Kaiso: Stay tuned

Following two recent columns in this space touching on the decline of calypso as popular music, I have heard from several readers in some very interesting exchanges on this subject.  These gaffs, some of them quite extensive, served to confirm the point I raised, in one of the previous So it Go columns, of the diversity of topic that has been a feature of calypso since it emerged in Trinidad almost 100 years ago and constitutes a singular feature of the art form.  As I have often mentioned in public performances in various countries over the years, one of the many unique features of this music is that while calypso is known for its salacious subject matter, and the consequently double entendre disguises, calypsonians actually sing about anything and everything under the sun; no subject is taboo; no matter is too delicate; the door is wide open for artists to enter, whatever their point. It is a distinction with a difference; one that sets it apart in the popular music genre.

A prime example is one from the 1930s, Grenada Excursion by Growler (a song I mentioned before), which set me as a writer on the calypso path. Growler wrote about a boat excursion from Trinidad to Grenada where rough seas almost caused a sinking, and while I suspect the event was covered in the various media of the day, I am very confident that no musician in the other art forms took it up as the subject for a song. Calypso, however, did in a manner that offended no one, deprecated no one, and left us laughing at what could have been a disaster.  In classic kaiso use of the sardonic to emphasise, Growler tells us in one line that at the height of the storm, “a man turn and said to he wife, look we pay six dollars to lose we life.”