Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

Slinger Fran­cis­co’s ad­di­tion of qual­i­ty to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment was ahead not on­ly of oth­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, but al­so be­yond the ar­tic­u­la­tion of groups of so­cial sci­en­tists, politi­cians, and gov­ern­ments. He picked up the theme ex­pressed by PM Dr Er­ic Williams at In­de­pen­dence: “The fu­ture of the na­tion is in the school bags of our chil­dren.”

“Ed­u­ca­tion, ed­u­ca­tion-this is the foun­da­tion … to be recog­nised any­where you go, to have your cer­tifi­cates to show ... to en­joy any kind of hap­pi­ness, knowl­edge is the key to suc­cess. Chil­dren go to school and learn well; oth­er­wise, lat­er on in life yuh go ketch re­al hell. With­out an ed­u­ca­tion in your head, your whole life is pure mis­ery, yuh bet­ter off dead ...”

The to­tal­i­ty of the lyrics, and the un­der­ly­ing ob­jec­tives of that ca­lyp­so are even more rel­e­vant to­day than when Spar­row sang them 50-plus years ago.

The bard, how­ev­er, did not ac­cept for him­self what he con­sid­ered the colo­nial ed­u­ca­tion as pre­sent­ed in the pri­ma­ry school text­books pro­duced by the British ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cial in T&T at the time, J O Cut­teridge. For Spar­row, it was an­ti-ed­u­ca­tion, de­void of re­al­i­ty and in­ca­pable of en­gag­ing his own think­ing ca­pac­i­ty: “How I hap­pen to get some ed­u­ca­tion, me ent know, all they teach me was about Br­er Rab­bit and Rumpel­stil­ski­no. They want­ed to keep me down in­deed, they try their best but did not suc­ceed, yuh see, meh head was dun­cy and up to now ah can’t read,” Spar­row in the genre of ca­lyp­so mim­ic­ry and ridicule. His­to­ri­an Michael An­tho­ny wrote that Spar­row was too harsh and un­fair to Cut­teridge.

Spar­row’s own ca­reer rep­re­sents a man high­ly ed­u­cat­ed in the ways of the world, and in his own abil­i­ty to pro­pel him­self over the many hur­dles he faced in life.

The bard en­gaged for him­self a path for­ward be­yond what was pre­vi­ous­ly achieved by the gen­er­a­tions of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans who, be­fore him, set­tled for ac­com­mo­da­tion with­in the sta­tus quo, ie, ca­lyp­so­ni­ans singing for a drink of rum and two shillings: “No dogs and ca­lyp­so­ni­ans in here,” a sign at the door of a ho­tel.

Trav­el­ling to the USA with his col­league, Lord Melody, who went there to find Har­ry Be­la­fonte, the in­ter­preter to the world of Melody’s com­po­si­tions: “Ma­ma Look ah Boo Boo,” and “Sweet­heart from Venezuela”. “I want­ed Be­la­fonte to in­tro­duce me to the right peo­ple in en­ter­tain­ment,” said Birdie about his mis­sion.

Spar­row was sure­ly not the first ca­lyp­son­ian to take the ca­lyp­so as a form to the US, Cana­da, Eng­land, and through­out the Caribbean. But in per­form­ing in his sig­na­ture en­gag­ing man­ner, he opened op­por­tu­ni­ties not on­ly for him­self but al­so for gen­er­a­tions of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans who fol­lowed. He took the ca­lyp­so back to Africa in an ex­pand­ed form, and was hailed as Chief Omo Wale of Ikoyi by the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Nige­ria.

King David Rud­der (if Spar­row deems him so, is so) marks the spot of Spar­row fol­low­ing the likes of Li­on, Ex­ecu­tor, Kitch­en­er, Be­gin­ner and Ter­ror in Britain, along with “Fitzroy Cole­man fin­gers danc­ing on the fret; Carnegie Hall graced by the pres­ence of Spar­row, oh ho, ho, and when Slinger done with dey tail, they shout­ing don’t go, Spar­row don’t go ... Ca­lyp­so!”

Log­i­cal­ly, and prag­mat­i­cal­ly, giv­en his con­tact with the Unit­ed States ear­ly in his ca­reer and life, trav­el­ling to Amer­i­ca, reg­u­lar­ly singing to the Tri­ni and Caribbean Di­as­po­ra, and hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced the ap­petite of Amer­i­cans for en­ter­tain­ment, Birdie ex­pressed in a cou­ple of sig­nif­i­cant ca­lyp­sos his ide­o­log­i­cal sup­port for the USA and, by ex­ten­sion, West­ern po­lit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy in com­pe­ti­tion against the So­vi­et Union bloc.

“Ah say to tun them ships in the op­po­si­tion di­rec­tion, Kennedy is the man for them,” was Spar­row’s re­sponse to the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis (1962) when the So­vi­et Union un­der Pres­i­dent Niki­ta Khrushchev at­tempt­ed to land mis­siles in Cu­ba, the US back­yard, in­to which non-hemi­spher­ic coun­tries could not in­ter­vene in any hos­tile man­ner - Pres­i­dent James Munro, 1823.

“Stop them, search them, or sink them to the bot­tom of the ocean ... any re­tal­i­a­tion will be met with ex­plo­sion ... (maybe he was fore­telling Trump) meh moth­er said she rather dead than live in a world of com­mu­nism ... to­geth­er with Cana­da, Eng­land and France, Niki­ta Khrushchev ent stand ah chance.”

But even be­fore the Mis­sile Cri­sis, Spar­row adopt­ed in a prag­mat­ic, ide­o­log­i­cal man­ner, the Amer­i­can po­si­tion in the pro­pa­gan­da war be­tween the two su­per­pow­ers in their in­di­vid­ual at­tempts to cap­ture out­er space: “They try­ing they best but they mak­ing a mess with the Russ­ian satel­lite, they should be all sent to prison for the dog that they poi­son in the Russ­ian satel­lite ... two sput­niks in the sky have every­body hyp­no­tised; I am very sor­ry for the poor lit­tle pup­py in the Russ­ian satel­lite.”

He com­pared, neg­a­tive­ly, the Russ­ian at­tempts at space ex­plo­ration to the Ital­ian sailor: “Colum­bus was a man very hard and grim; he nev­er sent ah dog to look out for him.”

To be con­tin­ued.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine- In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.