I came into music at a time when comedy was a big ingredient in the popular music of the Caribbean. It was a salient feature in calypso, particularly in the array of comical songs featuring every year in Trinidad’s carnival, continuing that history of clever humour that came from the artistry of Atilla, Beginner, Spoiler, Roaring Lion, etc. In the ʼ70s that tradition continued with the likes of Sparrow, Blakie, Kitchener, Lord Funny, Dougla and Chalkdust, but with the emergence of soca, originally propelled by Lord Shorty, the music changed with the emphasis on party music, or “getting on bad” as the Trinis say, so that our popular music today in the Caribbean is almost totally bereft of that humourous strain that was once a key ingredient in the songs. In light of the change, to look back it strikes me that many of the ʼ70s calypsos were actually stand-up comedy set to music. Some of the songs were actually jokes, and indeed calypsonians were generally known as a comical lot whose conversations often ended up as joke-telling sessions. Lord Nelson’s calypso about the man with washroom problems on an aeroplane trip was based on a joke, and many calypsonians took a humourous line and produced a comical story creating a hit in the process; Spoiler (‘Himself told Himself’) was a master at this, almost a genius, and Lord Funny also was known for his hilarious interpretations, but the style was rampant. I recall being backstage in a calypso tent in my first visit to Trinidad carnival in 1967 and, newcomer that I was, being bowled over by this constant back-and-forth of joke telling, sometimes going on while someone was performing on stage.
Indeed, while I didn’t recognize it at the time, my first recording with Tradewinds, ‘Honeymooning Couple’, released for that first Carnival, and later a hit all over the Caribbean, was almost word for word a joke my late brother-in-law, Joe Gonsalves, had told me a few years before I migrated from Guyana. Calypso tents were known for this outpouring of comedy, even the emcees were involved with it, that often had the tent rocking with laughter. I remember laughing so hard at a Chinese comedian named Rex West that I actually fell off my chair in the Kitchener calypso tent on Wrightson Road in downtown Port-of-Spain… onto the floor.
With my songs for Tradewinds, starting in 1966, I had gone full bore into the tradition. I was writing specifically about Caribbean culture, and so there was a variety of subjects, but I would often take the humourous slant, which I was apparently born with, to song after song, some of them using the double entendre approach. The humour in such songs (‘It’s Traditional’; ‘Copycats’; ‘Motor Car’; ‘You Can’t Get’; ‘Wong Ping’) was actually the hinge on which they swung. I recall intending to write a song about ‘Chinee Brush’ but never quite figuring out how to deal with that sensitive subject, until one day I heard a Trini drummer, Louis Flores, impersonating a Chinese shop-keeper and the bulb lit up – the song should be about such a person selling the sex-aid product. Humour had taken over and made the story work.
Over the years in my performing, that inclination to humour spread as I took to using comical pieces to introduce songs, and even sometimes adopting the calypso tent approach of telling an actual joke between songs. You may have heard these jocular bits – ‘De Chinee man – wan, two, chee’; ‘Two Choices’; and the story about ‘Burnham and de Bunjal Chicken.’
It’s not well known in Guyana, but there was even a time, in the early 1990s when I ended up doing stand-up comedy with a group in Trinidad who put on Caribbean comedy shows in North America and in the Eastern Caribbean islands of Trinidad, Barbados and Tobago. I would perform pieces of my songs with only a cuatro, and do straight stand-up comedy in between; as is common in such shows, you would have to be fast on the uptake with audiences. I remember a show in Washington at Howard University with close to 10 performers including Sprangalang, Errol Fabien and Nikki Crosby of Trinidad playing to a largely Trini audience. I was standing backstage waiting to go on, after Nikki Crosby, who is a very funny lady known for her spontaneous quips. In the middle of her performance, someone arrived late for the show and quietly took a seat in the auditorium. Ever the professional, Nikki spotted the late-comer and said to the audience, “Look somebody now coming in late…must be a stupid Guyanese.” As you can imagine, there was an explosion of laughter. I could peep through a space in the curtain, and see the uproar in the crowd, with some persons almost jumping out of their seats. Five minutes or so later, it was my turn on stage. Martins is introduced. I walked straight to the microphone and said. “Nikki Crosby was just out here, and after somebody came in late I heard her say, ‘Must be a stupid Guyanese’” I waited for the ripple of laughter to subside and went on. “Well let me tell allyou something. It is well known that Guyana, under Forbes Burnham, borrowed 20 million US from Eric Williams…that was 20 years ago, and up to now we ain’t pay allyou back one cent – so who more stupid than who?” Well, to be fair to the Trinis the uproar was even louder than for Nikki’s joke; some persons in the front row were dancing and hugging up. Humour is a great leveller.
As I close, I’m alerting you that there is a big comedy show coming up in Barbados, a Rotary Club fund-raiser (I am a Paul Harris Fellow awardee from Rotary). It’s on Friday 7 October at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre at 7pm. It features Mac Fingall, Janine White, and Ricardo Reid Jr, from Barbados, our own Chow Pow from Guyana, and the same Nikki Crosby. For tickets, call (246) 629-0990. If you go to the show, ask Nikki if she remembers “who more stupid than who?”
