Nass­er Khan

As Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brates Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month, there is no bet­ter way to be­gin the ob­ser­vance than by pay­ing trib­ute to the “Ca­lyp­so King of the World” Slinger Fran­cis­co - the Mighty Spar­row - who was large­ly re­gard­ed as giv­ing the art­form in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal and tak­ing it fur­ther on the glob­al stage.

“Every year some­body dear

Give us cause to shed a tear

And mourn for they are gone

Now all that's left is a faint mem­o­ry

Based on the theme of a strange melody

Still we must think of them

And re­call their im­age with pride

Telling peo­ple from deep in­side

This is ded­i­cat­ed to those

who died …”

1974 ca­lyp­so Mem­o­ries by the Mighty Spar­row.

“Mem­o­ries”…and so be­gan one of the Mighty Spar­row’s hun­dreds of record­ed ca­lyp­soes, telling our sto­ries on every imag­in­able top­ic, from cul­ture and folk­lore, na­tion­al pride, pol­i­tics, love, scan­dal and bac­cha­nal to crick­et.

Now we are left not with a faint mem­o­ry but mem­o­ries of a true su­per­star with an un­matched vo­cal range. Few can tru­ly be de­scribed as Great in their field of en­deav­our but such can un­doubt­ed­ly be as­cribed to the leg­endary Mighty Spar­row, the Ca­lyp­so King of the World no less.

A true Caribbean man, his pass­ing has left the world with a void that will be hard to fill. One can re­al­ly on­ly skim the sur­face as to who and what The Mighty Spar­row has meant to gen­er­a­tions of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, the Caribbean and the glob­al di­as­po­ra. Trib­utes no doubt will con­tin­ue for a long time.

Known fond­ly to all as Spar­row, the Mighty Spar­row, Birdie and the Ca­lyp­so King of the world, Grena­di­an-born, the young Slinger was brought to Trinidad as a mere tod­dler. He was first ex­posed to mu­sic through his school choir and, with the en­cour­age­ment of his pri­ma­ry school­mas­ter at New­town Boys, Carl Jadunath, per­formed at his week­ly school con­certs. By the age of 14, he had joined a steel band in his neigh­bour­hood and con­tin­ued to per­form.

In his long and il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer, Spar­row won both the Road March and Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion eight times each and along with Lord Kitch­en­er (Ald­wyn Roberts, 1922-2000), he ruled the ca­lyp­so world dur­ing the 1960s and 1970s es­pe­cial­ly. Among the many awards he has re­ceived were:

1969 Hum­ming Bird Medal Sil­ver; 1987 Hon­orary Doc­tor­ate of Let­ters, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies;1993 Cha­co­nia Medal Gold; 2001 Or­der of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty; 2002 Mar­cus Gar­vey Life­time Achieve­ment Award, Jamer­i­can Film and Mu­sic Fes­ti­val; 2006 Bol­ly­wood Mu­sic Award (Spe­cial Achieve­ment for Out­stand­ing Con­tri­bu­tion to Glob­al Mu­sic); 2014 Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, ORTT; 2015 Of­fi­cer of the Most Ex­cel­lent Or­der of the British Em­pire, OBE

Among his im­mor­tal clas­sics in his ex­ten­sive reper­toire are Jean and Di­nah, Ed­u­ca­tion, Slave, Mae Mae, Sa Sa Yea, Mod­el Na­tion, Mem­o­ries, Good Cit­i­zen, Ed­u­ca­tion, Mr Walk­er, Sir Garfield Sobers, Fed­er­a­tion, Maria, Doh Back Back, Drunk and Dis­or­der­ly, Ly­ing Ex­cus­es, Age is Just a Num­ber, We Like it So, Pay as You Earn, The Lizard, Salt Fish, Obeah Wed­ding, Con­go Man, Mara­jhin…and so many more.

As the re­gion con­tin­ues to strug­gle on true re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion (Fed­er­a­tion, Carif­ta, etc.), one on his clas­sics that res­onates to­day is Fed­er­a­tion (1958-9). De­spite his be­moan­ing Ja­maica’s de­ci­sion to with­draw from the Fed­er­a­tion (see some lyrics be­low), it was in lat­er years that he and the late Ja­maican By­ron Lee formed a very suc­cess­ful mu­si­cal part­ner­ship, which showed on a dif­fer­ent lev­el the ben­e­fits and syn­er­gies that true in­te­gra­tion can ac­com­plish:

“Peo­ple want to know why Ja­maica run from the Fed­er­a­tion

Well, they want to know why Ja­maica run away from the Fed­er­a­tion

Ja­maica have a right to speak she mind, that is my opin­ion

And if you be­lieve in democ­ra­cy, you'll agree with me.

But if they know they didn't want Fed­er­a­tion

And they know they don't want to unite as one

In­de­pen­dence was at the door, why didn't they speak be­fore

This is no time to say you eh fed­er­at­ing no more.

When they didn't get the cap­i­tal site, that near­ly cause big fight

When Sir Grant­ley Adams took up his post, that even made things worse

They bawl­ing, We ent want no Ba­jan pre­mier!”

This writer be­lieves that he would have tran­scend­ed race, colour and oth­er prej­u­dices and might have been even greater than Frank Sina­tra had he been born and raised in the USA; such was his tal­ent and vo­cal range.

Maybe all ca­lyp­so and steel­band com­pe­ti­tions for 2027 should be Spar­row-themed?

Rest in eter­nal peace, sir; you have tru­ly cap­tured our sto­ries in ca­lyp­so. For that, you will for­ev­er be in our “mem­o­ries”.

Nass­er Khan, HBM, is the au­thor of the book “Pro­files He­roes, Pi­o­neers & Role Mod­els of Trinidad & To­ba­go, Cel­e­brat­ing our 60 Years of In­de­pen­dence, 1962-2022” fea­tur­ing over 400 Trin­bag­o­ni­ans in over 20 ar­eas of hu­man en­deav­our, in­clud­ing The Mighty Spar­row. It can be freely ac­cessed on­line at https://epub.sa­faripub­li­ca­tions.com/firstc­i­t­i­zen­stt/pro­files/2/