THE CARNIVAL STORY
AND SO, CALYPSO
BEGAN
By Terry Joseph
Episode Five
Express
Section 2
February 25, 2000
Pages 8 & 9
One of the unique components of slave celebrations at Carnival time
in the late 19th century was the singing of songs especially
composed for the occasion. Many of
these songs contained information that the French gentry would have preferred
to keep private.
Out
of the Covigne Estate in Diego Martin came a superior singer called Gros Jean,
a slave brought here by the Begorrat family.
He not only entertained with great voice but, from all reports, managed
to infuse scathing picong into his lyrics.
Gros
Jean's lyrics were sung in patois and referred to as "lavway". In French, the word "le vrai"
means the truth." His songs,
clearly the forerunner of today's traditional calypso, often took swipes at his
master and like people. The word
"kaiso' also came into wider circulation at that time, meaning
"encore", but suffered its own brand of corruption in the 20th
century, becoming interchangeable with the generic term "calypso".
Other
sweeping changes that came during the second century of calypso have produced
new forms and a number of hybrids, sequentially driven by motives quite
different from what calypso originally intended.
"Festival
music", a latter-day term that embraces a wide swath of spin-off and
downstream products from the traditional calypso genre, is currently the most
lucrative. This style has therefore
attracted the larger percentage of new performers. The more successful singers enjoy high demand during the North
American summer to perform at many of the more than 90 Trinidad-style Carnivals
held there annually.
Iwer
George, Ronnie McIntosh and Machel Montano are among the more successful performers
of festival music, comprising lyrics that seldom engage deep philosophical or
social/political comment, concentrating on providing rhythms and catchy hook
lines. SuperBlue's 1991 road march,
"Get Something and Wave" however straddled both the old and new calypso
concepts.
But
long before chutney, raga, dub and parang sought marriages with soca, calypso
had seen major shifts, from the ray-minor and mi-minor moulds, in which the
early songs were almost exclusively rendered.
Even details like the mandatory repeat of the first line, as a way of establishing
context, had given in to a running commentary, and the beat was being varies
from as far back as Kitchener's "Trouble in Arima".
Lord
Melody's "Second Spring" and Sparrow's "Rose" were
controversial because they did not conform to agreed calypso conventions,
although just slightly different in tempo from Nelson's 1982 blockbuster,
"Mih Lover."
In 1995,
The Roaring Lion scored with the remake of "Papa Choonks", a song he
had recorded more than 35 years before, without a change of tempo or lyrics
from the original rendition.
The
Mighty Sparrow created another benchmark with "Jean and Dinah",
declaring a kind of open season on the structure of calypso.
Over
the ensuring 45 years, calypso has engaged other musical forms in the continuing
search for a winning formula, although traditional constructions still enjoy
widespread appreciation. Entertainers like
David Rudder who came into the national spotlight in 1986, have moved
seamlessly between the many styles.
Electronics
and the requirements of a different type of masquerader informed some of the
changes to calypso structure and tempo.
But
as we shall see tomorrow, some of the influences that affected calypso were
completely external.