Cherisse Moe
Someone pelted a bottle while Sparrow was singing at a Students’ Union event at UWI’s Mona campus in Jamaica in the early 1970s, during a violent, volatile period.
Dr Tim Gopeesingh was there.
Asked about his favourite calypso and the lines he still enjoys, he starts with that night.
“Hearing the crash, Sparrow ran offstage for his safety and never returned, much to our disappointment,” Gopeesingh, chairman of the North Central Regional Health Authority (NCRHA), tells Guardian Media.
Gopeesingh has loved the calypsonian’s artistry since childhood.
“In more than 50 years of Carnival participation, some of my best memories are of dancing to his songs on the road and at fetes. I later saw him many times in the tents in the 1980s and early 1990s. He was always phenomenal.”
October is Calypso History Month. It was declared in 2002 by the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians’ Organisation (TUCO), with the intention of remembering and honouring those who contributed to the development of our native music and its place in our culture.
He struggles to name his top pick—Sparrow’s catalogue is that deep—but “Philip My Dear” gets the edge. It recalls the early 1980s incident when a poor man, Michael Fagan, entered Queen Elizabeth II’s bedroom at Buckingham Palace. Gopeesingh was a doctor working in London hospitals while pursuing his medical specialist training at the time. Britain was in an uproar over the high-level security breach.
“Then Sparrow imagined the Queen telling her husband, Prince Philip, what happened. After all that serious British coverage, his Trini take was refreshing and very funny,” he says.
“I particularly enjoy the lines: ‘Yes, this malodorous urchin. On top of my bed was perching. Like a cockatoo.’ That very proper British language followed by such a saucy comparison still makes me laugh. He was such a master of words. We have truly been blessed to have the Birdie. He was a national and regional treasure, and his music will always be part of us.”
Rose remembers a musical giant
Veteran singer Calypso Rose (Linda McArtha Monica Lewis) tells Guardian Media that “Fire in Me Wire” gets her nod, noting its huge international footprint.
“It has now been done in nine different countries and by nine different artistes,” says the 86-year-old. “I like the Spanish verse: “Ven acá, papito, dame mucho agua. Dame un traguito de caña. Oye mi pana. Dame un traguito de ron. Para calentar el corazón. Sube, sube, sube. Fuego en la baranda. Fuego en la cocina. Fuego en la candela”— I learned Spanish in Puerto Rico, where I performed for years when the tourist ships used to come.”
Like Gopeesingh, Rose also singles out the Mighty Sparrow.
“He was the greatest. I walked in his shoes,” she recalls of their days performing together in the Original Young Brigade calypso tent in Trinidad. “When I wrote my first song, ‘Glass Thief,’ in 1955—inspired by a man stealing glasses from a woman in the market—I sang it for Dr Eric Williams, and he told my adopted mother, Edith Robinson, who was from Barataria, that I should be in the tent. That was history.”
Calypso crosses generations
Reigning Monarch Terri Lyons, who presented Rose with the Elite Calypso Award at the recent Caribbean Music Awards, has been flying the red, white and black around the world for years, representing the indigenous genre.
She shares that Black Stalin’s “We Go Make It If We Try” tops her list.
“One of the verses I really like is ‘in Trinidad we don’t party how we vote.’ That is very important to show that as much as we may have differences when it comes to politics, when it comes to just living, it’s bare unity.”
While some believe that the art form is struggling for space, today’s young artistes are finding their own cherished selections among the icons whose work has become part of our country’s musical inheritance.
Soca artiste Jahmike “Christo” Bonas chose David Rudder as his ultimate choice, with “The Ganges and the Nile” as his go-to selection.
One particular bar gets him every single time: “‘Does it tell you that your heart is a fire and does it tell you that your pain is a Liar!’ That phrase stood out to me because he speaks about pushing through pain and listening to what’s inside of you,” states the “Doux Doux Darling” singer. “As a rising talent, that message resonates with me.”
The music that speaks to home
Meanwhile, PNM Tobago Council political leader Shamfa Cudjoe-Lewis, who has always been big on culture, loves Black Stalin the most. The tune “Bun Dem” is her ultimate anthem.
Her standout lyric from that song is: “It have some sinners comin, wit dem I go be dealin, because dem tings dat deh do me, I want to fix dem personally.”
If we look around, the history of the genre is everywhere—in the old tracks our parents and grandparents still know word for word, which captured the politics, scandals, humour and everyday life. It is in the melodies that represent people of different races and religions, yet are bound by the same Trinbagonian blood.
