One of the many consequences of being a musician who has written some songs that have become popular in your homeland is that aspiring performers will engage you on the subject of song-writing looking for advice on how to proceed. To be clear, I don’t take it as an intrusion, because (1) the very nature of the approach is complimentary, and (2) I know, from my own experience, how difficult the road is and that any help you can provide another would-be writer is almost always a significant boost for someone labouring, as most writers do, totally on his/her own with this new quest.
Just this week, in a totally by chance encounter, I met such a request from a youngster in Georgetown, and given how often the subject comes up, I’m using the column today to relay some of what I said to the young musician. In the first place, as I pointed out to him, there is no one way, or no set group of ways, behind the work of our creative people and that is probably what my response can be summed up as saying – there is no one way.
Each artiste is actually on a search to find these channels of expression – in whatever the area of interest or appeal – and the approach is generally very varied so that the original impulse or idea can come, and does comes, from literally everywhere. A good example is Sparrow’s classic composition “Congo Man.” In that creation, Sparrow takes the almost clichéd information of cannibal behaviour in a particular country and weaves that around another clichéd piece of information around the critical line in the song with a double entendre meaning “ah never eat a white meat yet’ in a classic example of calypso salaciousness, where the writer draws upon a regular, indeed daily, practice of all mankind – consuming food – but turns it into ribald comedy. The idea, therefore, to start with, often described as the “inspiration” and seen as something falling from the sky, usually comes from observations in everyday living or experience, absorbed over time, and, here’s the mysterious part, somehow triggered in the mind of the creative person as the subject for a song.
The even more mysterious part is when the writer, with the topic established, goes about finding the “how” of presenting it. There, too, one will get a range of answers from different composers, and that is an essential difference: what triggers the various responses in the creative mind not operating in the average person? If there is an answer to that, I don’t know what it is. The only explanation I know is the time-worn Guyanese expression, “yuh born suh”. In other words, the disposition is there in that person’s genes; the Georgetown youngster asking me for advice clearly has it operating.
From there, I would have to say that some familiarity with music forms in general is in play, and the writer, on his/her own, will choose the road to travel. Nobody advised me to turn my song-writing interest to the calypso medium as I did. I had listened to a variety of popular music on the radio, and in different social settings, and while I did write the occasional love song with the mind of a typical teenager, my main interest, from early on, was in these hilarious and rhythm-driven calypso compositions coming out of Trinidad. In my early years, as an immigrant to Toronto, this interest was further fueled by various Trini friends with their recordings of the then current calypso fare from Trinidad carnival every year; we looked forward to getting the latest releases pronto. To sum that up, I would agree with our elders’ explanation of “yuh born suh” on the matter, but what you grow up hearing around you is also in play and I relayed to the young man the very comments above regarding Sparrow’s work as an example.
With the disposition already there, the actual composing process, which I don’t profess to understand, takes over and from what I heard from other writers every creator has his/her own formula. For me, and for several writers I know, it usually begins, the topic established, with a musical instrument of some sort – in my case, a guitar – and basically trying out various melodic approaches. I pause here, however, to mention that in my case, with my topic generally in hand, I was coming to the musical creature with that very much in mind, and therefore, at least in my case, the very words of that topic often became an early influence in where I was going: My song, “You Can’t Get,” for example, began with just the idea for that expression, but words already have their own inherent rhythm, and that single phrase becomes a major influence on how you proceed musically; those few initial words are often affecting what musical format one chooses – country; rock; ballad; reggae; calypso; etc.) and can also be steering the writer in very specific ways. In these early trial runs the writer is trying out several approaches and choosing the one that feels right – he/she is determining what the song will be and, particularly, how it will be – fast or slow; what rhythm; whimsical, comedic; dance; etc.; basically, the creative mind at work.
In my case, since most of the songs I was caught by were in the calypso medium, my antennae were always up in search of topics in that genre, which meant humour was prominent in my deliberations. I would often use the calypso double entendre, but generally I was operating with the kaiso mind, looking at societies and individual behaviours that way; “Copycats,” dealing with Caribbean people talking Yankee, was an immediate choice for me, or “I Want to be a Puppy” with canine behaviour as opposed to the human. Also, my intent was to present Caribbean people positively, so that I was always open to using our dialects, and to deal with developments in the society, as in “Not A Blade Of Grass,” but I was also drawn to cultural matters as in “Mash Down Town,” about Mashramani, and, when I lived in Grand Cayman, to a song “Party, Party, Party,” extolling Cayman’s National Pirates Week Festival. Often, the calypso mind is given to presenting an idea in a double entendre form, which made airplay possible, such as Sparrow’s “Congo Man” with its “ah never eat a white meat yet” or my own “Honeymooning Couple.”
In general, knowing the creative mind somewhat, I stay away from offering advice to young writers, unless specifically asked, but I offer these few thoughts today for the would-we writers who may be interested but are reticent about asking.
