By Dave Martins
Recent letters from Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green and from Mr. Frank Fyffe on the matter of local music are interesting in that Hammie’s bemoaning of the state of modern music and Frank’s concerns for the problems with calypso in Guyana are different aspects of the same thing and it can be summed up in two words – societal change. In both cases, two principal factors are at play: the first is the traditional evolution of what is loosely called “popular tastes in music”, and the second factor is the number of substantial alterations in the society today compared with an earlier time.
To deal with the second point first, we are simply living in a different world with not only a greater range of entertainments from outside, but, probably more importantly, a greater access to such things. Like it or not, the technological revolution is now part of our lives and the entertainment plate before the consumer has infinitely more choices now, and they are immediate.
When I was growing up in West Demerara, my musical diversion was a dry-cell battery radio, the occasional movie at Gunraj’s cinema, and the church choir at Malgretout on Sunday (I went occasionally). Today, in that same territory, people are in their homes daily watching DVDs or playing CDs, albeit pirated, from all over the globe. Hundreds of youngsters are playing video games, YouTubing and Facebooking and Googling away for hours on end, totally plugged into what is happening today – at this moment – in New York or London or Hong Kong.
Frankly, the appeal of much of what Hammie recalls in Georgetown in the 1950s was largely a case of there being not much else to do. Ask yourself: what else was competing with the Bandstand Concerts on the evening they were on? Probably a few domino games at somebody’s bottom house.
The other factor at play is that popular musical tastes of the day, driven principally by youth, are constantly changing, as well. I know without asking that both Hammie and Frank, as young men, were hearing from adults of that time, about the “musical nonsense” that young people were chasing then, and I also know without asking that the young people following “hip-hop” and “house” today will be telling their children, 15 years from now, “What is this nonsense you’re listening to? That’s not music.” My mother used to tell me at Vreed-en-Hoop, “Boy, you’re listening to jungle music.” It has always been so. When Frank Sinatra came along, adults thought young people were mad to be swooning, as was later the case with Elvis Presley, and later the funk revolution, and more recently Michael Jackson, and now the hip-hop and dancehall surges. Ten years from now, today’s dancehall patron will be telling the radio stations, “Ah wha madness alyuh ah play?” The popular music of the day changes, looking for newness, and reflecting the changes in the society, and in that context calypso evolved into a simplified and dance-oriented music, short on message but high on catchy hook lines and driving beat – all qualities of modern life. It’s essentially the same music with a different shape, and we forget that in its birthing time, people like Lord Shorty, Kitchener, Sparrow, etc. were presenting both of those shapes.
As a cultural storehouse, our earlier musical forms do have great value. Frank is right when he says calypso was “the small man’s newspaper”, but the reality is that we have moved from that time into one where those purely commentary needs are now met by hourly newscasts, and calypso is no longer the popular music of the day in the Caribbean as it was in 1968 when Tradewinds began. Soca is now the rage, and dancehall; the reflective and incisive calypso is nostalgia material.
In both cases – the declining interest in more sedentary music and in calypso – the concept of demand is at play. Simply put, such things would be at hand generally if the public wanted them. Calypso tents in Trinidad are struggling to survive, while the jump and wave fetes are booming. The message is unmistakably clear.
Let me emphasise, that I am not dismissing these genres. I listen to classical music probably more than anything else, and calypso remains to me the most delicious music on earth since I first heard it in my aunts’ rum shop at Hague with its gripping African drumming and that sensual interplay between melody and dialect. (No, I wasn’t into the brown rum; I was just captivated by The Roaring Lion.)
Ultimately Frank makes some excellent points. Society does indeed tend to tar all calypsonians with the same negative brush, and there are some magnificent songs in the genre. Yes, the music is played here mostly at Mash time, but you don’t hear it in Barbados after Cropover either, nor in St. Lucia or even Trinidad after carnival. Although, as Shadow once pointed out, “Calypso is not a mango; it shouldn’t have a season,” the music has indeed been traditionally tied to seasonal festivals, and it remains that way.
Frank is dead right about the standards. The raw vulgarity, crude comments, and even gratuitous “wukkin’ up” does stir criticism, but, unfortunately, we have to concede that most of the public seem to want it that way. It is today’s popular fare.
While I am in agreement with Frank’s despairing comments on the art form, the reality is that the way forward for calypso is not going to be easy. It will take dedicated people. In particular it will take dedicated thinkers, because one of the vital ingredients of the form is, as Frank says, the perceptive or incisive mind behind such songs as “The Rights of the Child” by Duke, or “We Pass That Stage” by Sparrow, or “Haiti” by David Rudder, or “Where Are Your Heroes” by that Martins chap.
The music consumer today has neither the time nor, frankly, the inclination for the more reflective material; present day appetites are for the abbreviated message, the instant hook phrase, the energetic beat, and quickly on to the next offering. The musical fare has changed, as it always does, and calypso is no longer the main course.
The harsh reality is that the continuance of calypso, not just here, but even in its homeland of Trinidad, will rest on the performers themselves making the sacrifices to keep it going, perhaps with some enlightened assistance from governments and the private sector. The committee to foster it, as Frank suggests, is a good place to start in Guyana. It needs more professional presentation, more discipline from the performers, and better promotion, but it’s certainly a cultural legacy we should try to sustain, and I am willing to put a hand.
However in this matter, as in life generally, there are realities to be faced. Don’t hold your breath waiting for bandstand concerts or sold out calypso shows. They belong in a time that is gone, and one that is not coming back. Regret it, certainly, but understand that “so it go, banna.”
