Last week saw the height of carnival in Trinidad and Tobago: J’ouvert, Ol’ Mas, Carnival Mon-day and the end of the festival on Carnival Tuesday. In Guyana things had wound down the previous week.
During that week, several of the main events in Trinidad were completed: Panorama (steel band finals), Soca Monarch, Calypso Monarch, Stick Fight finals and the Junior competitions. Tuesday – called Carnival Tues-day or Shrove Tuesday, saw the Band of the Year (the winner of the costumed bands contest), King and Queen of the Bands and the Road March (the most played tune among the parading bands, which declares the most popular soca. Years ago, it was the most popular calypso).
However, a number of strange questions have been raised in Trinidad about two of the musical traditions – chutney and calypso. One is really the opinion of a few expressed in the newspaper letter columns – that Trinidad has forgotten the importance of the humour in calypso. That calypso is for entertainment, that political commentary dominates the finals and humorous songs are no longer favoured by judges.
That may be fairly easily dealt with. More proof is needed that all of that is true. The legendary Mighty Chalkdust – that grand old man of calypso satire – won the crown again in 2017 with social criticism. He dealt with what is a burning issue: arranged child marriages, but it was delivered as a mathematics lesson with humour and pun, including the famous statement: “75 can’t go into 14”. A few years before that, Kurt Allen (the last ‘badjohn’ of calypso) was the king with a scorching criticism of the members of Parliament, singing: “They bright, they too bright /That’s why they can’t run this country right”. It was satire with humour as one of its weapons, just as still happens so often in contemporary calypso.
By far the more serious contention, and the stranger of the two, was the comment about chutney in Trinidad. Like calypso, chutney is one of the three monarchies in the carnival, soca being the third. The comment claimed: “the death of traditional chutney is near”. This appeared in the Daily Express totally without introduction, explanation, context or source. It was clearly a first-person narrative, which meant someone was being quoted verbatim; but there was nothing to indicate in whose opinion, by whom, when and where it was expressed. The paper simply carried a side bar captioned, “The death of traditional chutney is near”.
It stated: “Its death isn’t near . . . it’s been dead a long time now. . . Chutney is nothing but stolen Bollywood tunes meshed with nonsensical words . . . Sad, sad, sad . . . Beautiful cultures and traditions dying slowly by people who consider themselves ‘artistes’.
“These so-called artistes need to take note of the likes of Hemlata and Rasika Dindyal, Yankarans, Devanand Gattoo etc. Those are the real pioneers keeping traditional chutney alive. The others that steal Bollywood melodies and add a bottle of rum are mostly talentless.
“I’ve stopped listening to the so-called chutney they have nowadays. These songs are not chutney and every single one has a rum line in it with dedication to rum and getting horn. Bring back the real chutney music.
“People are tired of the usual rum songs, it’s ridiculous now, to be honest. I won’t spend a single cent to see and listen to that crap.
“If they are serious about keeping it traditional, take it out of Carnival season altogether.
“Let it be its own thing. Outfits should be traditional too.
“Is rum till I die /I say is rum till I die /She tell me she doh love me,and daiz the reason why . . .” (Daily Express, Feb. 28, 2019, p.9).
Chutney is now a part of Trinidad Carnival with a monarch crowned each year, and there is even an opportunity for contestants from around the Caribbean. Guyana was once represented there by Roger ‘Young Bill Rogers’ Hinds. The competition grew from one that was privately sponsored and run to the point where it was accepted as part of the national carnival. This was great ascendancy and recognition for chutney at the national level. As a carnival competition, it followed in the footsteps of the soca, which for a while after its emergence in the 1970s, was part of the calypso contest. As it grew in prominence, popularity and recognition it seceded to independence on its own.
Chutney spent years emerging before it was embraced by the recording industry and grew in popularity. After the annual competition by private interests, it gained recognition and the place it holds in carnival today. This earned it even more popularity while it advanced considerably as an industry with several artistes releasing numbers and videos, extending into several shows and mega-concerts, with performances both in Trinidad and Guyana.
All of this certainly contradicts the point of view that “people are tired of the usual rum songs”. Perhaps the speaker is tired, has stopped listening, and “will not spend a single cent” on the music and videos. But that does not seem to be the opinion of a large and growing popular audience in Trinidad and Guyana. They have created a demand for those “rum songs”, have fuelled the industry and caused its admission into both the carnival and Guyana’s Mashramani.
On the other hand, repeated reference is made in this expression of outrage to “the traditional chutney”. And that is where the speaker might have a point. During the past three decades, chutney has been subjected to cultural change, the influence of the popular culture and commercialisation. Truly, the chutney that prevails today is “chutney-soca” or “soca-chutney”, an evolv-ed form that is the outcome of modernisation, technology and the recording industry.
The traditional accompaniment by traditional folk instruments gradually gave way to the addition of modern instrumentation – electric guitars and keyboards to take the sound upmarket. Incrementally, strains of the soca rhythm encroached upon the more reticent folk music to create a slightly more hybrid form.
Quite contrary to what the speaker asserted, chutney has attained a peak of popularity and attention. Two of the most popular songs in carnival recently, have been chutney winners. A few years ago KI (Kris Veeshal Persad, lead musician of the popular band JMC 3Veni), soared to popularity with “Single Forever” displacing many soca hits in the carnival season and remaining in demand for years after. Then in 2017, the new chutney hit “Ramsingh Sharma” rocketed to prominence and was regarded as a rare chutney tune that had a real chance of challenging for Road March.
But there are still significant differences between soca and even the chutney-soca, which sees the latter retaining some of its folk characteristics. The very rum theme that the speaker complains of is one of them. Some years ago, the chutney hit, “Rum Till I Die”, rose to become a popular anthem. Here was a song that expressed an element of the village culture and its characteristic pastime of rum drinking. It enlarged the social issue of drinking to dispel problems, including domestic and romantic affairs.
“Rum till I die/Rum till I die/She tell me she doh love me/And that’s the reason why”, tells a story that was often repeated in other songs, such as one of the most recent “Bring the Johnnie Walker” – a similar case of drink to ease the pain of heartbreak. It influenced a tradition, a chain of songs about drink, on similar themes of heartbreak such as “Radika (Why You Leave and Go)”.
These songs are extensions of the traditional chutney that sing of the life in the villages. Several of them are about the family, the great emphasis placed on the family in village society, the influence the family has over domestic unions and domestic affairs. There were even those tunes reflecting a breakaway from those traditions, as in “Single Forever” and “Ramsingh Sharma”.
The appearance of this criticism at carnival time is therefore significant. But it raises the question about whether there is a lament about the death of the chutney tradition or about the ascendancy of the form in contemporary society. This calls for a more detailed coverage of the history and analysis of the form and the tradition. It also points to what can be drawn from the tradition and the contemporary music in Guyana, which has also been swamped by the ever-popular Trinidadian chutney tunes.
