It didn’t come to me like a bulb lighting up; it took a long time for the realisation to dawn but when it did come it landed with so much force that I remember it left me thinking, “Halle-lujah; I never thought of it before, but that’s true” and what I’m referring to is the fact that the most gifted calypsonians were those who had the advantage of having lived a very focused life, of having taken part in or seen or heard of unusual things, and – this is the key part – then being able to find a novel way of expressing the idea or the behaviour in a humourous or sardonic manner in a song. An accomplished kaisonian could look at a fairly regular part of the life and see the humorous angle in some aspect of human behaviour, and if the humorous angle wasn’t already there, the calypsonian would tell us the story in a way that brought out the humour. That is the essence of kaiso
