Calypso is more than just music for singing and dancing: an evening in a 'Calypso Tent', in which ten or so calypsonians sing to the crowd almost in the style of a variety show, will give you a crash course in Trinidadian politics and plug you into island gossip. Each year the calypsonians take the government to task for their current performance, while others will have a swing at corruption and drug issues. Some will round on lighter issues, local scandals, often spicing them with scurrilous pieces of gossip. Many are surprisingly conservative, fiercely proud of Trinidad, and they will berate the crowd on the general decline of standards on the island. But whatever the topic, the main purpose of calypso is to entertain.
Calypsonians come from all backgrounds of Trinidadian society, and from across Trinidad and its sister-island Tobago's diverse racial heritage. To be a successful calypsonian is a route to recognition on the island. And the names they perform under is all part of the entertainment: The Mighty Chalkdust is a schoolteacher, Watchman is a policeman, Black Stalin is strong on social comment. Who knows how Red Plastic Bag's name came about.
Calypsonians comments on public figures can be scurrilous, but, in Trinidad there is a special word for insult set to rhyme: 'picong'. A picong is delivered, and usually received, with good humour. It is intended to be very personal and of course many of the calypsonians know each other well, so it can become quite pointed. At times calypsonians spar with one another in song.
The two most successful and respected veterans of calypso are the Mighty Sparrow and Lord Kitchener (who has now died). They won the variosu competitions for nearly forty years. Not long ago Sparrow rounded on Kitch for refusing the country's second highest honour (on the grounds that it should have been the country's top honour) and he built his mockery into a song.
Another source of wit in calyspo is the 'double-entendre', and these can be subtle, but as often as not they are just plain rude, or 'smutty' as it is called. One year there was a calypso with a chorus: "She want Happiness". You just have to change the stress on the words to hear a rather different meaning.
Smut can get deeply vulgar and despite its popularity, it periodically causes uproar. It is an easy crowd-puller in a fiercely competitive arena and so now, in addition to the politicians and commentators, some of the calypsonians themselves have come out against it. Some calypsos have even been released in what has been called an 'Elcock Mix' (after a moralising disc jockey), with a clean version for air-play on the radio.
There are three titles in the main Trinidadian calypso competition. On the Friday before Lent is the Extempo competition final, in which calypsonians have to ad-lib their song--they are given a topic and a couple of minutes to make up a song about it. Picong really gets into gear here too because they sing against one another in pairs, verse on verse, each responding to the other's lyrics and trying to outdo them in humour and reparti.
On the Sunday before Lent the Calypso Monarch title is decided. This is the most coveted title because it takes calypso to its finest form. The songs have to be witty and well delivered and of course they have to raise the crowd. There are usually about ten finalists and they compete against the winner of the previous year's competition in front of a crowd of about 30,000. The singers are allowed to sing two songs and they use all their stage presence, in styles as varied as burlesque, stand-up comic and pantomime to whip up the audience to the maximum noise level. Each verse may tell a story--the gossip, the scandal, the picong--and the last line is of course the punch-line. With a successful song a calypsonian will bring the house down.
The last, and most lucrative if not most coveted, title is the Road March King or Queen. These songs are the engine house of the street parade. The masqueraders shuffle and strut in their thousands--a carnival 'band' can have as many five or more thousand 'players' (dancers, not musicians) dressed to a common theme. Sometimes they advance and retreat in lines, but most of the time they simply 'jam and wine' in a huge, seething melee. They move as the mood takes them, with maximum room for self-expression--warlike, often self-consciously humorous, ever-exuberant and of course often overtly sexual--they attach themselves to one another by their 'middle section' (midriff to mid-thigh) and gyrate in extraordinary positions.
The dance tunes for the Roadmarch tend to be simpler and faster than the Calypso Monarch competition winners. There is often a theme, in which the dancers will jump and wave, or brandish a flag. The winning song is the one played most as the Carnival bands pass over the judging podia on the carnival route march (the bands want their players to be as energetic as possible during judging and so the DJs play the best dance music--it is quite a good arbiter). Certainly they have to be good to keep everyone, hundreds of thousands of them, dancing non-stop for five days.
For an overview of music in the Caribbean and a full annual calander of musical events across the Caribbean, check out our Caribbean Music Guide.
