The word ca­lyp­so is a noun that, ac­cord­ing to the Con­cise Ox­ford Dic­tio­nary, "is a kind of West In­di­an mu­sic or song in syn­co­pat­ed African rhythm, typ­i­cal­ly with words im­pro­vised on a trop­i­cal theme."

Ben Co­hen, of Ben and Ger­ry ice cream, used the word ca­lyp­so as an ad­jec­tive– "ca­lyp­so time"–when he ad­dressed the au­di­ence at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Trade and In­vest­ment Fo­rum at the Trinidad Hilton Ho­tel. Sub­se­quent­ly, an ex­pla­na­tion may have been of­fered to the for­eign­ers in the au­di­ence who no doubt would have ac­quaint­ed them­selves with the dic­tio­nary mean­ing of the word.

I shud­der to think what that ex­pla­na­tion might have been. I re­mem­ber well the neg­a­tive con­text in which the term "ca­lyp­so crick­et" was coined by a ri­val and for­mer WI fast bowler and its sub­se­quent us­age by crick­et­ing com­men­ta­tors, es­pe­cial­ly those from Aus­tralia.Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath re­peat­ed the ter­mi­nol­o­gy used by Mr Co­hen as if ac­cept­ing and un­der­stand­ing the con­text in which "ca­lyp­so" was used! He did not take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to of­fer a time­ly cor­rec­tion re­gard­ing the cul­tur­al val­ue of ca­lyp­so to our na­tion.

If a neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion of the word ca­lyp­so is al­lowed to find its way in the Eng­lish lan­guage and West In­di­an lex­i­con, then our cul­tur­al base would im­me­di­ate­ly be­come un­de­sir­able. In fact, it could mean the end of any po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans!I sin­cere­ly hope that the Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism–white hat or not–who was in at­ten­dance at the open­ing ses­sion of the fo­rum will ei­ther ask Mr Bharath to diplo­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect Mr Co­hen or will do so him­self.

John Hen­ry

Pe­tit Val­ley