High philosophy, but grounded in reality and with a deep appreciation of life and the value of one of his Creator’s greatest gifts, discovery and self-expression: “Music fills the world with happiness, sweetness, and togetherness.”
Shadow’s exploration of the created wonders of life, language, the power of music, and its capacity to bring all people together in harmony and to render healing to all in a kind of supernatural, not easily understood and described in this manner: “Old lady, young baby, everybody could Dingolay”—dance with a sense of abandonment to the sweetness of the music.
Yet through Shadow’s own deep other-worldliness, the listener-participant to the music cannot be an indifferent spectator to the Dingolay, as you may find a kind of, not exactly melancholy, but a simmering spirit deep down as you soak yourself in the music; maybe it’s his latent sad mystique so obvious in his look, his dance motions not classical, smooth, not a wine-down-de-place gyration, but rather his manner of representing himself as “De Dread” who was compelled to stay with the music planted in his head by “Uncle Farrell de Bassman from Hell”.
What a tragedy that would have been if Winston had returned to Les Coteaux to plant peas!
In the approach to Calypso History Month, I have selected one of the most profound, moving, and melodious calypsos of all time, composed and sung by the one-of-a-kind, never to be repeated by a calypsonian of any era, the Mighty Shadow—Winston Bailey, a calypsonian who has probed our senses, our capacity for love and life, and at the same time our inhumanity, the inequities of life—”Poverty is Hell”, high philosophy in his search to understand “What is Life”—”Dig de Trees, they grow big and tall only to be cut down ...”
In “Dingolay”, Shadow gives us an appreciation of the beautiful gift from “the One who created music … Music fills the world with happiness, sweetness and togetherness; Music have no friend no enemy … everybody could dingolay ... dingolay … dinglolay, even if yuh shoe busup, or your clothes tear up, yuh could dingolay …”
I returned recently, as I have on countless occasions before, to the video of him coming on stage at a live performance. He emerges from the darkened background, perhaps at the playground of the Bassman From Hell, completely enveloped in a spirit, his typical strut enchanting and puzzling at the same time, reflecting his desire to leggo the dingolay on adherents to his faith and anyone else wanting to get on board.
“Old lady, young baby, everybody could Dingolay” to free themselves from whatever the hindrances posed by life.
The cutaways in the video fit exactly those “dingolayers” wrenched from social respectability. I make those observations as the expressing audience celebrates freedom from the drudgery to a new field of existence: “Music in the atmosphere, music is everywhere; even in the park ah blind man can find ah melody ... Oh yeah.”
Shadow’s spirit can never be shackled by petty insularity and/or self-interested racial conflict spread for the personal benefits and ambitions of low-life politicians.
The music is typical of Shadow’s heavy bassline while the rhythm section is driving the vibes, the organist plays background and is in the foreground between verses sounding the feeling of melancholy, in fact, the music never leaves you.
“Energy, fantasy” … how and where to look for it …” You don’t have to be a bulldozer to become ah composer ...”
What of this man who came on stage masked and all but unknown, perhaps even reluctant to show his face and disclose his identity? Who was he?
Outside of the obvious, little is known of this Shadow who came into our lives in the 1970s and stayed there for 50 years. The little that is known of him is that he threatened to return to Tobago and pick back up his life by planting garden in his village.
Where did Uncle Farrell get this thing that he gifted to him? What of the deep spirituality of the man, outside of a few notes in a couple of his compositions?
Maybe the shadowy figure he cut came from his country boy upbringing and because of it. Unsure of himself in the world he encountered in Trinidad, he became something of a recluse figure from the bright lights and city living.
Yet he displayed the ability to own and manage a calypso tent across from “Dem Boys Jail” and seemingly his own financial business. Where and how did he find that business acumen coming from a place that did not value highly those elements of life?
He told the story after feeling fully at one with the audience at the Dimanche Gras 1974 that he would be the Calypso King; however, when the judges, whom he threatened when he became more confident, did not award him the recognition, he left the Savannah and ran all the way to his Belmont home to drown out the voices of accommodation and prostration to the acknowledged King, the one so recognised by the values and mores of the society.
We should have explored more deeply this man we never fully sought to understand.
Tony Rakhal-Fraser is a freelance journalist, former reporter/current affairs programme host and News Director at TTT, programme producer/current affairs director at Radio Trinidad, correspondent for the BBC Caribbean Service and the Associated Press, and graduate of UWI, CARIMAC, Mona, and St Augustine Institute of International Relations.