Off The Beaten Track: Calypso, Tell me a Story

Sangeeta Nancy Boondoo, an attorney with the government of Trinidad and Tobago, is a student of life. She's always on the lookout for something new and interesting to learn and do. She loves to travel, and though she hasn't yet been to India, the land of her ancestors, it's at the top of her list to visit someday. She loves to go to the beach, take nature hikes, and bake. She does not like to cook, but she collects cookbooks anyway, along with all kinds of other books. A girl after our own heart...

Calypso music, like the steel pan and chutney music, originated from my beautiful, small country of Trinidad and Tobago, and unfortunately, it is a largely unappreciated art form in a world filled of “production-line” type music. Calypso music had its birth amongst the Afro-Trinibagonian slave population and is reported to have been a means of communication between the slaves in a time when their communication with each other was severely limited by the plantocracy, who were no doubt afraid of a slave revolution, which occurred regularly on other Caribbean islands. Calypso music has since developed to become witty social commentary set to music, and over the years, has served as historical records of events, whether local or global, capture Trinidad and Tobago’s attention. As we approach Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, the local highlight of the calypsonian’s year, I thought it appropriate to share a few of my favourite songs and explain the stories they tell.

One of my all time favourites is Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca Cola.” Yes, you read right – Lord Invader’s, not the Andrews Sisters. Here’s Lord  Invader’s original version:

Apparently, Lord Invader’s intellectual property rights got infringed way back in the 1940s. If you want to read about it, you can at: http://www.rumandcocacolareader.com/RumAndCocaCola/main.html 

What does this song have to do with our history? Well, firstly, Trinidad and Tobago, though a British West Indian colony, has always had ties with the United States.  In 1941, the U.S. and Britain signed the Lend-Lease Agreement, also called the Bases-for-Destroyers Agreement. As part of this agreement, the Americans got 99-year leases of the deepwater harbor on Trinidad’s north coast, along with three army bases, one each at Chaguaramas, Wallerfield, and Carlsen Field. Thousands of Trinidadians worked at these bases for higher wages and in better conditions than they were accustomed to. My grandmother spoke fondly of my grandfather’s experiences while working at the Carlsen Field base. There were also the female Trinidadians who worked in an entirely different manner – as prostitutes, entertaining the Americans and Canadians who were stationed here; they too made higher wages than the other islanders. 

Lord Invader was inspired by this situation, and the fact that the Americans used to chase (drink) the local rum with their Coca Cola at limings (hangouts) such as Point Cumana. The wages of the prostitutes was apparently so high that mothers would pimp or even join their daughters in the profession, “working for the Yankee dollar,” as Lord Invader eloquently put it.

In 1936, Attila the Hun sang “Roosevelt in Trinidad,” a lively calypso recording the visit of then U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Trinidad. Roosevelt was on a secret mission to Casablanca, and because of the tumultuous period before World War II, he flew the longer route through Trinidad as part of the secrecy. The calypso extolled Roosevelt’s virtues. Listen to it here:

It is said that Roosevelt became a fan of calypso music after hearing this song. Wouldn’t you too if you were flatteringly portrayed in song?

Jumping a few decades later into 1967, Lord Kitchener sang the popular “Take Yuh Meat Out Mih Rice,” a conversation between a Bajan (a citizen of Barbados, a Caribbean neighbor) and a Trini (short for Trinidadian), complete with the accents. Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados have shared a long love-hate relationship, and in this calypso, the Bajan and Trini, unable to make it alone and being hungry, decide to pool their resources to make a meal of meat and rice, the Bajan contributing the rice and the Trini the meat. After the meal is finished cooking, the Bajan continuously diminishes the Trini’s contribution as a justification for reducing his own share. Over the years, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago have had disputes over maritime borders, cricket, and flying fish. Why flying fish? Well, the Bajans alleged that they have fished flying fish, the national icon of Barbados, off the coast of Tobago since the seventeenth century. We Trinis, for the most part, do not take too kindly to the Bajans passing of our fish as their own. In the opinion of many, this calypso song, though decades old, still applies. It’s sure to put a smile on your face! Take a listen:

One of the best calypos around is Ras Shorty I’s “Watch Out, My Children,” released in 1997. In the 1990s, the country’s drug problem began to surface. After meeting some young boys high on cocaine and looking as if their lives had been wasted, Ras Shorty I was inspired to write this song. Interestingly enough, the United Nations International Drug Control Programme chose the anti-drug anthem in 2002 as its theme song. It is timeless and beautiful, and if you listen to no other calypso on this list, I ask that you at least listen to this one:

 

There is a tremendous amount of calypso music, though my list is short and does little justice to the great art form. Calypsos have recorded much international history, such as about the Russian Space Station, Edward VII’s abdication, the first nuclear weapon, and a visit by the famous German airship, Graf Zepplin, to Trinidad in 1934 on its way to the Chicago Fair. While calypsonian musicians have stopped naming themselves “Lord,” the stage names are still unusual, and the music continues to tell our story and define us as a nation.

Hot Fusion, Tropical Beats

The spicy pepper mixture known as chutney in India has a second meaning in the Caribbean, where it’s also a type of Indo-Caribbean music with deep roots but a short history. It's also as diverse as the people who created it.

Chutney music goes back to the late 1950s, when a dance album called The King of Suriname released in the tiny South American nation of the same name. The music made a splash among East Indians across the region, and the singer, Ramew Chaitoe, became known as the father of chutney music.

Chaitoe sang primarily Indian religious songs known as bhajans in a Creolized Hindi. One song in particular, Raat Ke Sapne, became a dance hit that was popular for decades. The song is about separation, an apt subject for Chaitoe’s primary audience whose ancestors were brought by the British to the Caribbean sugar belt as indentured laborers to replace the freed slaves.

A decade after Chaitoe’s historic recordings, another Surinamese, Dropati, released an album (Let’s Sing and Dance) of traditional wedding songs that became another hit and earned her the title of the mother of chutney music. The King of Suriname and Let’s Sing and Dance remain two of the bestselling East Indian albums, though the genre itself has changed dramatically.

In 1970, a Trinidadian named Sundar Popo had a #1 hit song in Guyana and Trinidad with his song Nana Nani (which means “grandfather" and "grandmother”). Sung in Creolized Hindi and English, with lyrics like “Nana drinkin' white rum and Nani drinkin' wine,” the song was heard all over the islands in the ‘70s, and gave way to the term chutney for this form of music. Sundar Popo sang folk songs with influences of West Indian calypso sounds on topics that reflected life of the Indo-Caribbeans, touching on themes of emigration, repression, and discrimination in his songs. Other chutney music artists emerged, singing about everything from female oppression to life on a sugar plantation.

Today chutney music has gone mainstream, an amalgam of calypso and Trinidadian soca, using electric guitars and synthesizers, and Indian popular music and traditional instruments, such as the dholak (a double-headed hand drum played horizontally), the dhantal (a long steel rod played with a metal horseshoe-type piece), and the harmonium (something like a small keyboard similar to a reed organ). And it’s not just East Indians creating this music; Afro West Indians have gotten in on the act, and the genre has spread to a wider, mainstream Caribbean audience. A musician named Atiya all the way over in Holland shot to fame performing her own Indian soca music.

And as Afro-Caribbeans and Indo-Caribbeans migrated north, to the United States and Canada, so did the music. Record companies and nightclubs promoting this popular party music emerged, especially in Toronto and New York, spreading the Caribbean music scene further. Often, recordings done in the north make their way back to the islands. 

Earlier, some Caribbean governments banned or repressed chutney music because of ethnic discrimination. But by the early to mid-‘90s, both Trinidad and Guyana had East Indian political leaders, which helped lead to a renaissance of this type of music. In Guyana, Terry Gajraj had a top hit with an album called “Guyana Baboo” (Child of Guyana) that evokes nostalgia for Guyanese immigrants everywhere.

In fact, the music has splintered into a dozen other subgenres – dance, folk, hip hop, rap, even appearing in Bollywood films – but even as it moves from the islands onto the international stage, the music remains popular throughout the region and the Caribbean diaspora as the music of their roots, for East and West Indians alike.

Here are just a few popular chutney songs, old and new:

Chutney Pressure: 

Nani Nana:

 Marajin: 

Guyana Baboo:

Catholic Kali

A 1940s poster of the goddess Kali
standing over Lord Shiva

I mean for you to scratch your head with that headline. Kali is a powerful, demon-killing goddess from the Hindu pantheon. Nothing to do with Catholicism, right? Turns out, there’s a pretty interesting connection.

When the Spanish colonizers began importing indentured Indian laborers from India to the Caribbean in the mid-1800s, the newcomers were only allowed to observe parts of their culture, regardless of religion. North Indian Hindus worshipped the usual deities—Ram, Sita, and Krishna, for instance—as well as the deity known as Kali. The minority Tamil speakers from South India, however, worshipped Kali almost exclusively, forming Madras temples, also known as Kali temples, mostly in Guyana.

But in other areas, because of the limitations put on them by their colonizers, some Hindus in the Caribbean began worshipping the Virgin Mary as a representation of Kali Mai, or Mother Kali. As well, in those days when Indians first began leaving their homeland, they called the foreign oceans they had to cross “black waters,” because mysterious and often dangerous things happened to them when they traveled afar. Many Caribbean Hindus came to believe that the black deity, Kali Mai, traveled with them across these waters and took on the form of the Virgin Mary when they arrived.

Kali in a 17th century mural
(credit Balajiviswanathan)

In some areas, such as the former French colony of Guadeloupe, Hindus began observing both faiths. They modified their observances to accommodate both – for example, they didn't perform pujas, Hindu prayer ceremonies, during Lent.

Among Hindu goddesses, Kali is one of the most hardcore. I grew up a little ambivalent of her (read: afraid) and not entirely convinced she was one of the good guys (gals). That’s because she’s usually depicted as a woman with a murderous temper. She wears a garland of *human heads* around her neck, always hangs her long tongue out of her mouth, carries a sword dripping in blood, has wild hair and four arms. One of her arms carries a severed head; another holds a bowl that catches the blood dripping from this head. Sometimes she’s shown standing atop the inert body of her husband, Lord Shiva. This goddess means business. I would say don’t make her mad, but she was born mad.

Kali’s name comes from the word kala, which means black, and she’s depicted as either dark skinned or even jet black. (The blue skin in the poster up top is meant to suggest dark skin, as in popular mythological renderings.) Hindu interpretations vary on the meaning of Kali's darkness. Some associate it with death or time, others as beyond color, even as a manifestation of pure energy.

Either way, some Africans in the Caribbean have also adopted a belief in Kali Mai in part because she is—get this—the goddess of healing. (Don’t ask. I’m not entirely sure myself how this part of her story reconciles with the scary stuff, but I’ll leave that topic for another day.) Caribbean Africans brought their own healing practices, such as Obeah, to the area, and so the idea of a healing deity was one both oppressed groups in the region could embrace. Not only did a belief in Kali entail the healing of the sick, but it also helped empower these disenfranchised groups to believe in healing from suffering and oppression.

The matriarch of La Divina Pastora in Trinidad
(credit to Jason X)

Beginning in 1871 and continuing on until now, Hindus at the Roman Catholic church of La Divina Pastora in Trinidad began worshipping Virgin Mary as the embodiment of Kali. The dark statue of La Divina Pastora or the Divine Shepherdess is also known as Soparee Mai, another name for Kali, at the church. Each year on Good Friday, Hindus fill the church to worship Soparee Mai. Catholics join them as well as local Muslims, Buddhists, and indigenous Waraoa Indians. Offerings of gold, flowers, and fruit are left at the feet of the deity, and healing miracles are said to have occurred.

It’s unconfirmed, but some believe this is the only church in the world where such a phenomenon takes place. Pretty cool meeting of cultures, no?