Ray Funk and An­drew Mar­tin

Of all the ear­ly films in­volv­ing ca­lyp­so, Wind­jam­mer is per­haps the strangest and rarest of the lot.

The film was brought to my at­ten­tion by the ca­lyp­son­ian Lord Su­pe­ri­or some years ago. Lord Su­pe­ri­or men­tioned a strange film in which he ap­peared called Chris­t­ian Radich and sug­gest­ed that it was one of the first to fea­ture ca­lyp­so, steel­band, and lim­bo. Chris­t­ian Radich proved to be the name­sake of a Nor­we­gian sail­ing boat and the film he was talk­ing about was the 1958 film Wind­jam­mer.

This unique and lit­tle seen film chron­i­cled the Chris­t­ian Radich's epic 238-day voy­age that be­gan in Oslo and made stops in the is­land of Madeira off the coast of Africa, Puer­to Ri­co, Cu­ra­cao, Trinidad, New York, and Rhode Is­land be­fore go­ing back across the At­lantic to Nor­way.

Wind­jam­mer was a big event at the time and had a large fea­ture-film bud­get be­hind its cre­ation and pro­duc­tion. The movie was pre­miered at Grau­man's Chi­nese The­atre in Hol­ly­wood on April 8, 1958, and played for 36 weeks, fol­lowed by an­oth­er 15 weeks at the Fox The­atre.

Wind­jam­mer was shot us­ing a new tech­no­log­i­cal film for­mat called Cin­e­mir­a­cle and was the on­ly large-screen fea­ture film ever shot in this for­mat. The Cin­e­mir­a­cle process in­volved shoot­ing three rolls of film si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly from one bizarre spe­cial cam­era with three lens­es.

Be­cause of the unique tech­no­log­i­cal needs of Cin­e­mir­a­cle films, Wind­jam­mer had to be shown on spe­cial pro­jec­tion equip­ment. As a re­sult, the film was on­ly screened in a few oth­er the­atres around the Unit­ed States, Ger­many, and Scan­di­navia. Co­lum­bia Records is­sued the film's sound­track as an al­bum in the US, and in Eu­rope and a book was is­sued about the film in sev­er­al lan­guages.

The Cin­e­mir­a­cle film process nev­er caught on in Hol­ly­wood and Wind­jam­mer dis­ap­peared from pop­u­lar view short­ly af­ter its pre­miere and has on­ly been shown a cou­ple times since.

Among film col­lec­tors, an al­most un­watch­able ver­sion of the film made from a con­ver­sion of the Cin­e­mir­a­cle for­mat has cir­cu­lat­ed for sev­er­al decades.

How­ev­er, re­cent­ly the Amer­i­can film restora­tion com­pa­ny Flick­er Al­ley (best known for its work restor­ing the great films of French di­rec­tor George Melies) has re­stored Wind­jam­mer and rere­leased the film. The box set fea­tures all the ex­tras one could pos­si­bly want, in­clud­ing two sep­a­rate hour-long doc­u­men­taries on the film it­self and an­oth­er on the film's restora­tion process.

The scenes in Wind­jam­mer filmed in Trinidad of­fer a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse in­to the ear­ly de­vel­op­ments of ca­lyp­so and steel­band and are not to be missed. The Trinidad por­tion be­gins and ends with scenes that fea­ture the steel­bands Boys­town from Care­nage and Sil­ver­tones from Bel­mont–both of which no longer ex­ist.

The Trinidad scenes takes place over the course of a dozen or so days while the ship was docked in Trinidad.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, Wind­jam­mer of­fers one of the first de­tailed film­ing of Trinida­di­an steel­band per­for­mance known to ex­ist any­where. The scenes in­clude a dance on the docks next to the boat, a steel­band per­form­ing pan-around-the-neck march­ing down the streets in what ap­pears to be Laven­tille Hill, and mul­ti­ple scenes of steel­bands per­form­ing on the Chris­t­ian Radich it­self.

The two "ca­lyp­soes" found in Wind­jam­mer are per­formed by a ca­lyp­so cho­rus fea­tur­ing Lord Su­pe­ri­or, Viper, Skip­per, Al Thomas, and the March of Dimes. Bizarrely, the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans were not al­lowed to sing re­al ca­lyp­soes; rather, they were rel­e­gat­ed to singing two songs writ­ten in a fake ca­lyp­so style by an Amer­i­can folk trio called the Easy Rid­ers.

Pop­u­lar among Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­ers, the Easy Rid­ers scored a top-ten hit sin­gle in the Unit­ed States for their re-write of the fa­mous ca­lyp­so Mary Ann. Hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly adapt­ed one ca­lyp­so for Amer­i­can au­di­ences, pro­duc­ers en­vi­sioned that for Wind­jam­mer The Easy Rid­ers should be flown down to Trinidad to teach re­al ca­lyp­so­ni­ans their fake ca­lyp­soes. Here then we see The Easy Rid­ers per­form­ing Sug­ar Cane and their lat­est sin­gle Don't Hur­ry Wor­ry Me with a Trinida­di­an cho­rus singing on the dock. The scene in­volv­ing Sug­ar Cane is fur­ther paired with im­ages of young Nor­we­gian sailors eat­ing raw sug­ar cane in a cane field dur­ing har­vest time.

On board the ship, guests were en­ter­tained by a small mas band list­ed in the cred­its as Pe­ter Rapsey's Ocean Ex­trav­a­gan­za Group. Sev­er­al band mem­bers were wear­ing huge fish heads, and there was a Nep­tune com­plete with tri­dent, and young women in­side scal­lop shells. Wind­jam­mer al­so in­cludes footage of lim­bo danc­ing fea­tur­ing the group of Hen­ry Trim Ju­nior.

Along with Fire Down Be­low (1957) and Is­land in the Sun (1958) this was one of the ear­li­est film de­pic­tions of lim­bo danc­ing.

Of those three, it was the on­ly one filmed in Trinidad.

Is­land in the Sun was shot in Grena­da and for Fire Down Be­low the lim­bo danc­ing by Stretch Cox and Ju­lia Ed­wards was shot in Eng­land af­ter the main film­ing in Trinidad.

Giv­en the need for spe­cial movie pro­jec­tors, the movie nev­er made it to Trinidad in 1958.

Now, how­ev­er, Wind­jam­mer is read­i­ly avail­able on Ama­zon.com. While oth­er­wise a strange and dat­ed film, Wind­jam­mer of­fers some of the first film of pan, ca­lyp­so, mas and lim­bo, and is in­deed an im­por­tant doc­u­men­ta­tion of Trinidad's mu­si­cal and cul­tur­al his­to­ry.

Car­ni­val his­to­ri­an Ray Funk is pre­sent­ing a talk on the his­to­ry of Car­ni­val arts on film with rare clips tonight at Nalis, Port-of-Spain, at 7 pm.

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