SONG TIME

When the note was given, we sang lustily as we possibly could —"God save our gracious King / Long live our noble King / God save the King." At the end of the song, the teachers picked out all those who were shadowing and ordered them to join the others in the corner. We were then given the command to "Sit square and keep your eyes front." Of course that meant you could not look at anybody, only at the teacher.

If you were caught gazing, you received a clout or a blow on the back with a cane.

Then the slaughter of the sinners started. The first batch of sluggards received two strokes each with a guava or tamarind rod for "refusing to respond rapidly to a command". The boys of the second set were considered "traitors to the British Empire" as they did not sing the anthem enthusiastically — "the veins on their necks were not sufficiently visible" and they had to endure four lashes.

All singing lessons were carefully planned. Mr Ferdinand told us about the origin of the songs or the lives of the composers, explained how they were inspired, the meaning of the words and the message. We usually copied the lyrics from the blackboard and memorised them.

We were taught all types of songs — folk or traditional, love, sea shanties, military, negro spirituals and many others. I still remember songs like "Lock Lomond" — getting to Scotland before somebody, "De Ye Ken John Peel" — all about fox hunting, "Molly Maloney" — who cried "Cockles and mussels, Alive alive O" and died of a fever, " O Danny Boy" — the pipes the pipes are calling" — bagpipes, of course. We enjoyed "Coming Through The Rye" about a laddie who kissed a lassie and she cried; "Funiculi Funicula" which we thought was rather funny and "Alouette, gentle little skylark, Alouette, I will plume you now, I will plume you on your head" then it went on to brow / eyes / nose and on and on, "until thy kingdom come".

"Swing Low Sweet Chariot", "God Down Moses", "Old Man River", "O Shenandoah", ‘Trees’, "My Bonny", "Oh My Darling Clementine", "Lullaby", and "Home Sweet Home" were also part of our repertoire.

How well I remember the composer Stephen Foster! He wrote the words and music for "Old Folks at Home" aka "Swanee River", "Old Black Joe", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Oh Susanna", "Camptown Races" with its ‘doo-dah-day’ and "Beautiful Dreamer" which was so slow and sugary sweet, it could send you to sleep. ‘Ferdie’ said it was Foster’s swansong before he passed away — a penniless pauper.

In the singing classes, we were not taught any of our own traditional songs. Unsupervised, we sang the popular calypsoes of the early 40s such as "Is your moustache we want Hitler, we want it to solder", "Brown Skin girl, stay home and mind baby, I going away in a fishing boat and if I don’t come back, throw way the damm baby" and "Nettie Nettie give me the thing you have in your belly".

One day, an inspector went to school and asked a class, "Now children, can you tell me how many seasons there are?" Everybody replied, "Four seasons", and rattled them off — "Spring , Summer, Autumn and Winter".

Then he said "Now tell me, how many seasons we have in our colony?" After a long pause, a boy stood up and answered, "Two seasons. Cricket season and Football season."