Michelle Loubon

• Trinidad Ca­lyp­so as Post­mod­ernism in The Di­as­po­ra: Link­ing Rhythms, Lyrics, and the An­ces­tral Spir­its

-Dr Michael Tou­s­saint is a his­to­ry lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine

Tou­s­saint's pa­per ex­am­ines how the Trinidad ca­lyp­so has sought to main­tain its rel­e­vance both to its so­ci­ety and with­in the glob­al mu­si­cal en­vi­ron­ment. Through an ex­am­i­na­tion of its gen­er­al rhyth­mic, lyri­cal, and African-based re­li­gious tenets, the dis­cus­sion seeks to an­swer the ques­tion of how this pri­mar­i­ly African-based mu­si­cal genre has sought to reach out to the wider world while main­tain­ing a re­la­tion­ship with its source com­mu­ni­ty. Against this back­ground, Tou­s­saint ex­am­ined one of ca­lyp­so's more dis­cern­able con­tem­po­rary phe­nom­e­na: a re­turn­ing of the art form to its African roots through the in­cor­po­ra­tion by its artists and per­form­ers of a more pro­nounced lev­el of African an­ces­tral re­li­gios­i­ty with­in the genre.

Ca­lyp­so high­lights so­ci­etal changes

Tou­s­saint's in­ter­est in this sub­ject emerges from three and a half decades of in­volve­ment in Caribbean mu­sic, 27 of those years as a per­former, as well as a decade of teach­ing "African di­as­po­ra" his­to­ry. The crit­i­cal rev­e­la­tion from these ex­pe­ri­ences was the el­e­men­tal sig­nif­i­cance of art forms for se­ri­ous in­ter­ro­ga­tion and ex­pli­ca­tion of so­ci­etal ad­just­ment and trans­for­ma­tion. Mu­si­cal forms, for ex­am­ple, ex­pres­sive­ly mark changes in so­cial di­rec­tion. The ca­lyp­so is one of the most so­cial mu­si­cal art forms and, through its own ad­just­ment and trans­for­ma­tion, high­lights the chang­ing modal­i­ties of the so­ci­eties of the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. Tou­s­saint's fo­cus was on some of the re­cent ad­just­ments of the Trinidad ca­lyp­so, with all the im­pli­ca­tions for an un­der­stand­ing of the evo­lu­tion of both the art form and the so­ci­ety.

Rhythms, Iyrics, and an­ces­tral re­li­gios­i­ty

Of ne­ces­si­ty, Tou­s­saint be­gan from an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of cer­tain fun­da­men­tals con­cern­ing their re­la­tion­ship: first­ly, that ca­lyp­so has de­vel­oped as a pri­mar­i­ly Afro-based mu­si­cal genre; sec­ond­ly, that it was sig­nif­i­cant­ly sus­tained through the in­volve­ment of this group. These are an­thro­po­log­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions: he claimed his was not a lit­er­ary fo­cus on the genre, but an ex­cur­sion in­to its eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gy. Tou­s­saint sought to ex­plore the Trinidad ca­lyp­so as it ex­ists, by bring­ing to­geth­er three of the el­e­ments through which it con­tin­ues to main­tain its so­cial rel­e­vance: rhythms, lyrics, and an­ces­tral re­li­gios­i­ty.

Post­mod­ernism Ca­lyp­so: World mu­sic

Ca­lyp­so is to­day a genre far more ap­pre­ci­at­ed be­fore. The re­sponse is wide­spread, in that the art form has man­aged to reach the imag­i­na­tion of a greater cross-sec­tion of the so­ci­ety at home, and in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence. This "ar­rival" of ca­lyp­so at home and abroad con­tributes to its post­mod­ern ex­pe­ri­ence. There was the dis­man­tling of old con­cepts about the su­pe­ri­or­i­ty of West­ern cul­ture. At an­oth­er lev­el, the spread of ca­lyp­so across the At­lantic was al­so the re­sult of an ad­just­ment of its form to meet mar­ket de­mands.

That was re­ferred to as "world mu­sic". It is al­so an in­di­ca­tion that it is among many oth­er forms oc­cu­py­ing the pe­riph­ery, and such am­biva­lence caus­es the art form to de­pend sig­nif­i­cant­ly on its moor­ings al­so. It has had to con­tin­u­ous­ly sus­tain its le­git­i­ma­cy at its source, the Afro-Caribbean, while ne­go­ti­at­ing the world mar­ket, in­clud­ing the an­ces­tral home­land and glob­al African di­as­po­ra. Many is­sues and chal­lenges are in­volved in main­tain­ing Afro-based and glob­al le­git­i­ma­cy, both of which are in­dis­pens­able to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and suc­cess.

The art form must ser­vice a con­stituen­cy which has be­come mul­ti­cul­tur­al, mul­ti-eth­nic, mul­ti­po­lar, and multi­na­tion­al, sat­is­fy­ing even com­pet­ing needs for en­ter­tain­ment, in­for­ma­tion and phi­los­o­phy while at the same time main­tain­ing its core sup­port. To cope with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ments, it must keep in line with do­mes­tic as well as in­ter­na­tion­al mu­si­cal and oth­er trends.

Ca­lyp­so func­tions

Ca­lyp­so per­forms a num­ber of key func­tions of which the ca­lyp­son­ian is con­scious and which serve as mo­ti­va­tion, al­though the needs of in­di­vid­ual per­form­ers vary. The pro­vi­sion of en­ter­tain­ment and the prof­fer­ing of one's self as a voice on be­half of the peo­ple, and as "grand vizier" have tra­di­tion­al­ly been im­por­tant. The genre, there­fore, be­comes the com­mu­nica­tive medi­um for de­liv­er­ing on all these re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, but places nu­mer­ous iden­ti­ty is­sues and chal­lenges be­fore the per­form­ers. When ca­lyp­so­ni­ans per­form, they ex­hib­it their no­tions about iden­ti­ty and con­scious­ness.

Ca­lyp­so and the mass­es: The lyri­cal ba­sis of pop­u­lar­i­ty

Ca­lyp­so could on­ly be re­gard­ed as pop­u­lar mu­sic. It is pitched at the lev­el of the mass­es and has hard­ly ever been or­gan­ised or struc­tured to fa­cil­i­tate a pri­mar­i­ly es­o­teric or clois­tered group. It has re­mained pop­u­lar be­cause of the needs that it sat­is­fies, and, is, there­fore, based on reci­procity with the mass­es. The re­la­tion can be im­me­di­ate, oc­cur­ring, for ex­am­ple, dur­ing a per­for­mance or ren­di­tion, or, over a longer term, through re­play and re­call. The mu­sic thrives on the ex­plo­ration of the range of so­cial themes that can bring the peo­ple and per­form­ers in­to in­ter­ac­tion.

Dur­ing live per­for­mances, "call and re­sponse" be­tween the per­former and au­di­ence is the nat­ur­al mode of in­ter­ac­tion. That ca­lyp­so can ad­dress any mat­ter is im­plied in the so­cial con­ven­tion which al­most al­ways per­mits the artist to sing on "who­ev­er" or "what­ev­er."

Dis­cuss­es so­cio-po­lit­i­cal is­sues

Songs of lo­cal or do­mes­tic sig­nif­i­cance treat with po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ments, so­cial con­scious­ness, race-based is­sues, and mat­ters per­ti­nent to na­tion-build­ing. Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans of­ten veer in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al realm, fo­cus­ing on glob­al is­sues and themes. Again, there are neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive por­trai­tures. The for­mer as­sails war, su­per-pow­er ex­ploita­tion, and hu­man degra­da­tion. It al­so ridicules elit­ism and ques­tions the fu­ture of man. Pos­i­tive ap­prais­ing hails hu­man achieve­ments in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, as well as per­son­al achieve­ments through which all of mankind al­so ben­e­fits. But ca­lyp­so al­so asks meta­phys­i­cal, and tele­o­log­i­cal ques­tions, and its re­la­tions with the faith-based as­pects of life are a gauge of the re­li­gious ori­en­ta­tion of the so­ci­ety.

Ad­vent of gospe­lyp­so

By Chris­t­ian stan­dards, the ca­lyp­so was ini­tial­ly re­gard­ed as dev­il mu­sic, par­tic­u­lar­ly by Chris­ten­dom of the British Caribbean so­ci­ety and be­gin­ning in Trinidad and To­ba­go with the Ro­man Catholic and lat­er the An­gli­can and non­con­formist church­es in suc­ces­sion. To­day, how­ev­er, there is more wide­spread ac­cep­tance, and a par­tic­u­lar form, gospe­lyp­so, has emerged in some lo­cal non-con­formist de­nom­i­na­tions. It is sim­i­lar to vin­tage kaiso and so­ca, ex­cept its lyrics fo­cus on Chris­t­ian con­ver­sion and the good news of re­demp­tion. Gospe­lyp­so, is there­fore, a new type of praise song.

Afro-con­scious­ness emerges

Afro-con­scious­ness in ca­lyp­so mu­sic makes pos­i­tive ref­er­ences to, and at times strong­ly iden­ti­fies with the caus­es of the an­ces­tral home­land and the di­as­po­ra, al­though in the past there were neg­a­tive ideas about the su­per­nat­ur­al, which, through an as­so­ci­a­tion with obeah and witch­craft, was ridiculed in hu­mor­ous ca­lyp­soes. There­fore, while there have al­ways been man­i­fes­ta­tions of re­li­gious con­scious­ness, it has not al­ways been easy to de­ter­mine what lev­el of re­li­gios­i­ty.

Re­search in African lit­er­a­tures

Long be­fore the ar­rival of gospe­lyp­so, Rasta­fari ca­lyp­so­ni­ans were ex­tolling, as they do now, the Afro-Zion­ism of Broth­er Valenti­no. Rasta­far­i­an­ism is, how­ev­er, sig­nif­i­cant­ly syn­cret­ic with Chris­tian­i­ty. And yet, the fo­cus on Ethiopia can take be­liev­ers back re­li­gious­ly to an an­ces­tral African view and cos­mogony that an­te­dates Judeo-Chris­tian­i­ty. Still, there was a freer and nor­ma­tive af­fir­ma­tion of Chris­t­ian re­li­gios­i­ty in the so­ci­ety com­pared to the treat­ment met­ed out to oth­er faiths.

Wak­en­ing the an­ces­tral spir­its

Much am­bi­gu­i­ty sur­rounds the ori­en­ta­tion of many who are now open­ly af­firm­ing African re­li­gios­i­ty in the form of Or­isha. As part of this, the Trinidad ca­lyp­so is now speak­ing to African re­li­gios­i­ty through a fuller em­brace of the Or­isha by a num­ber of pop­u­lar per­form­ers. The new de­par­ture is par­tic­u­lar­ly telling, the as­sertive ap­proach be­ing adopt­ed by some of these artists.

An­dre Tanker and David Rud­der were among the first to sig­nif­i­cant­ly bring to the pub­lic do­main their close as­so­ci­a­tion with this re­li­gious faith. Tanker spoke of­ten about the in­flu­ence of the Or­isha on his mu­sic. He opened up his un­der­stand­ing of Africa, the world and life, with strong an­ces­tral rhythms and rev­er­ence for Africa in his songs. In Bahia, David Rud­der us­es his en­counter with a tal­ent­ed Brazil­ian fe­male dancer to at­ten­tion to the con­nec­tions be­tween Sal­sa and Rhum­ba, and Trinidad. But the con­nec­tion is soon ex­tend­ed be­yond the mu­sic in­to the realm of re­li­gios­i­ty and across the West African di­as­po­ra through Rud­der's al­lu­sion to "Yoru­ba's an­cient holy city."

In the ca­lyp­so, Rud­der would draw her at­ten­tion Trinidad's mu­sic cul­ture: "In Trinidad and To­ba­go we have the same vi­bra­tion." He in turn recog­nis­es a glob­al di­as­poric cul­ture, at­tribut­ing this to com­mon re­li­gious roots: "Ile Ile If e, she make me to un­der­stand" (Rud­der). In a sub­se­quent in­ter­view, he dis­cussed his fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the Shango Bap­tist faith and its in­flu­ence on the mu­sic. There is an eas­i­ness and ea­ger­ness which be­lies the sub­ju­ga­tion and abuse his­tor­i­cal­ly ex­pe­ri­enced by those who took it up­on them­selves to be close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the Or­isha/ Shango Bap­tist faith.

Con­clu­sion African rhythms in­flu­ence ca­lyp­so

Tou­ss­saint said: "We (T&T) are cur­rent­ly wit­ness­ing an un­prece­dent­ed lev­el of Or­isha re­li­gios­i­ty in the Trinidad ca­lyp­so. African con­scious­ness has al­ways been in­trin­sic to the mu­sic, and pos­i­tive ref­er­ences to Africa and the di­as­po­ra have al­ways formed part of the ex­pres­sion.

"African rhythms root­ed in an­ces­tral re­li­gious tra­di­tion have al­ways in­flu­enced the mu­sic. How­ev­er, in the al­most 100 years of record­ed ca­lyp­so Trinidad, noth­ing in its reper­toire ap­proach­es to­day's strong af­fir­ma­tion in re­li­gios­i­ty across the di­as­po­ra and the world com­mu­ni­ty. "Those fa­mil­iar with the his­to­ry of Trinidad will know that for cen­turies the Or­isha/Shango faith op­er­at­ed in an en­vi­ron­ment of racial prej­u­dice, taboo and sus­pi­cion. Tou­s­saint not­ed that in at­tempt­ing to take the mu­sic for­ward, some among its key pro­po­nents are seek­ing to strength­en the spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tions be­tween the an­ces­tor­land and the di­as­po­ra. Ca­lyp­so con­tin­ues to pur­sue glob­al­i­sa­tion through con­sol­i­da­tion of its le­git­i­ma­cy at its an­ces­tral source. Giv­en this, ca­lyp­so lyrics of­fer neg­a­tive or pos­i­tive ap­praisals, or both.

"A negat­ing ap­praisal de­rives its strength from the cur­ren­cy of the sit­u­a­tion and, like pos­i­tive ones, en­gages the so­ci­ety in terms of moral­i­ty and log­ic. Some lyrics fo­cus al­most en­tire­ly on pro­vid­ing hu­mour, form­ing sense from non­sense and vice ver­sa."