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Sing, Stalin, SingTuesday, April 27th 2004 So what, cricket and everything else just about rained out, did you do this weekend? Me? I stayed home and sang along with Stalin, the "Black Man" presenting in 2004 one of his trademark albums replete with penetrating social, political and economic insights, and I know that there are members of the "educated classes" who will bridle at this, the question in their minds being what do calypsonians know about these things, sociology, politics and economics being outside their frame of reference but my stern answer would be: "Yuh very wrong," Lloyd Best having gone to great pains to show me and the other First Year economics students at UWI that it was not that we did not know what economics was about but that it was his job to show us to approach the subject in a disciplined way, the man Morgan Job once called an "encyclopaedic intellectual" spending much of his time, even now, trying to show that people have a pretty fair idea about life's truths, the intellectual challenge being not to lord it over them but to lead them to a deeper understanding of the ramifications of much that they already instinctively know. In this regard I have taken to telling people that the real initiators of Britain's Industrial Revolution were the so-called ordinary people, the tinkers and blacksmiths and candlestick makers, and those who occupy themselves with this space can vouch that I continue to make the point that observing, thinking and understanding are not exclusively, or even mainly, a university or even secondary school activity not that the university-trained ought not to have a bigger bag of tools, as it were, to better plumb the physical plant or the human condition as the case might be. Actually, I must be getting soft in my old age because there was a time when, like fellow-columnist Bukka Rennie I wouldn't even deign to take on those people who put down calypsonians on the basis of limited knowledge, the empirical record rife with more than 150 years of oral perception (I don't know if there is such a term but there should be) Gordon Rohlehr for one, showing us in his engrossing classes how calypsonians, down the decades, had dealt with large abstractions in tellingly human and apparently simple ways. Whatever the reluctance of far too many of the radio stations to give as much space to the calypso commentators as they give the soca party set, they continue to do so although precisely because of this I don't know that all that many people, if many at all, have heard Stalin's latest, which is a pity given the relevance of the numbers. Neither the man's music nor his delivery can spring forth from the printed page, but I have been singing along whole weekend to Stalin's searing cry against teenage pregnancies ("Doh Do It"): She looking well and she sexy But stop, stop, stop Chorus: Zip it up, His plea both to government and people not to blow yet another energy "boom" ("Push It"): Ah warn yuh once Put down something, Chorus: Do like the mongoose His lament about the Trini man/woman do-nutten emigrant, as compared to the go-getters ("Homey"): Yuh leave yuh country Chorus: Home boy, remember Look, I still have four more to go but Ah holding back something for tomorrow ("Dr Jit", "Just the Way You Are", "One Slave", "Andre the Lion"). Before I leave today's session, though, I'd like to advise the hopelessly uninitiated that all I have quoted here is the first verse and chorus of each of these three songs and part of that "calypso ting" as Stalin so often puts it, is how the likes of Sparrow, Kitchener, Rudder, Shadow, Mudada, Explainer, Duke, Superior, Shorty, Superblue, Stalin and some others at their best develop on the opening theme (every verse stronger than the last). Hopefully, there is enough here to so whet your appetite that you'll meet me around the table for a second musical tomorrow courtesy a man who has been crowned king all of five runaway times. By which time, of course, like Lystra who typed out the lyrics for me, the gourmets among you would already have gone out and bought the CD (Just For You)-trust me. Until tomorrow then? More, Stalin, MoreWednesday, April 28th 2004 One Slave: Going about the place and pushing rebellion We got to find that slave immediately Chorus: We try confirmation-that won't do As a practising Catholic, I have to concede that at first I flinched when I heard (on NBN Radio 100) this Stalin song, but I never judge a work on whether I agree with its sentiments or not and, in any case, the "black man" here is making a more profound statement that might first appear in the calypso, although Stalin goes on to argue that the religion for black folks here is "Orisha", addressing this whole business of "Africans" both operating and being operated on by European institutions in the Americas, the concept, again, being Bestian and I can think of no better calypsonian to raise it, Stalin by complexion and dread locks, hurling the blackness of Afro-Trinidadians straight back in their face. If "Homey", to which I introduced most of you earlier, has Trinidadians in New York (where, I understand, it is "No.1," whatever that means) ruminating about those who left here with high hopes but failed to make it, "Slave" should make black people here think, if only to disturb that frame of mind so long conditioned to see "blackness" as a negative, and I don't know that Stalin is not also addressing contemporary concerns, the calypsonian looking, perhaps, at the gun rebellion among the young in the so-called high-risk areas and has the runaway slave (used here, of course, as metaphor since you can be sure Stalin is not talking about historic slavery) cautioning "with slaves like themselves never pick a fight" and "he even telling them doh pick up no weapon/they cyar win the fight dey don't make the gun/he say education is the way for them/he tell them that the gun is weaker than the pen", which, in true calypso fashion, seems to be a retreat from his initial anti-education stand as implied in the first chorus, although here Stalin might argue the question here is what constitutes a "good education". Whether by accident or not, the next cut continues, in a way, the issue of "blackness", Andre The Lion being a eulogy to Tanker, the "red man" who fled "Black Power" but who, in exile, rediscovered his blackness and returned here a changed man and a changed artiste. Hear Stalin thinking about Tanker: Ah glad, ah so glad, he forward home Hear meh, Oh how great is de Father Ah man who really understand And rap, indeed is what he does, Leroy laying down a first-class rap, as a deliberate tribute even as earlier he had gone into pan mode with his tribute to Jit Samaroo who is, of course, one of steelband's sterling sons of the soil: From ah little village called Lopinot up to UWI So when the word came out that dey from UWI Chorus: Doctor Jit congratulation, This is, perhaps, the slightest piece on the album, Stalin going over much of the ground covered so cleverly by Sparrow in "Outcast" but, having said that, let me also say that it is a nice ditty, my fellow workers here no doubt tired of hearing me sing this verse even as I know better than trying to sing "Just the Way You Are", Stalin's love song which Lystra swears, woman already! is her favourite and which she is also certain, woman already! he must be dedicating to his wife-not, mind you, that Stalin could be singing this for anybody but the lady, Patsy!- I have this deep, gut feeling No other woman make me feel like you do What we have is very special CDs by Stalin at eCaroh: Black Stalin - Hard Wuk |
