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Truth be told, Dr Keith Rowley should have held his tongue—he does not have the moral high ground.
He should not have responded to Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s allegation, made under cover of Parliament without evidence, about the source of the money used to erect the new Balisier House.
But not confident that the current PNM leadership would handle the matter satisfactorily, the ex-prime minister began his defence of his stewardship with an ad hominem attack on the female prime minister.
Copyright: Office of the Parliament.
“I want to say to Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar today,” Dr Rowley began, “I told this country before that you are a jamette.”
As we started out for the Eddie Hart Savannah early the next morning, Bobby deliberately misquoted Patrick Manning, Dr Rowley’s predecessor, speaking in Parliament in 2008.
“[…] And you, sir, are a wajang, a raging bull and a Rottweiler.”
“PNM memories are short,” he felt he needed to tell me. “Conveniently. But I have not forgotten 2015—mid-March if I’m not mistaken.”
(Copyright Office of the Parliament.)
Bobby, you might have guessed, is not a PNM-ite. The way the party in general and Dr Rowley in particular treated Mr Manning after the 2010 election turned him off completely.
Born around 1956, he grew up admiring Dr Eric Williams and remains a PNM sympathizer at heart. Nowadays, however, rather than discuss local politics, he’d much rather talk about Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and the wars in Iran and Ukraine—a massive bee in his bonnet.
Still, morning after morning in the months leading up to 16 February, we beat one topic like a road march: the negative effect, direct or indirect, the new government was having on the 2026 Carnival/calypso season.
We also regularly commented on calypso’s progressive disappearance from the airwaves. Soca parang in the voices of Baron and Kenny J and Scrunter was everywhere. Now and again, we’d hear a Christmas kaiso here from Rose or Singing Francine and a kaiso there from Nap Hepburn or Relator.
(via The Caribbean Camera.)
Or Drink a Rum and Christmas Greetings from Kitchener, Bobby’s favorite calypsonian.
Meanwhile, all we heard from Sparrow was Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, as Bobby delighted in reminding me.
“Tell me what could make a serious calypsonian decide to sing about reindeer,” he confronted me one December morning, sounding like a book, “when there are Caribbean quadrupeds galore available to hog the spotlight?
“The man could have sung about Mano Benjamin and Abdul Malik, the two-legged animals in calypso you wrote about on Wired868 the other day.
The case, tried in Arima, was followed closely in Britain and USA and inspired Lord Kitchener’s calypso, One To Hang.
“Or like King Solomon, (singing) ‘Santa take a big man from St James and tie him like a cow in Morvant’. Instead, reindeer? (Loud steups.)”
But it was his Wednesday morning “wajang, raging bull, Rottweiler” throwaway line that finally sent us down the animals-in-calypso rabbit hole.
Casual research, he revealed, had turned up a few dozen calypsoes that mention animals. He’d found dogs and cats and mice and rats and donkeys and horses and goats and snakes.
Even an ostrich in a Cro Cro calypso, a sly mongoose in a kaiso by Lord Invader and a catfish in Miss Dorothy, an old Roaring Lion offering.
About one dozen, he said, were the Grandmaster’s, more, he posited, than even Sparrow…
Bobby: “…unless we’re counting reindeer! Kitch has My pussin, Dog bite yuh, Jaws, the Bajan and the crapaud, Trini Revenge, I think it’s officially called, Kakaroach in mih Petticoat, Return of the Bull, Love in the Cemetery, Batty Mamselle, O’Halloran cock…”
Me: “Hold on, hold on, hold on! A cock is a animal? A cockroach? A battymamselle?”
Bobby: “Well, not if we’re working with some narrow, narrow definition. I hope not. Plenty good, good calypsoes will get left out.”
Me: For instance?
Bobby: (Cocking his head on his left shoulder for a few seconds) Bee’s Melody…
(Breaking into song again) Climbing up a mountain / high above the sea / Ah find mihself approachin / a hive ah killer bee…”
Me: “Before ah could bawl out oh gorm / like is dead ah dead / The whole ah the beehive just swarm / and ravage mih head…”
Bobby: (Playing an imaginary tenor pan) “Puh pung pung pung puh pung puh tung. Puh pung pung pung puh pung puh tung…
Me: “Can’t have that, can we? We’re going with your definition. Bees—is apostrophe S or S apostrophe?—have to get een. But Return of the Bull?”
(via The Women Traveller.)
Bobby: “Why not? A bull is not a animal? Toro! Toro!”
Me: “Broad definition or narrow definition, not every ‘bull’ is a animal. When Shorty sing Kalo gee bull bull, he singin about a animal? Or Penguin singin Betty Goatie? Or Relator?”
I launched into my best imitation of the Gavaskar singer.
“When Sobers hear he too had a son / he make duck and run back in the pavilion. Bees and cockroach and battymamselle, okay. But I cyar see how the definition could ever be broad enough to let Kitchener Bull or dat Relator-Gavaskar-Sobers duck get een! One is not a animal and the other one is only a animal when yuh watching live cricket on TV.”
Bobby: (Chuckling) Cool, cool. What animals yuh boy Sparrow have?”
Photo: Hindustan Times.
Me: “Plenty. He have a bee at the end of Lying Excuses. He is the Village Ram. The Lizard run up the teacher dress. The Old Man and the Donkey, a message calypso. Please yourself because yuh cyar please everybody. Animal Beauty Contest, both parts. A different message in Monkey mouth. ‘Look at beauty this fellah got.’ Which brings us to More Cock and The Cockeyed Rooster.
“You see that area of overlap between the animal world and the human body? No calypsonian is better at exploiting it than Sparrow.
“I’ve heard of a Kitchener kaiso called Cat Party in the Sky. And everybody knows Blakie’s Hold the Pussy, where the double entendre doesn’t really work so well. It’s better in Black Prince’s My Desire, where he is obsessed with killing a cyat. And Calypso Rose has My Little Pussy and Brynner Roslyn Pussy.
“But Birdie is the master of cyat calypso. He alone has three: Ah Fraid Pussy bite me, Sell the Pussin and Pussy Quarrelling.
Sparrow has eight Road March titles to go with his eight Calypso Monarch crowns.
Photo: Frans Schellekens/ Redferns.
“Some people give him a fourth: Saltfish!”
Enough for today. I hope to return to the canines et al before long. But Bobby gets today’s last word, well, words. He quoted verbatim the very relevant 27-word comment then Leader of the Opposition Rowley made about then Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar, 11 years ago during a PNM political meeting.
“She could jump high, she could jump low, she could drink this, she could drink that, she could bark at meh dog, I go ignore she cyat.”
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