The following is the fourth and final instalment in Owen Thompson’s four-part series on the classic album, More Sparrow More!, by iconic calypsonian Slinger “Sparrow” Francisco: There are other equally telling avenues that allow us to arrive at meaning and afford us powerful glimpses into the unique quality of the …
Read More »Thompson: A lizard, school ma’am, Martinican mademoiselle and Sparrow’s sporting cock
The following is the third in Owen Thompson’s four-part series on the classic album, More Sparrow More!, by iconic calypsonian Slinger “Sparrow” Francisco: In Sa Sa Ay, Sparrow begins by making us all complicit eavesdroppers, inviting us both at the end of the first and the second stanzas to listen …
Read More »Thompson: Connecting Jean and Dinah to Sparrow’s unnamed pretty lil Martinican gyal
“[…] Sparrow took command of a cultural realm that touched a particularly sensitive chord, allowing for the message to be conveyed with extraordinary directness and clarity; the entire country sang along… Musically, and in terms of the procedural norms of an art form peculiar to T&T, Jean and Dinah was …
Read More »Thompson: Education, school days and 50 years of More Sparrow More!! (Part One)
“In the fullness of time, when Slinger Francisco’s massive oeuvre is unreservedly appreciated for its immense breadth and depth, rigorous scholars and casual calypso lovers alike will point to one special year, the Carnival season of 1969, when the Mighty Sparrow’s More Sparrow More!! album was released. “There had been …
Read More »Bim at 45 (Pt 3): Melodies from a master craftsman; is Tanker the Derek Walcott of Caribbean music?
Bim Singh’s final fall is the harsh culmination of the metaphor of entrapment that runs through the film. A mesh, inescapable, awaits Bim everywhere, even in his opulent, new haven. It is an element of the past which refuses to go away that jumps out of nowhere on his return …
Read More »Bim at 45 (Pt 2): Robertson’s masterful camera work adds to Tanker’s music to make a politician cringe
Andre Tanker orchestrates—there is no better word—perfect harmony between musical movements and plot movements. Key to that harmony is the articulation of a fusion that proved a prophetic precursor to the diversity of musical forms taken for granted in Trinidad today. At a time when ‘Trinidad music’ meant almost exclusively …
Read More »Bim at 45: Production far from perfect but Andre Tanker’s music scores big
“Revisiting Bim four and a half decades later, thanks to the 40th Anniversary Film and Music Pack, I find the film’s imperfections all the more endearing, its shortcomings charming. Perfection in any home-grown Trinidad film product back then would have been out of sync with place and context; it remains …
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