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September 2013 |
But even as we celebrate his indomitable will and resilience—this is the man who more than once has had to declare that he was still alive in song—we are mindful of his advancing years. It seemed fitting to celebrate his life with him, so that he could be reminded of how enormous has been the space that he has carved in Caribbean memory. More than 25 years ago, The University of the West Indies conferred upon him an honorary Doctor of Letters (1987) and to many he has since been known as Doctor Bird. But sadly, many only know him by his songs, which have been one aspect of this phenomenal man. All too often, the journeys and achievements of our icons remain sketchy for later generations. All too often available information is inadequate for people to really grasp the true measure of the men and women we choose as standard-bearers. For more than fifty years, Slinger Francisco, the Mighty Sparrow, was music to our ears, and we wish to pay homage to his presence. Professor Gordon Rohlehr, the most fitting person to fully render such a tribute, has shared this fuller version of what he prepared for the citation when he was presented with the region’s highest honour, the Order of the Caribbean Community in 2001. SLINGER FRANCISCOBorn in Grand Roi Village, Grenada on the 9th of July 1935, the infant, who was nineteen years later to become the Little, then the Mighty Sparrow, was taken to Trinidad by his migrant parents in 1937. His first public appearances as a performer were with St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church Choir and at school concerts at the Newtown Boys’ Roman Catholic School. Later he would sing his repertoire of sentimental Nat Cole, Sarah Vaughan or Frankie Lane ballads at parties. An early admirer of the calypsos of Kitchener, Melody and Spoiler, he started in 1954 to make a precarious living as an itinerant troubadour making the rounds at nightclubs and restaurants, accompanying himself with his guitar. In the 1955 Calypso season, he made his first appearance in a tent at the Old Brigade Tent, South Quay, Port of Spain, singing “The High Cost of Living.” Touring Guyana after the 1955 Carnival season, he improved his performance beyond recognition and emerged in 1956 as both Calypso King and Road March champion, singing the famous “Jean and Dinah.” In seven years’ time, he had performed sufficient calypsos to be able to publish several long-playing records and singles, and a songbook entitled “One Hundred and Twenty Calypsoes to Remember.” What this meant was that the young Sparrow was recording close to twenty new songs per year. Since 1956, he has won the Calypso Monarch title seven more times, the latest being in 1992, and the Road March a similar seven more times, the last occasion being in 1984. In addition, he has won the Calypso King of Kings Competition on both of the occasions—1985 and 1988—that he has competed. Sparrow has, over his 46 years as a performer, received many honours and accolades. Some of the most significant of these have been a Chieftaincy of the City of Lagos, Nigeria (1977); awards or certificates of appreciation from the governments of Nassau (1980), the Virgin Islands (1980), Barbados (1981), Jamaica (1993), Trinidad and Tobago (1969, 1974 and 1993, when he was awarded the second highest honour in the land, the Chaconia Gold Medal for long and meritorious service). Besides these, he has been honoured in various cities: Detroit (1962); New York (1984); Austin (1985) where he was made an Honorary Citizen of the City of Austin; Newark (1986); Winnipeg (1987) whose Mayor proclaimed June 3, 1987, “Sparrow Day; Brooklyn (1990); Tallahassee (1994). The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine in 1987 conferred on him its Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree. The Order of the Caribbean Community, however, is something special. The criteria that any recipient of this Order must satisfy are strict and difficult. A recipient must, first of all, have contributed to “the political, cultural and social development of the Community and the consequent impact on the life of the peoples of the Caribbean.” The Mighty Sparrow has, as we have seen, been honoured in various Caribbean countries. He has located his narratives about society and politics in specific Caribbean islands. Apart from direct social and political commentary, he has made an immense contribution to the social well-being of the Caribbean Community through his function as celebra0nt, chantwell, warner, prophet, satirist, purveyor of joy, delight and elation; raconteur of the folk tales of our daily grass-rooted life, maintaining and expanding the rich oral tradition of the Caribbean. The output of songs through whose performance Sparrow has achieved all this, has been phenomenal. He is at present in the process of re-recording his life’s work on forty Compact Discs. He easily satisfies the first of our criteria for the Order of the Caribbean Community. Criterion No. 2 states that the recipient must have contributed to raising the self-esteem of the region. Sparrow’s achievement as a performer, social critic, self-made intellectual and entrepreneur, is living evidence of the example he has set the small people of the region of their own potential. As entrepreneur, for example, Sparrow has not only created and generated the cultural product out of his own and the region’s entrails, but has created and accessed the local, regional and international markets within which the cultural product has been disseminated. For many years he owned and managed his own recording company and record shop. And during the 1980s, developed the famous Sparrow’s Hideaway as an entertainment centre. Sparrow’s success has not come easily. It has, as he asserts in his famous calypso, “The Outcast,” been won in the face of immense social prejudice hypocrisy and negativity. According to Sparrow: Calypsonians really ketch hell for a long long time In response to these pressures, Sparrow has been rebel, warrior, the aggressive life-force beneath the very foundations of Caribbean society, pushing down walls, transgressing boundaries of race, colour, class and caste, defining freedom. Sparrow has been an inveterate and eloquent campaigner for the music; for an increased percentage of playtime for local music; for adequate copyright legislation; for the ethic of hard work and professionalism. It was he who in 1967 (“Education a Must”) advised Caribbean youth to value and make full use of the widening educational opportunity that had come with Independence. He has set an example and lifted up many of his colleagues and helped establish, in Derek Walcott’s words, “the calypsonian as citizen rather than ruin revived for a season.” Grass-rooted, connected, in touch; yet fluid, flexible, capable of adapting to whatever each circumstance demands, Sparrow has been an icon of the Caribbean person. “Man Will Survive,” he sings, after economic misfortune and political catastrophe. “Age Is Just a Number,” he declares, after recovering from illness. Thrice in his career: “Simpson” (1959), “Sparrow Dead” (1969) and the less direct “Man Will Survive” (1992) he has had to sing songs challenging and mocking rumours of his death and illustrating his awesome resilience, a power to constantly reaffirm and reinvent himself. Criterion Three requires that the recipient of the Order of the Caribbean Community “must have contributed significantly to the forging of a stronger Caribbean identity within the Community and in the Diaspora.” We may consider in this respect, Sparrow’s focus on Caribbean politics in many of his songs; his memorable calypsos on the West Indian Federation and the deep regret he shared with many other poets and artists when that brave experiment at Caribbean unity came to naught; his playful construction of narratives about recognizable Caribbean types of men and women; his inscription of a powerful personal style of performance that has been imitated by younger singers up and down the region. Sparrow once defined his mission as being always to be doing “something new and better.” He has tended to welcome new initiatives in calypso and has recognized the right of each new generation to be different from its predecessor. He has, in short, reinforced the self-confidence of the community of performers to draw on tradition or affirm change, as they might wish. Contributing to a sense of regional identity at home and abroad required intervention at critical moments in the societies’ evolution. Sparrow in 1957 along with the then youthful Lord Superior, led the famous calypsonians’ boycott of the Savannah Calypso King Competition. That boycott established for good grass-roots people’s understanding and statement of their identity as creators, indispensable to the making and performance of national culture. Similarly, “Kerry Packer” was addressing much more than cricket. That calypso was a blistering satire against the persistence of aristocratic privilege and autocratic control in Caribbean societies nearly two decades after Independence. Twelve years earlier, Sparrow had with “Sir Garfield Sobers” (1966) reaffirmed the age-old connection between great cricket and great kaiso, as he vigorously celebrated hero and tribe: “the greatest cricketer on earth or Mars” and the great team that Sir Garfield Sobers had led to the first West Indies victory in a Test Series against Australia. Significantly, Sparrow had dubbed Sobers knight long before Her Majesty realized that she would have to perform that ritual. “Mas in Brooklyn” (1969) recognizes the important fact that exile in the metropole has been a great eraser of the differences that separate West Indians at home. “It don’t have no who is who/ Brooklyn equalize you.” Equalized through exile, Caribbean people enter joyously into their true identities: a Sparrow observation with profound implications. There can be no doubt at all that Sparrow has satisfied the third tough criterion for admission into the Order of the Caribbean Community. The final criterion of the Order of the Caribbean Community involves “the projecting of the excellence of the Caribbean people on the world scene.” Sparrow has done this in a number of ways. He has for nearly five decades been regularly criss-crossing the world as a performer in America, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan, Africa and the Caribbean. “Leave the Dam Doctor” was a top tune in Nigeria fifteen years after it had been sung in Trinidad; “Mr. Walker” was as well-loved in Tanzania as in the Caribbean. Robert Mitchum sang and recorded a version of “Jean and Dinah” in 1957. In 1981, then United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim honoured Sparrow for his performance of “Wanted, Dead or Alive.” Prince Andrew is reported to have bought several copies of “Philip My Dear”. The former United States Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, confessed to his love for Sparrow’s calypsos, to which he said he constantly listened while contemplating the weighty issues of National Defence. Internationally, Sparrow is better known, thank God, than most of our regional politicians.\ There has been an international facet to his work from as early as “Russian Satellite” and “Princess and the Cameraman” to as late as “Isolate South Africa,” “Crown Heights Justice” and “Don’t Touch Mih President.” As we have seen, the people in several of the places that Sparrow has been visiting over the years have showered honours on this son of Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean, Brooklyn and the World. It is most fitting that the Caribbean Community should do so now In honouring the Mighty Sparrow, the Caribbean Community will also be honouring all those who have collaborated with him through the composition of lyrics, the arrangement of melodies and the accompaniment of his performances. Notable among these have been musician Bertram Innis and wordsmith Reginald ‘Piggy’ Joseph, both deceased, the phenomenal Winsford ‘Joker’ Devine, Calypso’s major lyricist for three decades now, and the scores of musicians and supporting singers, too numerous to mention individually, whose contribution has been indispensable to Sparrow’s success over these forty-six years. An oral and public art form, Calypso is as much the result of communal endeavour as it is of individual talent. For his outstanding contribution to the development of the Caribbean Region, the Caribbean Community salutes its distinguished son, Dr Slinger Francisco, the Mighty Sparrow, by conferring on him the Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC). |
When news of the Mighty Sparrow’s illness broke, a collective sense of dread that we were on the brink of losing this giant gripped millions around the world. So it is with great relief that at the time of writing, word from his family is that he has taken steps towards recovery, which we hope will be full and fast.