Dinah"), an infectious mix of sex,
social commentary, Sparrowesque braggadocio and
creole nationalism. It retooled the calypso art
form, giving it a new sound, a new style, a new
sensibility, a new stagecraft; and it also
introduced the human voice as key aspect of calypso
instrumentation.
The Sparrow Revolution also gave us the "new
calypsonian"- Sparrow being the prototype- and it
prefigured the coming of a new breed of politicians,
the People's National Movement (PNM), whose
September 1956 victory put an end to the political
careers of "Old Guardists" like Butler, Roy Joseph
,Bertie Gomes and Stephen Maharaj. Sparrow was a
part of the PNM takeover, for in 1955 he became a
member of "Gayap", a group that worked for Eric
Williams before the People's Educational Movement (PEM)
became the People's National Movement in January
1956. Before the PNM there was also the Bachacs, the
Williams-led study group that included individuals
like Elton Richardson, Winston Mahabir and Telford
Georges.
Williams and Sparrow, the scholar and the songster,
were quite fond of each other and there were in the
early days many public displays of their mutual
affection. Sparrow, at least until the mid sixties,
tolerated no opposition to Williams's government and
politics. To the glory of Williams and the PNM, he
sang songs like "Leave The Dam Doctor" and "William
the Conqueror":
Praise little Eric, rejoice and be glad
We had a better future here in Trinidad PNM
It ent got nobody like them
For they have a champion leader
William the Conqueror
"Leave the Damn Doctor" was Sparrow's hard -hitting
response to Growling Tiger's satirical stab at
Williams's moral armor; the "Tiger" chastised the
Doc for deserting his wife just hours following a
secret wedding on Caledonia island.
Tiger sang:
No, no, not the Doc
No, no, not the beloved Doctor
I can afford to gamble my life
He'll never marry and next day desert his wife
Sparrow retorted:
Leave the damn Doctor
He ent trouble allyuh
Leave the Damn Doctor
What he do he well do
Leave the damn Doctor
And doh get me mad
Leave the damn doctor
Or is murder in Trinidad
Sparrow once again took Williams's side in the
region-wide donnybrook that attended the mash up of
the West Indies Federation in 1962. Williams was at
the centre of this affair, for he was a key player
and the spokesman for one of two theories of
federation: Williams wanted a highly centralized
(Hamiltonian) federation, and in this respect he was
opposed by Norman Washington Manley, the Jamaican
premier of the day, who campaigned for a
decentralized (Jaffersonian)
arrangement that gave the respective territorial
units lots of room to maneuver, especially in the
area of economic development. After much sparring
with Williams and others, Manley made the decision
to turn the matter over to the Jamaican voters. The
vote took place in September 1961 and a majority -
54 percent - voted to quit the Federation. The
departure of Jamaica spelled the end of the federal
experiment. Williams turned to the language of the
"Midnight Robber" to sum up the situation: "One from
ten leaves zero", he quipped.
Sparrow soon followed with his own take on the
break-up of the Federation. In a song called
"Federation”, he sang:
Federation came down to simply this
is dog eat dog and the survival of the fittest
Everybody fighting for independence, singularly;
Trinidad for instance
But we go get too don't bother
But ah find we should all be together
Not separated as we are
Because of Jamaica
CLR James (1901-1989), the world-renowned Marxist
theoretician (and a big Sparrow fan) was in the
calypso tent that night when Sparrow sang
"Federation" for the very first time. James
commented:
I was in the tent the night he returned and first
sang it. When it became clear what he was saying,
the audience froze. Trinidad had broken with the
Federation. Nobody was saying
anything and the people did not know what to think,
far less what to say. At the end of the last verse
of that first night Sparrow say that something was
wrong and he added loudly:
"I agree with the Doctor"
( James: Party Politics in the West Indies, p. 162).
And of course the Doc agreed with the Sparrow. Being
a shrewd politician, Williams understood the value
of Sparrow's popular appeal as well as his immense
pedagogical powers. Indeed, he acknowledges this in
his autobiography "Inward Hunger: The Education of a
Prime Minister (1969), where he writes that Sparrow
was often the person who "summed up" public feeling.
Williams would return to Sparrow's role as public
intellectual in a 1980 letter sent to the
calypsonian on the occasion of the 25th anniversary
in the calypso business. In that note, carried in
the Trinidad Express newspaper for January 6, 1980,
Williams allowed that Sparrow had come
to his assistance with the song "Leave the Dam
Doctor".
THE COMING OF THE SPARROW
Sparrow's rise to fame was not driven by good luck,
good looks or the singer's rare magnetism.
Furthermore, Sparrow's ascent to calypso fame and
fortune did not begin in 1955, when he went into the
tent (for the first time) to sing "High Cost of
Living" and "Race Track" and was introduced by MC
"Viking" in the following manner:
"Ladies and Gentleman
It have a young feller here who say he could sing
So I will bring him on stage.
If you think he good, clap.
Well, you know what to do if he ent good"
Sparrow took the stage and brought the house down.
It is not possible to pinpoint the moment of
Sparrow's self-conscious take off, but the year 1948
remains utterly crucial. In 1948, Slinger Francisco
(Sparrow) was merely 13 years old. He was at the
time a student at the New Town man Catholic Boys
School on Maraval Road. He was member of the
school's choir. He was an altar boy, too. Slinger
loved to sing, something he took
from his mother Clarissa- and so he was a fixture in
the school's Friday concerts. But week after week
the young man will sing the same song: "Red River
Valley". He was a quite popular kid,
but just about everyone had had it with "Red River
Valley”.
In the wake of all the gossiping, Slinger decided to
put the school's moral code to the test. He walked
up to Teacher Carl (Jagnauth) and said: Sir, Ah
could sing calypso? And before Teacher Carl could
answer, Slinger was on the stage singing a Lord
Invader song:
"Before the landing of the Yankees
Everything I give me wife
She never displeased"......
A hush fell upon the assembled teachers and
students. Everyone was afraid to talk. This was a
Catholic school. A calypso free zone and the young
feller sang a calypso! Was this puerile innocence,
or was it manish rebellion?
END OF PART 1 |
