DE BONGO NITE

Carnival 2003 is only 24 hours away and with it Jouvert and the later explosion of colour and sound. This evening the National Carnival Commission presents its Dimanche Gras show at the ‘Big Yard’, Queen’s Park Savannah, at which the piece de resistance will be the battle for the Calypso crown worn for the last year by the current champion, Sugar Aloes.

Dethroning Aloes, whose songs, “My Only Wish” and “Where Dorothy?”, even though they earned him second spot behind Chalkdust for this year’s King of Calypso crown a week ago, will not be that easy. Chalkdust’s “Rowley Letter” and “Just So”; 2003 Queen of Calypso Singing Sandra’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “Ancient Rhythms”, and Heather MacIntosh’s “Ten Feet of Rope” and “Only the Fools” are strong contenders.

Should Chalkdust go for a repeat of last Sunday’s victory in which his song, “Just So”, which dealt with topical issues, was among his finest, he may decide to spring a surprise with inserts of the latest topics commanding the public’s attention. But although tonight’s Dimanche Gras may be seen by many as shaping up to be a battle between the current Calypso Monarch, Aloes, and this year’s King of Calypso, Chalkdust, another Calypsonian, Singing Sandra clearly is not going to make it a walkover for anybody.

But whoever wins will do so in a year that has been signally lacking in talent. The offerings in the tents and in competitions not only bore the stamp of mediocrity, but in many cases were downright offensive and obscene. One Calypsonian’s idea of a prop, for example, was more than crude.

Word picturing, creativity and talent were consciously absent from many presentations and their strengths, or it would be more apt to say their weaknesses, lay in the appeal to the baser instincts. They lacked the humour and subtlety of a Spoiler, the double entendre of a Kitchener, Sparrow or Roaring Lion, the piercing commentary of an Atilla [on the death of George Washington Carver], a Lord Invader [Rum and Coca Cola], or a Sparrow [Jean and Dinah].

The composers and singers of yesteryear’s Calypsos made little more than pennies in the 1930s and 1940s, when entrance to a tent could have been as low as six cents. They sang to crowds accommodated on folding chairs or wooden benches in tents roofed in galvanised iron sheets and with sawdust covering dirt floors, and who would hoot them off the stage if their lyrics and content fell short.

Today’s Calypsonians, no matter how crude and pointedly suggestive some of their songs may be, can rattle off the names of places in North America and Europe in which they have performed, at the various points on the Carnival circuit, whether it be New York’s Labour Day, Toronto’s Caribana or London’s Notting Hill. Some are well off by today’s standards, living high off the hog, on the basis of Calypsos better left unsung and unheard, performing at venues at which the entrance can be as high as 1000 times that of the 1930s!

The cynic would describe developments as the price of moving on. But we must wonder at the direction in which our national art form is moving. In the old days our singers stood on makeshift stages and rendered songs that were tuneful, meaningful and amusing. Today they stand on grand stages, strobe lights flashing over and around them, but what they offer is decidedly inferior stuff.