From Sparrow to Cro Cro to Machel: Best chronicles calypso controversies through the years

Emceeing the Revue Calypso Tent’s show in 1972, night after night, the Mighty Stalin introduced Kelvin Pope in the same way:

“So, ladies and gentlemen, here without further ado is that four-king four-cup four car Duke.”

Famously, of course, over the four years immediately preceding ’72, the Mighty Duke had completed a unique beaver-trick of wins in the annual National Calypso King Competition.

And, as Stalin would painstakingly explain to his audience before delivering his punch line: “In 1968, Duke was one king; he walked away with a cup and a car. In 1969, Duke was two king…”

It was Duke who, with the first of his two winning 1968 selections, entitled What is Calypso, had attempted to define the art form. And many felt that the judges allowed him to sell them on his idea of a formula for winning the calypso competition. Wins number 1-3 were arguably deserved. Win number 4? A sucker punch!

Disagreement with the calypso judges is, of course, par for the course. Just this year, the country seemed to be split down the middle concerning the value of Machel Montano’s title-winning selection.

Many felt that the popular performer was given a freebie by the judges. Just as many seemed to think that, although his Soul of Calypso was not perhaps the best song, nobody came close to matching his presentation of the albeit uninspired material, the overall impact of his performance on the night.

It is an argument one remembers well from 2017 when Chalkdust won with his eminently forgettable—and duly forgotten!—‘75 can’t go into 14’.

However, there have been quite a few instances of a national consensus, even a few instances of national unanimity. David Rudder’s Hammer and Bahia Girl victory in 1986 comes readily to mind. As does Singing Sandra’s runaway Voices from the Ghetto triumph in 1999.

There was near unanimity too in 1974 when everyone but the judges seemed to think that Shadow had run away with the title—or should have!

The upshot of that disagreement was that the margin of his road march win announced on Ash Wednesday was massive. You could divide the number of plays with which his Bassman finished by three, the late Keith Smith once told me, and the nearest of the other contenders would still be left in fourth place!

I am not aware of any Shadow statement suggesting that he was robbed at Dimanche Gras. But simple Shadow is not the Mighty Sparrow.

Has anybody ever beaten Sparrow in a calypso competition? Not fair and square anyway.

Chalkdust might have more Calypso Monarch titles and Kitchener and Machel might have more road marches but they are nowhere near the Birdie’s class.

Not, at any rate, in Birdie’s mind. I don’t know that Dr Bird has ever said so in a lecture or in an interview or in a radio or television programme. He has certainly said it in his calypso, Robbery with V.

Deh take a man with no originality / no stage personality/Deh trying to make me look small…

The emphasis here is mine but all my instincts tell me that it is also Sparrow’s. Like Donald Trump, he’s comfortable being at the centre of the world, comfortable with victimhood.

Comfortable with controversy. Indeed, his career was launched on the back of one—Blakie claiming publicly that Sparrow had done the dirty on him.

Yankees gone, popularly styled Jean and Dinah, he contended, was not Sparrow’s brainchild as he would have the world believe. It was a collaboration between them both, created jointly by two equal partners behind bars.

Comparison of their subsequent production tilts the scales away from the composer of Steelband Clash and Arabian Festival.  The calypso community—I am tempted to conclude—is chuffed that, even if there is some truth to Blakie’s claims, it was the Bird who flew the coop before D’Warlord.

But Sparrow had other fish to fry. In 1957, after Jean and Dinah won him the Calypso King title and he received an, in his eyes, completely inadequate sum of money as his prize, Birdie let fly at the Carnival Development Committee.

So ah keeping all mih calypso on de shelf / Leh dem keep de prize in Savannah fuh deh own self.  / Leh de queen run de show / wit she fridge and she radio. / Who want to go could go up dey  / but me ent goin no way.

It’s not immediately obvious more than half a century later but there was a clear racial undercurrent to the calypso.

Duke’s Black is Beautiful would come later as would Penny Commissiong’s, Wendy Fitzpatrick’s and Giselle Laronde’s coronations. But by the late 1950s, no Black woman had ever been judged to be worthy of the Carnival Queen title.

Dougla, winner of the 1961 Calypso King title with Split me in Two and Lazy Man, also felt Sparrow’s ire and was the person targeted by him in Robbery with V.

And to close the mini-chapter on the Calypso King of the World, to this day he swears he was unfairly treated in the Independence Calypso King Competition in 1962.

Kade Simon, kaiso moniker Lord Brynner, was a born Trini, Slinger Francisco was not. Does anyone remember a public invitation to “kiss my black Grenadian ass”? Is there a connection?

No discussion of calypso and controversy would ever be complete without mention of Weston Rawlins (Cro Cro).

Like Machel in 2024, the singer of Corruption in Common Entrance split the country down the middle in 1988. However, whereas Machel’s fault line may be seen as running vertically from the Northern Range to the southern coastline, Cro Cro’s ran horizontally across the central Caroni Plain…

…and deepened with his 2005 Chop off deh hand.

He was lucky, some say, not to end up in court over his kaiso about the funeral of a high-profile media personality. But that has apparently not chastened the Mighty Midget from Buenos Ayres, who certainly does not qualify as the art form’s GOAT.

In 2023, however, he might have discovered that, (cue Penguin’s 1982 hit), trying to put words in Abraham’s son’s mouth is not as sweet as putting them in Lambie’s bambam.

Cro Cro is one of several calypsonians who also discovered that the courts can sometimes provide an easy route from Calypso Fiesta to the Big Yard. Time and again, a calypsonian, lucky to make it to Skinner Park, took that shortcut, passing through some legal loophole.

Fortunately, they have not generally tasted success on Carnival Sunday night.

But the Skinner Park semifinals have tended to be an occasion rich in controversy. Denyse Plummer (not Black) and Sugar Aloes (PNM traitor) got memorable toilet paper tributes at the event. As has, if memory serves me right, Gypsy although I do not recall the reason in his case.

On one unforgettable occasion, the television captured an overzealous female fan among the fete-loving crowd waving a pair of panties.

Turns out she was a teacher and, curiously, she was censured for engaging in activity which neither the Ministry of Education nor TTUTA could be expected to sanction.

I mean, she wasn’t actually wearing the panties at the time she showed them off, was she? Or worse, she had not taken them off to show them to the watching world, had she?

I asked Mr Live Wire in what year that had happened.

He replied with a question, a mischievous twinkle in his eye:

“The same year Trinidad Rio sing No drawers, no?”

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Earl Best

Earl Best taught cricket, French, football and Spanish at QRC for many years and has written consistently for the Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review since the 1970’s.
He is also a former sports editor at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad Express and is now a senior lecturer in Journalism at COSTAATT.