Jumpeth and Waveth

MANY PEOPLE think that a degree in English is a useless thing in today’s world. As an English lover, I never knew this until I went abroad to study my favourite subject and was somewhat ridiculed by the high and mighty Business and Accounting students, whose motto was: “That’s all right, that’s okay, you’ll all work for us one day!” According to them, the only job a degree in English would get you was one where you’d have to ask, “Would you like fries with that?” This of course is not true – you can’t move up the corporate ladder if you can’t string together a coherent sentence for a presentation or write a critical analysis for your boss. A firm grasp of the English language is a vital skill in any industry, so much that all over the world, particularly in Asia, companies will spend loud money to fly English grads to their country to teach them how to speak what is fast becoming the international language of pretty much everything.

This is why it is so troubling (with or without the now famous “u”) that half of Trinidad cannot speak, read or write proper English. This is obviously a problem that has been deepening for decades – children who cannot speak “good English” grow up and become parents and teachers who in turn fail to teach the next generation “good English”, and so on, and so on. In today’s world, the English language is taken for granted, but the study, practice and love of your mother tongue teaches you many important life skills – how to listen, how to analyse, how to form arguments, how to imagine, how to write in different styles, how to use imagery, how to expand your vocabulary, how to THINK. Poor education can also translate into poor culture, and I think that the failure of our schools to teach proficiency and love of language is quite well reflected in the death of our local art form, calypso.

I grew up as a child listening to Arrow, David Rudder, Charlies Roots, Baron, Sparrow, The Roaring Lion, Kitchener, Tambu and all of the calypsonians of my parents’ generation. My young ears took in old songs like “Government Boots,” “Melosian Rhapsody,” “Pan in A Minor,” “The Hammer” and “Congo Man.” As a child, of course, I was too young to understand all the lyrics, but I knew that they certainly meant something. Calypsos told a story, they were full of double meanings, metaphors, carefully disguised inside jokes, commentary, satire, and most of all humour. They were rude as hell, but in a discreet, dignified way. Those were the days of real calypso, when calypsonians – even though they spoke in Trini dialect – were bonafide musicians and poets.

Today, I hate to say, calypso is pretty much dead, and I don’t think there is anyone out there in today’s generation of soca stars who has the ability or the interest in writing calypso. It seems to me that these one-hit wonder soca stars are more concerned in producing a song with a fast, infectious beat that will win Road March and then become an advertising jingle for corn chips. Today’s soca has little if any merit or intelligence other than to give you directions on where to put your left foot when you bend over to wine. The poetry of calypso is disappearing, especially as more and more of the classic calypsonians pass on with no one to replace them. Even David Rudder seems to have thrown his hat in the ring and has made Canada his new home.

You know something is very, very wrong when David Rudder abstains totally from Carnival. Maybe he too feels calypso as a musical art form is dead, and the new generation of soulless soca has taken over forever. The school system today is very, very different from the school system of 60 years ago. It was an education system based on strict discipline and rigorous academics and, of course, teachings of the Catholic church. Those were the days when they spoke in very flowery language. The older generations will tell you how they had to learn Latin, recite Shakespeare, read the classics and be versed in literature, poetry and the Bible. Language was of the utmost importance to a child’s education.

This was a result of British colonialism – it exposed the average Trini to a different cultural environment, so that even if you did not go school (as I’m sure some of the best calypsonians may not have had formal education) you were still exposed to higher learning in one way or another. But now kids cannot spell, they cannot read, they cannot write and they certainly cannot pen a calypso, much less a job letter. Today’s soca stars know how to rhyme, but even a four-year-old child can rhyme “wine” with “twine”, or “bad” with “mad”, which is why instead of producing high quality, melodic, intelligent, clever and enjoyable calypso, they produce high-speed sexed-up nursery rhymes!

Older generations cannot understand what has happened to calypso and to Carnival, but my generation, and those younger than me, know less and less about what calypso used to be and only know soca, and thus have no choice but to accept and emulate the likes of Destra, Denise, Machel, Lil Bits, Precious, Shurwayne, and all the rest of them. Some may argue that talent is something that cannot be taught in school, that the man in Laventille who turned a rusty oil drum into the most beautiful musical instrument of the 20th century didn’t have or need a prestigious education to be a musician.

Some may argue that you don’t even need to have a degree in English to be a writer or a poet, and that too is true to some extent. But I don’t think the art of calypso as Caribbean musical poetry will ever be revived as long as 50 percent of the country fails rudimentary English. A few writers have already given recommendations for improving the education system, so I won’t get into that… But I would like to make one suggestion to TTUTA – when allyuh teachers feel yuh res’ and refleck enuff, allyuh better get back in de classroom and teach dem chirren and dem how tuh speak good English so dey doh fail de nex’ exam! Yuh hear! Right!