THE CARNIVAL STORY
THE MUSIC OF THE
MAS
By Terry Joseph
Episode Ten
Express
Section 2
March 1, 2000
Page 11
Before political correctness became the social standard,
calypsonians followed the model of the chantuelles that preceded them, singing
with unlimited licence.
The
calypsonians did not, however, play a significant role in the music bands at
pre-Carnival fetes or during the parade of the bands until the last quarter of
the 20th century.
The
concept of the band singer, who drives today's Carnival parade music with
vocals, is therefore not altogether new to the festival.
The
chantuelles had done it in their way.
The practice had been suspended when larger acoustic music bands
replaced the fiddler, chac-chac and cuatro aggregations and rendered singers of
any sort simply inaudible.
Up
to the late 1950s, the Calypso King (who received a real crown in those days)
would sport the headpiece proudly, as he walked the streets of the capital city
on Carnival Monday and Tuesday.
Dressed
in full suit, the king would wave regally to his subjects, accepting from them
congratulations and liquor as he made his way.
Steelband
music was popular among the lower classes and available at little or no cost to
revelers on Carnival days. Minstrels
serenaded all who would listen, confidently expecting financial reward at the
end of each street-corner performance.
Much
of the pretty mas, the domain of the upper classes at that time was still being
played on lorries and the musicians who accompanied them, traveling by foot on
the road below, often suffered accidents.
Concentrating
on blowing wind instruments while walking on rutted roadways or negotiating
drains frequently resulted in burst lips.
Saxophonist
Roy Cape recounts that as late as the 1960s fellow musicians were still
complaining that the reeds sometimes cut into their very tongues when they
stumbled into potholes or as the band crossed the many drains then in the
capital city.
And
since there were no drum machines at the time, the musicians were required to
play all day, as instrumental calypso music had fully assumed the role of
driver of the dancing.
The
largest break they could hope for was when the bass drum and snare kept up a
rhythm, but that never lasted long enough.
One
of the most significant influences on Carnival music came from radio, which was
introduced here in 1947. And while
radio deserves credit for keeping calypso composers of the period on their toes
(they could no longer safely sing about events that had taken place many years
before), the medium has also been pilloried by the very bards for injustice to
the art form.
Unlike
long ago when, mostly for reasons of morality, radio stations took unto
themselves the role of censor, banning calypsoes at will, that too has shifted.
As
recently as three years ago Iwer George's "Bottom in the Road" was at
the centre of a controversy and several stations suspended playing of the song
until their legal (not moral) advisers gave clearance.
Calypso,
the only major component of Carnival that features the work of individuals
rather than groups, is often a magnet for controversy.
Because
of its assumed licence to say precisely what it likes, the art has regularly
made excursions into territory forbidden by both law and good taste, with
singes arguing for immunity on the premise that they are poets, mere messengers
of the public view.
Much
of the calypsonians' continuing arguments against radio have been about the
role of that medium in the promulgation of the art.
Particularly
in the latter day, radio has frequently been accused of favouring a mere handful
of up-tempo but often inane songs and rotating them, to the exclusion of a
large body of serious work. Accusations
of payola are also commonplace.
But
these allegations hardly rank as radio's greatest crime against the music of
Carnival.