RAS SHORTY I

RAS SHORTY COMES FULL CIRCLE

 

By Terry Joseph

Express

May 15, 2000

Page 48

 

Entertainer Ras Shorty I, diagnosed last week as suffering from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow, has gone through extraordinary changes over the 37 years since coming to public attention with the song "Cloak and Dagger."

 

A close friend of calypso composer Maestro, Shorty carved his space from the 1964 Carnival and rose swiftly in the calypso world.  He was crowned Calypso King of San Fernando in 1970, beating Bomber into second place and the still popular Black Stalin (who went on to win the national title on five occasions and is current Calypso King of Kings).

 

But much of his fame sprung from work produced from 1973 onwards, when he came up with the rhythm that fused Indian rhythm instruments (particularly the dholak, tabla and dhantal) with traditional calypso music, to produce soca.

 

In the soca vein, he produced some of calypsoes enduring masterpieces, including the seminal Endless Vibrations album.  Apart from its infectious title-track and other catchy songs like "Zena", the album offered new possibilities most notably "Om Shanti", a song that caused more than a mild uproar for its use of the Hindu chant in the chorus line.

 

Shorty became The Love Man, after an album so titled and took to dressing in pastels and designer bell-bottomed suits.  In that vein, he ran afoul of Prime Minister, Dr. Eric Williams.

 

It happened at a Dimanche Gras show, when he snag "The Art of Making Love", a song enhanced by unambiguous graphics, which offended Dr. Williams, particularly as he was entertaining Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley and his wife, the latter having taken objection to Shorty's demonstration.

 

Dr. Williams reportedly asked than attorney general Karl Hudson-Phillips to look into the possibility of bringing the calypsonian before the courts for embarrassing him and his guests.

 

But Shorty was not to be silenced.  The next year at the national calypso king finals he followed up with a song called "The PM Sex Probe", which poked fun at the Prime Minister for his response to "The Art of Making Love".  It would be the last time that Dr. Williams attended Dimanche Gras.

 

It was not the only idiom in which Shorty operated, although songs like "For Kim" did follow.  He was equally strong on social and political commentary.  His "Money Eh No Problem", another response to a comment from Dr. Williams, remains one of calypso's all-time classics.

 

Dr. Williams had used the saying as part of a promise to build what is now the Hasely Crawford Stadium and Jean Pierre Netball Courts, offering to do so at a time when the oil-boom had properly set in.

 

By the turn of the 1980s Shorty became disenchanted with the very image and music he had created, saying that soca was being used to celebrate the female bottom, rather than uplift the spirits of the people.  His comment was taken by many as a dig at calypso grandmaster Kitchener, who at first had treated the new music with disdain, then turned around and released its biggest hit in "Sugar Bum Bum."

 

He turned away from the bright lights going back to nature.  He became Ras Shorty I, a spiritual person and took to wearing robes.  He also took his children out of school, (he is said to have fathered 20 children), on the premise that the system was not teaching them useful things.  He moved into the Piparo forest and began a crusade against the very things for which he had become famous.  It is still his campaign.

 

He continued to provide and produce music, bringing his entire family into the act (son OC and daughter Abbi had, as children produced records).  It was now Ras Shorty I and the Love Circle, but his fortunes wanted somewhat, although in 1997 he released "Watch out my Children" an anti-drug song that stayed at the number one slot throughout the Caribbean for many weeks and sold well in North America and the UK.  The song was translated into several languages.

 

Last month, Shorty and the Love Circle released a new CD, containing his greatest hits - or at least those with which he had no objection to including.

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