SUNDAY 4TH OCTOBER, 2015 – UWI TODAY
23
In his Author’s Preface,
Gordon Rohlehr describes
My Whole Life Is Calypso as “my personal tribute to
Sparrow for his eighty (80) years of residence on earth
and his sixty (60) years of affirmative performance
of calypsos.” He also considered it “a sample of my
contemplation of the career of one of the region’s
premier and most celebrated artists,” and advises
that the book comprises basically “My Whole Life
Is Calypso,” his latest essay, and “Sparrow and the
Language of Calypso,” his first essay. It includes
as lagniappe “Sparrow as Poet” and “Carnival
Cannibalized” and ends with the citation he prepared
for CARICOM in 2001 “when they endowed Sparrow
with the region’s most prestigious title: Order of the
Caribbean Community.”
Essentially, the book proposes these two questions:
“What has Sparrow… given to Calypso over his
six decades of journeying between worlds, publics,
audiences and homelands, and what has Calypso done
for Sparrow in return?” In addressing these issues,
Rohlehr covers Sparrow’s 60-year engagement with his
homelands and places of residence and performance,
especially Trinidad and Tobago which has provided
inspiration to launch the Birdie into orbital flight and
simultaneously the challenge to bring him crashing
back to earth.
The literary quality of My Whole Life is
enhanced by the fundamental underlying unity of
the themes discussed throughout the essays and by
the omnipresence of the bird motif. This draws from
Sparrow’s self-description as a “bird flying from tree to
tree” taken from the early calypso “Sparrow is a bird.”
Rohlehr suggests that while in its original context
it referred to Sparrow’s irresponsible freedom to enjoy
sexual escapades, it may have deeper implications and
can apply to the restless journeying and performing
which characterized Sparrow’s life and career. Some
of the pivotal discussion points in “My Whole Life
Is Calypso” echo some of the thoughts published
previously in “Sparrow and the Language of Calypso”
“Sparrow as Poet” and “Carnival Cannibalized.” For
one thing this can excuse – if not properly explain –
Rohlehr’s reference to “Sparrow as Poet” and “Carnival
Cannibalized” as lagniappe; for another, it may require
the reader to re-read the essays in their order of
original publication to appreciate the development in
Rohlehr’s thinking.
In “MyWhole Life” Rohlehr’s deeper engagement
with issues raised before transcends what he sometimes
calls ruminations and musings, and emerges as a
complex of interrelated philosophical disquisitions.
To give one example, in the essays before “My Whole
BOOK REVIEW
MY
WHOLE LIFE
IS CALYPSO
Gordon Rohlehr
Tunapuna:
Gordon Rohlehr, 2015
“Sparrow and the Language of Calypso” and “Sparrow
as Poet.” Here, too, one can see a development – or
better – a change in focus in Rohlehr’s thinking viz-
a-viz Sparrow.
“My Whole Life” zooms in on the psychology
of Spar row’s per formance of ident ity : “for
Sparrow character, ability and reputation became
interchangeable components of a single personality…”
Again and again Rohlehr interprets Sparrow’s
songs and controversial behaviour over 60 years as
manifestations of his essentialist problematic: this
desire to take flight away from Trinidad and Tobago
measured against the need for affirmation from the
very society.
Rohlehr interprets his inclusion of “Congo Man”
and the somewhat less controversial “Marajhin” in
his set after he received the Order of the Republic
of Trinidad and Tobago, the nation’s highest award,
as him calling the bluff of unnamed individuals and
groups.
Rohlehr accords Sparrow, whose “main theme
had become himself and the recurrent phenomenon
of survival,” the mythic status reserved for heroes and
demigods. “MyWhole Life Is Calypso” accords Sparrow
the highest formof respect by first submitting his work
to academic rigour and then by acknowledging the
heroic dimension to his persistent struggle to affirm
his rightful place in time and space.
My Whole Life, which has been 46 years in the
writing, is emblematic of the sterling quality of vision
and expression that has earned Rohlehr, Emeritus
Professor of West Indian literature at The UWI, the
acclaimof architect of literary criticismon the Calypso.
Taken together, the book’s five essays constitute
the distillation of a literary scholar’s meticulous
examination of the technical artistry and psychology
ofTheMighty Sparrow; it also crystallizes the thoughts
of the celebrated scholar who has, from a distance,
watched Sparrow “[resurrect] himself decade after
decade amidst paradoxes of acclamation, censure,
glorification, nullification and the underlying reality
of time, aging, and diminishment.” Rohlehr readily
acknowledges that his first essay “Sparrow and the
Language of Calypso” “helped define the terms of my
interface and engagement with the Trinidadian and
Tobagonian for the next four decades,” the collection
My Whole Life testifies in part to this interface and
engagement.
Tweaking a David Rudder phrase, I can say with
reference equally to Sparrow’s career and My Whole
Life Is Calypso, surprisingly the only full-length
academic study on him, “It doesn’t get better than this.”
Dr Louis Regis was Head of the Department and Senior Lecturer - Literatures in English, in Literary, Cultural & Communication Studies until his recent retirement from the UWI.
It doesn’t get any better than this
B Y D R L O U I S R E G I S
Life,” Rohlehr consistently muses about Sparrow’s
problematic relationship with the different spheres of
Trinidad and Tobago society. This musing is taken to
another level in “My Whole Life” where he wonders
whether “the necessity Sparrow as entertainer and
performer has faced to communicate with so many
different audiences and publics, do not result in a state
of permanent transitionality inwhich identity becomes
performance and the audience’s indifference to or
rejection of performance is received as a deadly blow
to identity, to centre-self.”This business of locating self
within space and time, although present in differing
degrees in the earlier essays, is central to “My Whole
Life” which focuses on the psychology of Sparrow
rather than his art, which was the principal subject of
