Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

"San­ta tief ah big man from St James and tie him like ah cow in Mor­vant; sun and rain wet­ting de man and he cyah get away, poor fel­la...." King Solomon–Samuel Ryan

This col­umn is in ho­n­our of the "Ari­ma Kid"–Hol­ly Be­taudi­er, who taught us to ap­pre­ci­ate our cul­tur­al/artis­tic cre­ations; es­sen­tial­ly, our val­ue as cre­ative hu­man be­ings. This ca­lyp­so is con­nect­ed to the navel string of the cul­ture, and told with deep in­sight, pathos, tra­gi-com­e­dy, farce, tit­il­lat­ing dou­ble en­ten­dre and with use of the folk lan­guage in a man­ner of the great bards of lit­er­a­ture.

Hol­ly taught us to recog­nise these and more fea­tures of the ca­lyp­so and its pow­er.

The lat­ter part of that lin­ger­ing cho­rus line that has res­onat­ed at Best Vil­lage for decades, is sung with a kind of pathos, a res­ig­na­tion forced up­on "de big man from St James" to a fate pre­des­tined for him. Com­pos­er of that clas­sic piece of sto­ry­telling in kaiso–which I fre­quent­ly use as an ex­am­ple to young re­porters of great sto­ry­telling, char­ac­ter cre­ation and more–King Solomon, nev­er both­ers to give a name to this "big man from St James".

Maybe he was not wor­thy of a name; or maybe King "So­lo", who was quite a char­ac­ter him­self, want­ed him to be a name­less rep­re­sen­ta­tive of all "big men" who fall prey to the ca­pac­i­ties and wiles of a pow­er­ful woman like San­ta. I have nev­er been able to work out why the name "San­ta", why not Emel­da or Gertrude or one of the oth­ers pop­u­lar at that time?

Set in the late 1950s, the sto­ry be­gins with a po­lice­man go­ing on a mis­sion to ar­rest and charge a woman for an un­usu­al crime–steal­ing a man. But the po­lice­man, seem­ing­ly feel­ing the pow­er of San­ta, and or think­ing it ridicu­lous for a "big man" to be cap­tured in such cir­cum­stances, adopts a mea­sure of def­er­ence, even apol­o­gy, when faced with San­ta.

"Good morn­ing, Miss San­ta liv­ing here?" Im­me­di­ate­ly the re­ply comes with as­sur­ance and bold­ness and with a tinge of ir­ri­ta­tion from San­ta. "Yes, yes is me." Con­tin­u­ing his def­er­en­tial tone, the po­lice of­fi­cer in­forms San­ta of his mis­sion: "Look ah woman from St James re­port to me dat you tief she man from she, and as ah po­lice is my bound­ing (word boy!) du­ty to charge you for lar­ce­ny."

In his un­der­tone, the of­fi­cer is say­ing I would have pre­ferred not to make out a case against you, maybe it's too ridicu­lous a charge or too de­mean­ing to man­hood for ah woman to tief a man; but as an of­fi­cer of the law I don't have a choice.

Hav­ing laid out per­fect­ly the core of the sto­ry in the first stan­za, in his sec­ond stan­za, King Solomon fol­lows (he is not lead­ing her) San­ta to the mag­is­trate's court. And in keep­ing with her bold­ness, San­ta pleads guilty not wast­ing the court's time. She of­fers a ra­tio­nale for her ac­tions of "tief­ing" the big man from St James in a bold and dis­mis­sive state­ment: "Ah pick up this man last Fri­day be­cause he say he ain't got no­body, but when ah find out he so stu­pidy, ah cut de rope he shoul­da gone ahready."

And with ut­ter con­tempt for the man, who from town, St James, and she from Mor­vant, coun­try at that time, San­ta is done with her case to the mag­is­trate, sure that she will be freed from so ab­surd a charge of lar­ce­ny.

In the third verse to tell his side of the sto­ry to the mag­is­trate, the name­less man of weak char­ac­ter and ques­tion­able size ("Big man from St James ... don't know what was be­ing mea­sured, char­ac­ter or oth­er prop­er­ties) says, and with­out con­tes­ta­tion: "San­ta tell me dat ah have a light on me and come up Mor­vant she could bathe me; af­ter de bath she gave me ah butt and from then ah doh know meh head from meh foot; San­ta tief...." What glo­ri­ous, if even in­el­e­gant and grov­el­ing sub­mis­sion by this Big Man from St James.

Flood­ing my mind are the im­ages of those large and pow­er­ful Bap­tist women who held cor­ner meet­ings on Fri­day nights in and around the city in the 1950s/1960s. As the Spir­it moved, the "Moth­er Leader" (San­ta) would latch on to some poor suf­fer­ing man on the pave­ment and de­liv­er a cou­ple shoul­der bounces to him, shake him (as if shak­ing out the spir­it-light) and ring de bell to the four cor­ners. Case close!

Against that back­ground, King Solomon places the name­less Big Man from St James on the stand to say his piece in the con­clud­ing verse of the ca­lyp­so.

"De court start to sigh like if all ah dem in pain, some say she ad­dle (word boy So­lo) de man brain," as the mag­is­trate dis­plays a mea­sure of im­pa­tience with the slow­ness of the re­ac­tion of the man and in­quires of the big man: "What you want me to do be­fore pass­ing sen­tence on San­ta ... I am wait­ing on you."

The Big Man, now al­most on his hands and knees, says: "San­ta tie me in Mor­vant so long ah get ac­cus­tom to de grass on the ground, butt�for-butt ah go­ing back dey be­cause ah re­al­ly can't get away, yuh see! San­ta tief...."

Hol­ly must have put King Solomon on stage at some time; farewell my teacher.