The calypsonian and the world

The world is one large mirror.

We constantly create each other and are created by each other.

There’s always a conflict brewing that makes the world churn and tumble, walk and dance, sing and shout, praise and denounce. It’s the turns and twists that spark our curiosity and make this an interesting existence. So why not add to the list, the calypsonian, known nationally for his ability to brew words into ideas that we feed off, that provide us with entertainment as much as they can be vexing.

The fact that Chalkdust’s winning calypso has sparked some opposition is probably a good sign, a sign that calypso still has some clout. But then the opposition seems to be coming from people from the calypso era so one wonders how much of the opposition is now outdated. As one friend remarked, “Trinidad is not African and Indian anymore. Is about time that people realize that.” But unfortunately, there will be sections that continue with the tired race arguments with which many of us with a younger generation mindset are bored. But then, boredom inspires change so it’s not all useless when one looks at it that way.

Politically however, opposition of this sort works to keep the veil across people’s eyes, ensuring votes and whatever other agendas the powerful are interested in. So while, in my home, there was laughter when my nine-year-old niece said, “He is right you know. That is an improper fraction grandma,” there were others taking offence at the Sat Maharaj reference.

And the Sat Maharaj reference is about Hindus as Hindus claim.

But that too is a vexing problem.

And it’s a vexing problem because it is not only one that the common man contends with, but an issue that scholars have also sought to investigate and write about. This conflation of the Hindu with Indian identity is not a new one so the opposition is not altogether ignorant.

I see this as the problem of India itself, an idea that we have inherited in no small degree from such media as films and music. For even when during Eid we hear the quaseedas and Islamic film songs, during the rest of the year, it’s Hindu devotional music and ideas of music and life that are portrayed through Hindu iconography - the god Krishna with his flute, Saraswati with her veena, Shiva with his damaru and so forth. And there are various other subtle ways in which this Hindu/Indian ideal has been created and persists.

Then comes the issue of calypso where people and objects become symbols of larger issues – the mad man, the shanty town and Sat. Given that one of the amplified voices on the child marriage issue has been Sat Maharaj’s it’s natural that one would use him as a symbol of everything that’s wrong with under- age marriage. Agreed, it’s not only marriage to older men that’s the issue. It’s a far deeper problem.

But, I thought, the sexual innuendos were natural for calypso. Many have enjoyed all the others so far, Jean and Dinah, Congo Man and in chutney, Radica, Dularie Gyul and a host of others. And now enters Chalky, after generations of calypsoes that we have danced and wined to, with one that deals with a topical issue with the wit and language of calypso, and voices rise to oppose.

Forgive me if I don’t see the issue in quite the same way, as do those who have taken offence at Chalky’s “attack” on the Hindu community.

Sat Maharaj seemed a natural choice given that his is an image whose meaning people would naturally grasp along with the sexual innuendoes characteristic of many calypsoes. I have read and listened to, with interest, some of the reasons proffered for the opposition to the calypso. Some viewed the Sat reference as a hidden way of calling the Indians/Hindus backward while others felt that the song misrepresented the Hindu community among other arguments. Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t. Depends on which way you look.

The child marriage debate is a worldwide issue tied to such factors as poverty and the rights of women.

It’s one of the many things that’s wrong with societies, from the poverty that prompts parents to sell their children into labour and prostitution, to accusing women of attracting rapists by the way they dress. But discussion is always useful.

It’s now just a matter of taking the energy used to condemn and channeling it into effecting positive change.