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Thursday, January 23, 2025

Another loss to calypso

by

1546 days ago
20201030
Editorial

Editorial

From to­day, ca­lyp­so afi­ciona­dos will be able to vis­it the Caribbean Wax Mu­se­um in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos, to see a life-like wax fig­ure of the Ca­lyp­so King of the World, the Mighty Spar­row (Slinger Fran­cis­co).

It is on­ly fit­ting that the man who was made an in­deli­ble mark on the cul­tur­al and mu­si­cal land­scape of T&T and the wider Caribbean should be im­mor­talised. Here in T&T, the place he has called home for most of his 85 years, Spar­row’s stat­ue holds a place of promi­nence at the St Ann’s Round­about and is one of the sig­nif­i­cant land­marks around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah

In his birth­place in Grand Roy, Grena­da, a plaque cel­e­brates him as a son of the soil.

Now he gets to take his place among the many Caribbean icons fea­tured at the re­gion’s on­ly wax mu­se­um. It is an ho­n­our well de­served, made more sig­nif­i­cant by the fact that the un­veil­ing of the Spar­row wax fig­ure is tak­ing place on the penul­ti­mate day of Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month.

That fact was high­light­ed by Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­son­ian Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Broth­er Re­sis­tance (Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba) who said it fit­ted in­to this year’s theme—Ca­lyp­so Be­yond Bound­aries and Bor­ders.

How­ev­er, the joy over this im­mor­tal­iza­tion of the man who gave the world some of the great­est ca­lyp­sos ever writ­ten is tem­pered by the fact that here, in the birth­place of that in­dige­nous mu­si­cal genre, there is not a place to go to see the his­to­ry and de­vel­op­ment of the art form on dis­play.

And as much as Mr Masim­ba and oth­er stew­ards of this el­e­ment of T&T’s cul­ture might want to claim cred­it for keep­ing the mu­sic alive, they should be called to ac­count for the ab­sence of a Ca­lyp­so Mu­se­um or Cen­tre any­where in this coun­try.

Of course, the same ques­tion can be asked of the stake­hold­ers of steel­pan and mas, but ca­lyp­so is the fo­cus to­day be­cause re­cent­ly the world’s great­est pri­vate ca­lyp­so col­lec­tion was sold to a for­eign gov­ern­ment. It is not in T&T’s hands.

T&T-born George D Ma­haraj, a pas­sion­ate ca­lyp­so re­searcher and col­lec­tor, had over many decades amassed a col­lec­tion of more than 5000 orig­i­nal vinyl records as well as videos, pho­tographs, posters, fly­ers and oth­er his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ra­bil­ia. It in­cludes the old­est ca­lyp­so record­ing done in 1912 and, quite nat­u­ral­ly, the mu­sic of Spar­row and oth­er leg­ends of the art form.

But that price­less col­lec­tion now re­sides in an­oth­er coun­try be­cause suc­ces­sive T&T gov­ern­ments showed no in­ter­est in ac­quir­ing the col­lec­tion. Mr Ma­haraj al­so of­fered to do­nate the col­lec­tion to TU­CO and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), but they showed no in­ter­est.

His many of­fers to help cre­ate a ca­lyp­so mu­se­um were al­so ig­nored.

Like the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Cen­tre—a project en­vi­sioned by the late Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning which nev­er saw the light of day—this fail­ure to ac­quire the George Ma­haraj col­lec­tion ex­pos­es how lit­tle T&T cul­ture is val­ued by the very peo­ple who should be pro­tect­ing it.

A dis­ap­point­ing note on which to end the 18th edi­tion of Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month. Just weeks af­ter the pass­ing of cul­tur­al icon Den­nis “Spran­galang” Hall, the art form has suf­fered an­oth­er loss.


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