“CALYPSO”

Calypso is another musical form that Brathwaite employs in his poetry, using the form for
political satire. University of West Indies Professor Gordon Rohlehr writes that calypso was
popular in the 1800s and 1900s, and it is known for its creation of festival laughter and its use of
sexuality (1-6). Throughout calypso’s history, the upper classes tried to censor content (Rohlehr
7-26). Rohlehr remarks that in the 1950s, calypso made a comeback with calypso artist Sparrow,
“whose risqué calypsos were more risqué than any had ever been before” (10). Brathwaite brings
out both the political and sexual themes in his poem appropriately titled “Calypso.” In Part Two
of “Calypso,” Brathwaite speaks on slavery on the islands, where “of course it was a wonderful
time / a profitable hospitable well-worth-your time / when captains carried receipts” (48). Since
Brathwaite himself is black, these lines come across very sarcastic, initiating laughter among
Caribbean blacks who know that slavery was not profitable for them. The first stanza in Part
Two talks about the slavery and the hard work required to farm the sugarcane (presumably done
by slaves), and the following stanza says that the times were “profitable,” and “hospitable”
(Brathwaite 48). Brathwaite is contrasting slavery with the well-to-do state of the colonizers and
capitalists. Brathwaite also addresses sex scandals among the aristocracy – “young Mrs. P.’s
quick irrelevant crime” (Brathwaite 48). The poem comments on the underlying theme that
aristocrats are considered always right; they can ignore slavery just like they can ignore Mrs. P.’s
crime. Mentioning the names of a prominent person is frowned upon. Court cases have revolved
around calypsonians dragging the names of people into the street. Brathwaite does the opposite
of what most calypsos do by refusing to mention the person’s name who committed the crime.
Thus he critiques the policy of calypsos naming names, and he speaks satirically so as to offend
the aristocrats. He uses the name Mrs. P almost like an offensive nickname, writing in a way that
sounds mocking. Then Brathwaite discusses how someone with the European name John is
educated but is fired from his job by a man who never attended school (49). An uneducated man
being boss over an educated man is illogical. On top of that, it seems illogical to fire an educated
man, especially one that has assimilated into the boss’s desired culture (he has a European
name).
Ironically, Brathwaite uses the calypso’s upbeat nature to criticize society. He uses a form that is
generally associated with laughter while speaking on injustice in the Caribbean, contrasting
happy times with injustice, positive with negative. Additionally, calypsos are the music of the
lower classes. The themes present in “Calypso” address problems and discrimination that West
Indian blacks and the lower classes might face. The poem is sounding the music of the people it
is defending.
As for the musical structure of “Calypso,” the reader can feel the beat and the hyperactivity of
the words even in the first stanza. When performing, Brathwaite sings portions of the poem. He
remarks in an article by Edward Baugh that “‘The hurricane does not roar in pentameters,’”
pointing out “that nation language poets, in their determination ‘to break down the
pentameter,…discovered an ancient form which was always there, the calypso…It does not
employ the iambic pentameter.’” Brathwaite’s poem, “Calypso,” does not follow a specific form,
especially not pentameter. However, it does follow the iambic pattern – stressed-unstressed –
much like the beating of a drum. In “Calypso,” Brathwaite mentions steel drums and the banjo.
A simple search of calypso music on YouTube reveals the high usage of steel drums in
calypsonian songs. One of the stanzas in “Calypso” mimics the sound of the steel drum in
calypsonian music: “Steel drum steel drum / hit the hot calypso dancing / hot rum hot rum / who
goin’ stop this bacchanalling” (Brathwaite 49). Brathwaite uses the rhythm of the poem to denote
the sound of a true calypso while describing a bachanal (yard party) featuring calypso, and to
capture the history of the calypso and steel drum in the Caribbean (Morrison).
Kumau Brathwaite uses music to add depth to his works. He builds “Rights of Passage” around
music, making the titles of his poems the names of songs and including references in many of his
poems to music, musical instruments, or musically historical cities. He references folk music,
jazz, and calypso employing the rhythm to imitate the musical forms described in the poems. Not
only does he imitate musical sounds and patterns, but he uses the music to create irony and make
political statements. His works forms a type of political activism as he criticizes society. He uses
music in contrast with his content like with the calypso, or in congruence with the content like
with the work songs and bluesy pieces. Since music is a major part of Caribbean black heritage,
which Brathwaite is creating in his poetry, he integrates it into his poetry to fully describe and
more accurately reflect Caribbean history. The music also demonstrates the black diaspora
consumed by much of his poetry: Brathwaite uses musical forms taken from Africa in
combination with the uniquely Caribbean (folk music), Trinidad (calypso), and North America
(jazz). So not only does Brathwaite describe the music in his poems, he uses it to further his
purposes of creating history and describing the black diaspora.

Kamau Brathwaite, an author from the mid-20th century, is notable for his contributions in
poetry. He is a forerunner in using Creole as a viable language and relates much of his poetry to
travels, exiles, and returns. He has written a history for the Caribbean through his poetry which
speaks much to the African heritage of the Caribbean peoples. In his book The Arrivants,
particularly Section One, “Rights of Passage,” Brathwaite addresses and embodies diverse types
of music in his poetry including folk music and blues, jazz, and calypso.

Calypsoes as epitome of african orality in the Caribbean

1Due to complex and often traumatic historical processes, the Caribbean region has been shaped
as a space of hybridity and creolization, cross-cultural encounter and interracial coexistence. The
Caribbean is a highly syncretic place, where the heterogeneous and scattered genesis of its
population has brought together people of different descent: native Caribs and Amerindians,
Africans and Indians, European, Chinese, and other Middle-Eastern minorities. Nevertheless, in
spite of this ethnic and cultural plurality, the African presence informs the core of the region and
gives shape to its innermost identity.

2Since the majority of Caribbean people have an African ancestry, the survivals of West African
linguistic, cultural, artistic and religious elements are still evident across the Caribbean. As the
key feature of most African societies was a ”traditionally limited use of literacy“ (Warner-Lewis,
2004: 117), it is not surprising that ”these verbal traditions were among the few but highly
significant possessions brought to the Americas by the enslaved survivors of transatlantic
crossings“ (Warner-Lewis, 2004: 117). Today, the weight of this African legacy in the West
Indies emerges more substantially in some forms of Creole-based orature, including both poetry
and music, which are deeply influenced by the African oral tradition. This is, for example, the
singular artistic experience of the Barbadian oral poet Bruce St. John (1923-1995), who wrote
and performed his poetry in the so-called Bajan speech, a Creole resulting from the fusion of
Standard English and other West African languages. More interestingly, he used a call-and-
response structure inherited from African song and this antiphonal technique drew his poems
closer to a ”performative oral mode“ (Savory, 2004: 728); the oral nature of his poetry is even
more emphasized on the printed page, with the words arranged in two columns, in order to
visually display the vocal interweaving of different speakers.

3In the musical field too, the calypso represents a significant aspect of this cultural continuum
between Africa and the New World, because the origins of this peculiar musical genre are in the
early oral forms of expression introduced in the plantation fields by the enslaved Africans: songs,
folktales, religious chants, ritual practices. Undoubtedly, calypsoes belong to the many-faceted
field of Caribbean orature, where the influences of the African diaspora have been more
enduring. Thus, calypsoes can be considered as an African-derived form of folklore, which
expresses a distinctive African sensibility in the mingling of music, dance and orality.

Although it is not so easy to reconstruct the exact history of the term itself and of the genre as a
whole1, calypso seems to be the synthesis of different cultural echoes, among which the African
contribution is the most strongly recognizable and incisive. Similarly to other forms of African
expression, calypsoes have an extempore nature and are based on musical and textual
improvisation, although nowadays calypso competitions are less spontaneous events than they
were in the past, to such an extent that true extempore performances are really rare today2. In
addition to these improvisational features, Crowley argues that calypsoes descended from the
African tradition of satiric songs; moreover, even after formal emancipation from slavery, this
musical genre continued to be perceived as a means of artistic resistance to exploitation and
oppression. Consequently, its texts are so satirical and wittily allusive in content, so
conversational and informal in tone, so ready in recording the historical and political changes
which constitute calypsonians’ raw material, always eager to express a bitter criticism of society
and to be actively engaged in the complex process of moulding a Caribbean national identity.

5Other scholars claim that calypso is an interesting example of a crossover form, whose origins
are deeply rooted in the West African musical tradition of the praise and blame song, based on a
counterpoint between individual and community, as in all forms of ”total expression“
(Brathwaite, 1984: 18) where the oral tradition ”demands not only the griot but the audience to
complete the community: the noise and sounds that the maker makes are responded to by the
audience and are returned to him“ (Brathwaite, 1984: 18-19). More specifically, Gordon Rohlehr
traces the source of the political Trinidadian calypso in this kind of antiphonal African songs,
which often exercised a function of social control: it is now fully acknowledged that criticism of
political leaders or complaints about other reasons of unrest, turbulence and instability were only
possible within the restricted area of orature, through oral songs and stories. Rohlehr states that
”African music often served the purpose of social control, and the roots of the political calypso
in Trinidad probably lie in the African custom of permitting criticism of one’s leaders at specific
times, in particular contexts, and through the media of song and story. The leaders of society
recognized the value of such satirical songs in which the ordinary person was given the privilege
of unburdening his mind while the impact of his protest was neutralized by the controlled context
in which criticism was possible’’ (Rohlehr, 1990: 2).

6Similarly to its ancient ancestor, Trinidadian calypso inherited this privileged position too and
successfully acted as a “barometer of social consciousness, an expression of collective identity,
and a vehicle for anti-establishment critique” (Rahim, Fall 2005). Thus, calypsonians are allowed
to display a boastful alternative to the hegemonic set of current values, protected as they are by
the safe boundaries of the performance space during the “calypso season” once a year or by the
fictitious constraints in a narrative framework, as happens in V.S. Naipaul’s third novel, Miguel
Street (1959), where a remarkably high number of quotations from real calypsoes resounds
throughout the pages, focusing especially on such issues as gender, wife beating, ethnicity and
politics.

7In Miguel Street calypso emerges as a prevailing stylistic feature of the narration, conveying
and constantly reshaping the social, cultural and sexual identity of Indo-Caribbean people in Port
of Spain. Naipaul’s aim is to provide a philosophical framework to the seventeen chapters of his
work, thus offering a sort of unifying ironic counterpoint to a novel which is more similar,
perhaps, to a collection of short stories, all sharing the same characters and the same nameless
boy narrator. Moreover, Naipaul depicts how calypsoes reflected and contributed to redefine the
Trinidadian society during the Second World War and in the post-war period, when unexpected
changes deeply affected the lower strata of Port of Spain population, especially an increased
migration of Indians from rural places to towns, the process of acculturation for younger
generations, the American military occupation which induced Indian women to offer sex as an
easy commodity in exchange for the Yankee dollar. Ultimately, calypsoes prove useful to
humorously show and mercilessly amplify the domestic dramas of everyday life in the degraded
suburbs of Port of Spain, where people vainly strive for a heroic stature they are unable to attain;
instead, they are doomed to failure and frustration, misfortune and vulnerability, disillusionment
and alienation.

8Since calypsoes are the most authentic expression of West Indian popular culture, “born of the
folk and intrinsically tied to the folk” (Warner, 2004: 151), and since they really have “the power
to convey the Trinidadian ’spirit’ and worldview in the way that few other cultural practices can”
(Morgan, Fall 2005), it is no wonder that they are created, sung and performed in what Edward
Kamau Brathwaite labels as nation language, which is “the kind of English spoken by the people
who were brought to the Caribbean, not the official English now, but the language of slaves and
labourers, the servants who were brought in by the conquistadors” (Brathwaite, 1984: 5-6). Very
interestingly, the scholar stresses the need to investigate language structures through music. Thus
nation language, whose best feature is its orality, is also characterized by a deep connection
between “native musical structures and the native language. That music is, in fact, the surest
threshold to the language which comes out of it” (Brathwaite, 1984: 16).