Some music fans just enjoy the music and let you know, and that’s it. Others want to know the fine fine, and some, like the musician Bernard Fernandes, are particularly interested in how the songs come about. Like the brother who stopped me on East Street one day with “How do you come up with all these things, bannah?” it’s a constant question.
The answer is hard to pin down. I wrote a ‘So It Go’ a few weeks ago on the notion of “The Noticers” which is about the natural inclination of artistic people to notice things that slide by other folks, and that is a big factor. Also you have to be a person who is by nature curious, a searcher; your sensitivity antennae have to be always deployed. But having said that, the true answer is that, as with all artistic creation, we don’t really know. To illustrate the point and to satisfy the Bernards, here’s the story on some of the songs:
Wong Ping: In something as prevalent as Chinee Brush in the Caribbean, my sociology antenna tells me there is a song there, but it wouldn’t come. I went at it several times, but didn’t like the result. I had the subject, but I couldn’t figure out the ‘how’ of the song, the concept; that’s often the hard part. For over a year, I’m wrestling with it. One day in Toronto I was gaffing with Louis Flores, a Trini drummer, and he launches into this imitation of a Chinese shopkeeper, with that hilarious attempt at English that we all know in the Caribbean. The minute I heard that, it hit me: the song should be a Chinese shopkeeper (“yuh wanna get a velly good blush”) talking about the product. Bingo, the song. Once you know how, the song just pours out. Incidentally, that led to my trying to get a Chinese restaurant waiter in Toronto to teach me “velly good blush” in Chinese, but that’s a story for another time.
Blue Umbrella: I’m a young man in Guyana, and this gorgeous red woman rides up Carmichael Street, almost every day, umbrella in one hand, cool as ice, with the other hand steering, graceful… I can still see her. She never saw me, never knew I existed, but tabanka time. Mind you, when I did write the song it was years later in my house in Canada, but I was drawing on that early picture resting there in my mind – “she never looks my way.”
Bois Bande: On tour in St Vincent 1974. A friend, Stillie Fraser, tells me a true story about some Vincies playing a joke on a guy in a country rumshop by sneaking bois bande into his drink. However, as the bois bande took effect, the arousal would not subside. Run around the block, cold showers, nothing doing; he ended up in hospital. They put ice on the condition; the ice melted away leaving a doughnut of ice around the erection; it still wouldn’t go down. They had to resort to injections. The story was the song, immediately. The ‘how’ was obvious; just tell the thing how it happened; it’s right there. I must admit I was bit sceptical about the story, but as the Viagara ads now warn us, it can happen.
Bientot Haiti: Guyana 2010; the Haiti earthquake has happened. I’m in Krosskolor studio, recording my recent ‘At Home’ album; little revisions here and there. Off day, Sunday, I’m fiddling at home with adding a guitar part to something or other, and in the middle of that exploration, trying different things, I just hit upon this lilting phrase, four notes, that caught my ear. Hey, that’s a nice phrase. I hummed it a few times, and just so (clearly Haiti was at the back of my mind somewhere) the words “in time, Haiti” came to fit the notes. Again, the ‘how’ came; in this case, a distressed person comforting a friend by saying “in time, things will get better.” Once you have that foundation straight, the lines (“lights in the cafes will come on again; new vines will grow; the dancers will come back to the city square”) just naturally flow from that; it’s like a gate opening and you walk through.
Brother Jonesie: It’s 1978, and the Jonestown horror has happened. Guyanese in We Place in Toronto told me “Dave, you have to write a song about that.” What? 1,100 people drank poison and just lined up and died; there isn’t a song in that. Well, there’s a song in everything; some are in your face, some you have to go find. I found ‘Brother Jonesie’ in another place: the story of a religious group in Georgetown obeying one man blindly, and it hit me that the Jonestown story is not about the tragedy itself but about the sociology that people will do unimaginable things because one man (Gengis Khan; Hitler; Jim Jones) tells them to do it. The CBS reporter who covered the trial here told me, “The line that encapsulates Jonestown, ‘when he tell them drink, they’re drinking,’ I have to tell you, that gave me goose bumps.”
Honeymooning Couple: Canada, 1966. I was driving to Montreal solo, heard a saucy incident on the radio, and suddenly recalled a joke my brother-in-law, Joe Gonsalves had told me years previously in Guyana. With the “you get on top” punchline in my head, the chorus came to me almost ready made. Using a battery-operated recorder in the car, I began putting lines down as I drove; going back, editing, deleting, inserting. By the time I got to Montreal, five hours later, the song was almost completely finished. Sometimes, like ‘Wong Ping,’ it takes a year; ‘Honeymooning Couple’ took five hours.
They come from everywhere. Living in Toronto and hearing West Indians trying to sound like North Americans would irritate me, then bore me, then amuse me; when I got to the latter state, ‘Copycats’ was born. Ken Corsbie told me a joke in Barbados; I said “that’s a song” and wrote ‘Cricket in the Jungle.’ A friend in St Lucia told me of tape recording his girlfriend’s outburst during sex, and so came ‘Women in Love.’ I saw statues and memorials all over America, and one day recalled that we had only one statue in Guyana, and there was ‘Where Are Your Heroes, Caribbea.’
As you can see, there’s no one answer. The pulses arrive almost like something already in existence that come into your mind in pieces that you then manipulate into a completed song… I think. I don’t really know.
