UWI TODAY is pleased to reprint these academic essays on aspects of Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural history. They have been slightly modified for publication.
Slinger Francisco, the Mighty Sparrow and Calypso King of the World, is noted for his versatility of style and subject in this musical genre. In songs such as No Doctor No, PAYE, Federation, Get the Hell Out and BG Plantain, he focuses on the political leadership of Dr Eric Williams, the founder of the People’s National Movement (PNM), First Prime Minister and father of the twin island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Between 1956 to 1966, the Mighty Sparrow and Dr Williams both found themselves in their respective careers, creating the opportunity for some of Mighty Sparrow’s great works.
Academics’ consensus is that, in his early years, Sparrow used his calypsos to win popular support for Eric Williams and the PNM. Dr Louis Regis declared, for example, “the PNM public relations thrust was dictated by Williams ... and was supported magnificently by Sparrow in calypso”. But, while indeed Sparrow’s early social commentary calypsos appeared as a stamp of approval for Williams and the PNM, there is also evidence to the contrary, as some of his renditions, to varying degrees and manner, denounced and rejected some of the policies of the Prime Minister.
No Doctor No, released in 1957, became the first calypso through which Sparrow vented his and the people’s frustration with Dr Williams. The chorus captured the primary complaint: “They raise up on the taxi fare/and why the blasted milk so dear”. The calypso articulated a multi-layered but ultimately negative public response to the rising cost of living resulting from the PNM’s economic programme of 1956. The repetition in the chorus of “No Doctor No” serving as an outright rejection of the hike in prices. Sparrow also offered the jocose-serious threat of the grand charging “badjohn” calypsonian armed with “the big piece of mango wood”. Dr Regis’s writings reveal that the PNM was, not surprisingly, displeased with the calypso and held a consultation with Sparrow on the matter – itself a clear indication that the relationship between Dr Williams and the calypsonian was far from continuously harmonious.
Writers like Regis have highlighted that PAYE, the road march of 1958, was a masterpiece of PNM propaganda despite crying shame on the PNM’s 1957 taxation measure. It ventriloquised Williams as a pragmatic but callous and authoritarian leader. Sparrow also offered a retort in response to the Doctor’s quip to pay as you earn which was “Yuh paying to learn”. The calypsonian even called on his “badjohn” father to sharpen the axe in preparation for the visit from the tax collector, but later sells the axe to comply, though unwillingly, making PAYE an ode to resistance and compliance.
Federation certainly favoured the PNM to an extent, yet it included observations that were far from complimentary to the regime. Sparrow made Jamaica’s parochialism the scapegoat of the collapsed Caribbean union when he sang accusingly, “People want to know why Jamaica run from the Federation”. Sparrow went on, however, to identify the collective culpability of all ten members, including Trinidad and Tobago led by Williams, when he sang “...we failed miserably”.
Sparrow also contradicted and blamed the doctor in the line “Everybody fighting for independence, singularly Trinidad for instance”. Ultimately, Sparrow did not spare the doctor in his indictment that “Federation boil down to simply this/It’s dog eat dog and survival of the fittest”. Without exception, each party in Sparrow’s opinion was as guilty as Jamaica was in causing the demise of the short-lived and ill-fated political federation of the Caribbean region.
The most scathing and sarcastic attack on Williams was in Get to Hell Out, released in 1965. In 1962, Dr Patrick Solomon was Minister of Home Affairs in the PNM government with responsibility for the police service. Public opinion had assessed him as guilty of abuse of power and nepotism when Solomon’s stepson was arrested and incarcerated for throwing missiles in a public space, and Solomon allegedly abused his authority by entering the Woodbrook Police Station, slapping an officer on duty, ordering the release of his stepson, and taking him home. The opposition at the time, along with the wider public, demanded Solomon’s resignation. At first, Dr Williams supported this position, but eventually, the Prime Minister not only reinstated Solomon, but also promoted him to Minister of External Affairs.
Williams’ handling of the Solomon affair was difficult to defend, and Sparrow made no effort to do so. In Get to Hell Out, Sparrow scorned the doctor’s tendency at times to act autocratically: “I am no dictator but when I pass an order/Mr Speaker, this matter must go no further/I have nothing more to say, and it must be done my way/Come on, come on, come on, meeting done for the day.” Sparrow’s biting and sustained sarcasm in Get to Hell Out provides uncompromising justification to revise the extent to which he had been regarded as the mouthpiece of Dr Williams and the PNM.
Sparrow took another public but playful jab through a combination of political protest and sexual innuendo at the Doctor in BG Plantain, released in 1966. Employing a female protagonist, the calypsonian complained about the adverse effects of banning the import of plantains to Trinidad and Tobago from British Guiana. Typical of many of Sparrow’s racy compositions, he used double entendre as the plaintiff spoke disparagingly of Trinidad’s plantain: “ain’t good at all … too small, too soft and got no blasted taste”. Standing behind his female plaintiff, the calypsonian expressed no confidence in the doctor by declaring “... doctor you too unfair ... this is one time you ain’t know what you doing”.
This range of evidence available on the relationship between the Mighty Sparrow and Dr Eric Williams calls for an important revision in how the existing literature has conceptualised the interaction between these two. Sparrow was indeed a “PNMite”, but he was also a bard of the people and for the people. There was no guarantee that from one Carnival season to another his releases would favour Dr Eric Williams and the PNM.
