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Shorty would be able to blame any negative feedback from Severe Licking on Baron. Or his informants, Bomber and Cypher.
Gypsy’s troubles, however, are of his own making—in more than one sense!
In his 1972 For Cane, the Little Black Boy singer complained that Ah really doh know how to rule mih wife. So great was her desire for cane, she simply couldn’t be confined to the house.
Her helpful husband hatched a plan “to plant a whole cane field home”. Problem solved, right? Wrong!
Is now like the woman get jijiree, Gypsy sings. She doh want to suck the cane that ah plant fuh she. / And even though she have a whole cane field in she mouth / she still prefer to go for cane all about.
Arguing that charity begins at home, some see Penguin’s hit of a decade later as one possible explanation for Gypsy’s predicament.
(via Newsday)
Woman doh like, woman doh like, sang the 1984 Monarch, woman doh like sorf man.
Which might also help to explain the title of Zandolie’s The Iron Man.
Five ‘o’ clock in de morning, Zandolie reports, two women police came searching. / And before ah could put on mih clothes / all mih iron expose.
The calypsonian gets hauled off to the police station and subsequently to court. Fortunately, things end well for him; the female magistrate, he boasts, came to his house for an inspection, take all the iron and set me free.
It was Zando who famously accused his wife of having “too much man family”. Yet, ironically, in the end of his The Whip, females of the human species don’t feature at all! His would-be boss, Ignatius, makes it all about him:
He fell in love with it then and there / so he kiss the whip and declare / ‘Listen, Zandolie, / demonstrate on me. / I am the boss / and if you satisfy me / ah gie yuh de horse…’
Ah used to ride goat, dog, / mule, hog / anything yuh call. / And way ah vex now / ah tackling Gypsy and all.
For Shadow in Janet, things don’t go as planned either. He is at first told that his paramour’s spouse has “gone to Mexico, and then to Tokyo”.
And so we went inside and we hug up / and then I hear a motor car pull up. / And then she peep out in the gallery. / I hear she shouting, ‘Oh Lord, he ketch me’.
In the event, he has to turn to a phony act, hardly guaranteed to convince:
I will pretend I am a doctor. / Ah just come over to check yuh pressure. / But if he don’t believe what I tell him, / have a nice funeral, my darling.
The possibility of a funeral also arises in Sparrow’s Sa-sa-yea. A not-so-little Birdie tells us a story about a pretty lil Martinican gyul with whom he had a tryst he can hardly resist boasting about.
She say she come fuh de Carnival, he says. She want to play with George Bailey buh she eh have no money at all.
Sparrow proposes a quid pro quo:
Ah tell she ah go pay fuh she but she have to spend de night wit me…
However, he was also often criticised for misogynistic lyrics.
She agrees. One thing leads to another and, when things go the way of all flesh, we end up with her eventual lament:
Bonjé, Sparrow, ou ca tchoué moin!
Recognize ‘tuer,’ the French for ‘to kill’, in those six parting words? So there’s the possibility of someone dying—and not necessarily, as Singing Sandra would have it, with her dignity!
In the calypso tent in 1961, female dignity took a little beating in Trinidad and Tobago. Obviously, like Baron, I wasn’t dey. But, Bomber and Cypher be damned, I have it on very good authority.
Making waves at that time was a song beginning Making love one day / with a gyurl deh call she Mae…
Darling, don’t bite me, says the chorus, don’t bite me, honey. / I never had a man / who ever do that to me. / Ayayayayay, doudou darling, / look all mih pores raise up. / You making me feel weak, weak. / Stop, Sparrow, stop!
In 1961, Sparrow was 25 and nearing if not quite yet in his prime. Imagine him singing—and performing!—Mae Mae “live” inside the calypso tent. What might have happened, heaven forbid, had the For Cane man’s wife been present?!?
By his own admission, the Sparrow of that era could not guarantee self-control. Hear him in Take yuh bundle and go:
Ah stand up behind she, she bend dong she head / to pick up something under the bed. / Ah scramble on to she and ah bawling, ‘Doudou, / is joke ah making with you!’
And so, finally, back to Black Prince and The Letter. Our narrator meets a lady, he tells us, who is “the perfect flip side” to Brigo.
He falls head over heels. But she’s no pushover. She demands that he provide a handwritten letter of recommendation. From his last partner. Containing myriad mandatory personal details, such as what caused the break-up.
Impossible! Which woman would agree to do that?
Fortunately for Black Prince, all is not lost. He has a gay cousin, Hugh, and he agrees to write the letter for him.
It’s a cat he desires but our first-person narrator begins to count his chickens in the egg, imagining, one supposes, that his desire to kill a cyat is about to be fulfilled
Ah tell mihself when ah done rest de hurt on she, ah go buy mihself ah big trophy / in memory of all dem up and dong ah doing / getting mih credentials to get thru.
Buh wha yuh tink happen? he asks, doubtless feeling let down. Yuh know de blasted gyurl is a homo too!
Serves him right, I daresay! Audrey, Stella and the 15 women in between all agree. It good fuh he!
You’d think a man of his experience would know not to buy cyat in bag!
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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.
