Mighty Sparrow in Australia

Apart from the accent, it could be Muhammad Ali in his prime: “I am the one and only, any other is a phony,” comes the warm Caribbean voice down the telephone line.

“I got one sister, got one brother, after me there be no other.”

Boxing analogies aren’t lost on the Mighty Sparrow, the 71-year-old king of calypso. Much like Ali, he earned his title by beating all comers at his chosen profession. The difference is that the veteran calypsonian has remained the undisputed champion, in most people’s minds, for the best part of 50 years.

To many Australians that won’t mean much. The Mighty Sparrow is a legend in his native Trinidad and Tobago, but ask ten people here to define calypso and there’s every chance you’d get ten different answers. “Is it like reggae?” “Steel drums?” “They play it at festivals, don’t they?” are a few of the comments gleaned from colleagues in this office.

In fact calypso is one of the purest forms of folk music, with storytelling and political and social commentary at its heart. It has been part of Caribbean culture for more than 200 years and can be traced back to Africa, from where slaves were transported to work on the sugar plantations in Trinidad.

It has been popularised outside its home turf by singers such as Harry Belafonte, who had an international hit with his album Calypso (1956) and the song from it, “The Banana Boat Song.” American singing trio the Andrews Sisters also had a hit with calypsonian Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca-Cola” in 1944.

The Mighty Sparrow followed a long line of calypso performers who found fame in the early part of the last century, including the exotically named Atilla the Hun, Lord Invader and the Roaring Lion.

The Mighty Sparrow won his first calypso singing competition — a staple of the the calypso tradition — in 1956 and has never looked back. Fifty years later he’s coming to perform in Australia for the first time and is hoping to enlighten audiences on the subtleties and skill of his craft, as well as entertain them, with his eight-piece band, the TNT Troubadours.

He has recorded more than 90 albums and his songs include the landmark hit “Jean and Dinah” (1956) and political commentaries on everything from human rights to the Miss Universe competition.

There’s even the curiously named Kerry Packer, which isn’t, as he points out, a tribute to the Australian entrepreneur. It’s about the furore Packer caused in the cricket world with his revolutionary World Series Cricket. “I wasn’t singing about him,” he confirms, “I was talking about some of the other people who did not like what he was doing. People saying ‘how dare he do that.’”

The Mighty Sparrow and his TNT Troubadours play the Calypso Fever Festival at Brisbane’s Powerhouse on September 8, Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on September 9 and The Arts Centre, Melbourne, on September 10.