Calypso Drift and Water: Reflective Eco Logic Moving Lyrical Imaginative Awareness

By Steinberg Henry

Calypso Drift And Water is a record of social and cultural history. Though the book represents the island of Dominica, it defines and describes cultural, social, and political practices of the entire Caribbean where Calypso sinks past the color of our skin to find our bones! Engaging Dominica's most articulate winning rhythms, songpoets appearin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Jun 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648950667

Steinberg Henry

Steinberg Henry is originally from Waitukubuli, present-day Dominica. Currently, he resides just outside Atlanta, a city known for its music history. He is father, passionate communicologist drawn to entertainment education, healing arts and philosophy. By dint of a visual difference, he’s fast becoming advocate for persons with disabilities. Calypso Drift is his third work, the other two being As She Returns (2009 -- second edition due in 2014) and An Unassuming Love (2011). Cover Concept: Steinberg Henry Photograph: Greg John Baptiste Sketches: Darius Ettiene Sketch Management: G Seteira Henry & Z Colberg Henry

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Acknowledgments

Nadine Edmond designed excellent spreadsheets of those 2013 eliminees, and I deconstructed them without informing her. She’ll forgive me every time until I am no more. Nads, I love you, girl, for being you and for being Calypso savvy and thinking these calypsoic notes matter.

Darius Earl Etienne sketches his interpretation of this book’s subtitle and more. He’s exceptional brilliant interpreter of times, and, bro, thank you for your prescient counsel.

Ana Deshetty’s support is appreciated in its fullness.

And I give thanks! Niva Sean Boatswain made this project happen through his kind generosity!

And as I looked at this beauty, tears welled up in my eyes.

—Minister Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam On visiting Dominica, December 2012

I doh know who win / I doh even know who sing / I only come for de rum and de party

—Wayne Shadow Flow Robinson,

Rum An’ De Party, 2013

When change declares its day / who can stand in its way

—Denison Dice Joseph, Time For Change, 2014

He had the audacity to ask me to forgive he / I love him so much / I want to believe him

—Rhea Sting Ray Lloyd, Abuse, 2015

Captain not deor, deor / Dominica on remote control.

—Michael Boople Lafleur, Air Dominica, 2016)

The cost of justice cannot be quantified

—Dominica’s Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit,

May 6, 2016

To Dominica’s songpoets, Calypsonians, musicians, producers, and media creatives

Always to my family, Jeanne, Glendora, Zev, Roberta, Imran, and all our children

To my brothers and sisters, Joycelyn, Pearl, Ernest, and Albert, and their children

To Danny Prosper, Anthony Drigo, and Sam George, who waited for this

To Duncan Stowe, who dropped by to say, Let’s press on!

and

To Rosemary Merrifield, my forever literary discourse partner

Note

There was a university of the West Indies professor named Rex Nettleford ( 1933–2010) who reminded media practitioners ceaselessly that most people liked the text, not the context. Not much has changed, since to the inconvenience of a few, contexts reveal and make transparent. In fact, some people do not even like texts that care to record another history not subscribing to ways of doing history, culture, and philosophy. I welcome you.

This work was written between 2013 and 2016 and edited beyond that time frame. It was a delicate task because political and social events of the current context were likely to percolate into the 2013–2016 framework. Those three years and beyond marked shifts in Dominica’s totality. The island-state as we knew it would never be the same again. And though this has been written, it is only a critical part of the truth.

Dominica’s living eco system, its ever-present environmental effect, remains undaunted. In 2015, when the island was struck by tropical storm Erika, many thought this to be the force that would weaken its tall topography. Dominica’s green purple and color ranges would return, and even while the island’s people embraced the land’s beauty, it seemed that they saw it still as separate from them. This is a matter that invites consideration, one that Calypso itself may begin to provide bridge-answers to by drawing elements of that eco probe to our attention, but surely a consideration that itself has its roots in much philosophical analysis.

That split pervading development of knowledge in western civilization did not pass the island’s in the West Indies unscathed. Indeed, most of our institutions drew their structure and functioning patterns from that way of thinking. The divisions are evident these days in the division of culture etcetera.

Could the 2013–2016 Calypsos construct for us all as Dominicans, and by extension the peoples of the Caribbean archipelago once again, a deliberate relationship with the environment? This would require a sort of eco logic, I argue. This eco logic breaks rules—things will not run in straight lines, there’s asymmetry, there are precipices, lakes under moonlight and mist, a Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean infused with languages of their sound beginnings and enslaved remains. Of course, the land’s food is organically rich. But why the question regarding whether calypsonians can bridge that gulf? A gulf has appeared? Was that sudden, or did that accretion creep up on us culminating in observations and warnings of Bill Daniel, as captured in chapter 3 of this book.

Something changed, and that something did not look like coherence, harmony, family unity, powerful identity construction, a formidable ethic, and a sound moral rooted in a spiritual fire. Though calypsonians in their lyrics reflected those changes, still their judgment had to be questioned in some circumstances.

Calypso Drift and Water: Reflective Eco Logic, Moving Lyrical Imaginative Awareness looks fearlessly in and at an island’s ecosystem not with significant scientific names of flora and fauna, but turns Calypso lyrics of that time back into river, fruit, mountain land, fern, sea, and rock. It is an effort at ruthlessly preserving essence—that is, that which remains conscious of the truth that the land will bounce back, that another Calypso will be heard, this time in leaves laughing in the wind too. It is an effort to secure and make permanent, to safeguard legacy, heritage, and those things we in islands gave up to take on those of others while those others are now taking up what we gave up. In those Calypsos, traces of that preservation capacity were found. But they had to be grafted sometimes in the hope that in place of rehashing radio’s talk, calypsonians would come to see that logic in song in an eco that was radical in its original resilience, in its bouncing back, even in its beauty. This is not to suggest that political critique should be subsumed. In fact, even in subsuming political critique, calypsonians may be said to reach in for greater fire in Sulphur. It is, however, to offer possibilities for perceiving ways of developing the practices of watchdogs looking over a land of so many unknown resources, yes, those hidden in water and Sulphur too.

Lastly and more critically is the extent to which these songpoets go to describe changing relations between members of families, the rise of abuse, struggles over lands, houses, monies, the silence or silencing of churches, and the surfacing of rich men and women with no traces of where they passed to achieve those riches. It is the view here that calypsonians have helped shift those opacities.

Clearly, there’s a long-term education function that those Dominican songpoets will have to adopt and adapt to if their work is to remain relevant, nonrecycled, and substantial.

Lyrical imaginative awareness must thus find that rare collection of lines, lines that sound like those spoken on and in other media and throughout communities, but shifted now to make the song unique. Its interpretation must be unlike any other ways of knowing. Therefore, and henceforth, when songpoets write, they must pass every village, hamlet, town, and city to find anecdotes, facts, and truths and edit them to the point that when that unique thread emerges, it will be itself, basking in another possibility, another context from which to leap and write.

This is not a manual, though. It is a literary piece reflecting in its commentary Dominica’s topography. In ways still to be discovered, our songpoets are wonderful keepers of history. They will continue to record for us till we realize they’re going their way, they themselves knowing that years from now, we shall see and know their complex significance. They warn us, but we do not listen. We do not listen because evidently a few are political advocates and mischief-makers. But who can doubt power, change agencies even in syllables that in traces they leave us?

As for the Water in Calypso Drift and Water, it is more a haunt than an appearance, a presence. In spiritual contexts, for example, as recorded in Revelation 18:15, waters symbolize peoples, multitudes, nations and languages. In these times, Caribbean throngs are being refreshed, made whole again. Calypsonians can help their thousands of fans become conscious of that being and becoming, to tango with awareness, to embrace unfolding imaginative awareness. So when a Calypso is sung, not only does it identify the politically corrupt, but it empowers those who use lyrics in their everyday conversations. We could be guided in our speech by or songpoets.

Let me suggest adoption of an eco logic. At the very least, it embraces river-churning laughter and, given Dominica’s magnificent precipitous topography, a profound sense of awe, resilience, and levity! For instance, somewhere along this wild coast’s shores rooted in rock, you will read, [O]f course, calypso can practice from its inherent eco logic. In this respect, it traces the land’s topography. This too is context. Since all things in forests return to forests, the song returns to its subject matter to bring a conclusion to the story, but never to its finitude. It is boundless, borderless in its connection between all expressions of natural life from the zoological to the botanic, from the physiological and mindful to the astronomical and heavenly. The fruit is sliced as much as it is consumed whole. It is spart out as much as it is internalized. It causes aroma to arise as much as a well-cooked broth. It is boundless as ocean in its titillation of the sense of smell as it is to conjuring breath caressing its creamy meat.

Calypso Drift leaped in quantum fashion, much of its content, many of its words placed in places where they were least expected. Calypso Drift and Water still calls on songpoets to press on with the ever-changing eco, infuse it with our messages, our heartbeats, let it know we can do justice, that we love it and care, though we have not always been kind to it and each other.

So in the context of war, sexual twits, walls, corrupt politicians, climate disruption, chronic noncommunicable disease, fake news, greed, China, Russia, Gaza, America, Malaysia, Singapore, London, Bonn, Paris, India, Brazil, World Bank, social and economic media, artificial intelligence, technology that carries information, and more, we, those who remain largely unprotected, look in, take an interior gaze. It is to engage a deposit, is it not? But even there, there’s instability.

We must gather up our history to pack in the carry-ons of our children. It must be like jars of water, flowing water from a Dominican rock; it must be strength in being clear that no one under the sun is better by dint of some propagated historic error, a method of doing scholarship, working music or writing lyrics. We will leap when we want to. What matters is what happens after we leap out of order, not the leap itself. Waitukubuli music teacher par excellence, L. M. Christian, used to say to me as a music student for a brief while, there’s not really a wrong chord in music. What matters is what you play after the perceived wrong chord.

We must press on to touch inside those themes songpoets and calypsonians hand us, remembering that when greenery bounces back, when water becomes crystalline clear again, they’re calling us to care and know ourselves!

These fifty-nine chapters talk to and with you. They tell you a story, and at the same time, they engage you in the story within you. You’ll find yourself frequently running your own narrative and I hope not into a field of complexity. But what if I revealed to you that this entire book, its complexity and words will pass through you, and when you’ve read a section and feel you’ve had enough but remember little, go out and find someone to talk with not necessarily about this book. You’ll be amazed how your thoughts have deepened or take flight. Best!

Chapter 1:

A Gentler Entry

I take to finding something with and within everything. Every word is a living thing, suggesting not only its structure herein, but countless others holding their etymologies, their dark genesis and origins intimately burgeoning in Latin, Greek, and other unsettled linguistic, political power centers. Invariably, a radication process emerges, even as there is a deepening of select practices. I will not stop this emergence, neither can I, at this time in global history, change the course of events embracing any nation, so much so an island-state in the Caribbean archipelago, one so central, one dwelling in a latent state for so long, one with whom I dare to power-sound words to remember, record its vibrant political Calypso and any other genre in which it heartbeats. This I can do in the hope that these notes and reflections form part of any discourse or learning project using whichever media to inform a blooming, throbbing entertainment education movement in island-states.

For those familiar with such incipience, Dominica’s Calypso Heritage, I hope you journey on stillnesses or turbulence of your remembrances, your favorite lines, your significant melodies. This latter you will not find here, neither was there music writing, musical notation in Calypso Drift. Somebody else will do that.

Within this textual drift, I want you to feel different levels of sound as words jam, juxtapose themselves, and are juxtaposed. Motion has sound and sound motion. In this drift, meaning is in each letter when sounded and echoed to zones of silence where words speak themselves with words, moving, like Bèlè dancers, in an ever-productive tango, fragmenting, cohering, negating, and positivizing each fecund thread but always, setting free to sound, silence of sound differences.

Yes, songpoets appearing in this text will themselves to truth-writing or resemblances of truth for over five months or so, then revert to another mask, another communal sound, one not composed by their writers and composers, their musicians and neighbors. After competition—Finals, Semifinals, Quarterfinals, and Eliminations—they’ll walk with moments of sound bursting with tighter chords in their heads and hearts. We must love them among us, because even from then, they’ve begun to think of the next three hundred or so days when they’ll return again with other interpretations, another story in song about ourselves, other satirical vistas, another witty recommendation, feelings of despair, hopelessness, another representation, other misrepresentations.

I could not help observing myself: a grand disinterest overwhelmed me regarding Dominica’s 2013 Calypsos. Nadine Edmond, my Calypso colleague, told me I must be tired of recycled melodies; anti-government Calypsos; replication or rehashing of radio’s talk, given that I know of Calypso’s practice long, long before there was electronic media; an apparent adjacency of Calypso writers, composers, and judges to government and antigovernment politics; and of course, alignment of political parties with calypsonians.

My heart longed for wonder in the Junior Monarch’s lines, but she and he were singing themes adults selected and wrote on for them, and these motifs constituted the same political ideologies running on social media, television, radio, and in newspapers. There was a suffocation of writing ideas. Still—and because I thought the suffocation to be vital sign—I wanted, needed to play a bit, the kind of freedom-play that Gina Letang, by way of Tasha P, called for in 2011. I needed to take what Pope John Paul the Great referenced as an interior gaze. Yes, I wanted to write an original innocence. That innocence had to be suggested—the land I knew as a child, even the one I left in 2003, is not the same. I could not represent it in truth, neither could I represent its truth. I am a citizen, but no longer one who knows it. In fact, I am reminded that what I think of, imagine, and even dream about it are yesterday’s behavioral remains manifesting now. I am happy this is happening. Vulnerable and drifting, I am willing to take thought chances.

It is therefore possible that, at least temporarily, I see my land of birth better from a distance. Yes, from that distance, I chanced upon another way of thinking about Calypso as song-practice, another way of drawing together a method that was open to giving significance to meaning-making that, in its formative stages, was not heard, though now finally spoken, written, and sounded. It implies its writers and melody makers draw from their eco in unannounced ways. Thus, in embryonic tones, I adopt this ecopsychology, this burgeoning imaginative awareness depicted by a slippage, a drift into ecosystems, forms of living things and their perceived or real interactions with writers bodies, minds, and the fullness of both. It is the agreed upon unwritten, needing befriending, who calls from rock and river too, surrounding rough and calm seas, Sulphur, steam and fauna, a common bone, a different urgency to connect unfamiliars in an island known too superficially, treated too ordinarily, with depths increasing in my soul as it turns away from its traditional mas masks.

Chapter 2:

Something Stands Firm

What else was happening in these songs this time, I wondered. Clearly, there was social crisis. Persons who reported the crisis could not hold that information private anymore, nor deny that the reports by radio, television, newspapers, blogs, and in social media comments were untrue. The island’s prime minister, and the government’s minister for social services knew there were problems of deviance and crime, so did its commissioner of police. He would admit. Teachers, nurses, social workers, and community leaders spoke about the tension, the bullying. Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Johnson recognize behavior changes. Rotary Club, Lions Club, Caribbean Male Action Network (CariMAN), and Dominica Association of Catholic Men (DACAMEN) all rushed to the rescue. The island’s churches preached, so did its denominations and sects proclaim end of Dominican society as they knew it. Like an engineered flood, modernization had penetrated a traditional society successfully, devastating values consistent with its upright landscape, mind-set, its immaculate ecobalance. That landscape blossomed and stood around the people—in the presence of their apparent ethical and moral dilemma. Something stood firm still in love with them. And their seventy thousand or so voices spoke sounds in that gently touching acoustic space, mingling with vibrations of everything else universal, borderless, and undefiled—even silences in one thousand petals unfolding.

Imaginative awareness is integral to island culture, but we’ve been cultured to make ends meet for so long that our lives have become defined by our economic activity, standard of living, per capita income, food, clothing, shelter—themselves significant parts in this life movement. These, island peoples tended always to find. But subtler things? After having been systematically separated from themselves, from power in their wonder-filled subjectivities, they return invariably to churches to say good day, hello, how is granny, how is mother, what about sister, brother overseas. They care even in the absence of having. Little recognition has been given to their social strengths, their ecounderstanding and its accompanying silences.

It is this invisible abundance that I try to suggest should be intermingled with and into Calypso lyrics, and while songs themselves may not give me these benefits, I draw water from their rocks, stem cell from their bone, voices from their leaves, meaning from their surfaces, dreams from their wit, imaginative awareness from their patterns, their repetitions. Was there really a problem as suggested by songpoets? Depending on who says what, you can be sure that the issue in its true sociological sense, it crucial, over and beyond itself and those words selected to express it.

Chapter 3:

Daniel Discerns Crisis

On Old Year’s night 2012, Bill Daniel, bishop of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Dominica, sent a message to his congregation and the nation. On Monday, January 7, 2013, he summarized it thus for radio:

I said Dominica needs to go back to Godly ways. I think there has been a decadence in spiritual activity in this country. And, I think it is wise now to take stock and go back to the biblical ways. It makes no sense blaming anybody for what is happening. I think what has happened is that the enemy has crept in to our society. It has crept into our homes, it has crept into our country. And as a result, we are seeing these things coming to pass. And I think it is very deplorable to even think about that—it’s happening in our own nation, in our backyard. These are things that happen in the United States of America and other countries of the world. It has now come home. And, I think we need to go back to the Bible, we need to go back to spiritual order, we need to go back to the place where we begin to develop Godly fear. And once that is done, then God will be able to speak and to minister to us so that our ways may be changed. I think what has happened is that the parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are on edge and, they begin to do the things that were done in the past.

Our songpoets were challenged. There was no way, looking back over the history of Calypso lyrics in Dominica, that Bill Daniel’s observations were going to escape their writing souls and minds. All of us who called ourselves Dominicans knew in our hearts that something had changed. I know persons who dismissed it as a way of dealing with it. But those organizations and government agencies mentioned above could not sweep it into the river. A tall island surrounded it all. It is magnificent, glorious in its botany, its fauna, and its types of water. Dominica can only be loved.

American historian Howard Zin reminds us, however, that to love a nation does not mean that one is uncritical of it. Moreover, emancipatory song required calypsonians to face this crisis square and show us ways of looking at it, even show us where to pass! In fact, no matter how excellently or shabbily they and their writers treated the subject, the material, not having them would leave carnival and us sad, empty, and meaningless. What an issue! They, among other artists, had to understand a society’s base, unstable, moving to achieve economic well-being and a sense of being somebody. There was nothing wrong with that save that distractions, tensions were systemically introduced into island human relations even in the midst of community living and care. Were the weeds to grow with the plant-bearing fruit till they both reached maturity?

Traces of Dominica’s elites who were said to have defined history, heritage, tradition, and good behavior retreated with horror as the worst emerged; they could not recognize their preferred history, heritage, and traditions. It was foreign, alien, yet full of potential business. That which was wrong could be commodity they thought—moral decadence descended and ascended for a time. Soon that country would have to give birth or burst.

Truly, in the crisis context cited by relevant social observers, I felt like drifting on legal or illegal names of calypsonians, their Calypso names and song titles. They appealed to me as if they were decorated rafts taking me to more silent community shades under trees where once, thought emerged to sing. I believed that words have vibrations that when selected, when juxtaposed, call to other words, people, events, places, experiences, structures stable or unstable, negative and/or positive actions. Underneath these lyrics in crisis, I would want to hear melodies suggesting urgency, the agency in rivers or river-reeds swaying to openness; read river metaphors flowing in crystalline abundance; and listen to critical popular rumbles or feel geosteam rise. I would be thinking of purity, longevity, counsel, good living, good food and eating, consciousness given the nomenclature nature island afforded that precipitous water-laden land. I would conceive of a living hope!

I did not want to be too correct about selection of words, neither did I care to block flow of generated ideas for purposes of description. I adopted the practice that whatever came to me, did not do so because I chose it—though that was in part true—but particularly on account of its flow and the word’s willingness to share in my experience and experiment. The word’s willingness. Hmmm!

This novelypso is therefore being constructed by you, in you also. I am simply opening the window or door, skylight, or sail. I ask that you drift, reflect a moment until wind gathers in the wide Sargasso.

Chapter 4:

Eliminations 2012

toward 2013

On December 22, 2012, seventy-six calypsonians were announced as participants in Eliminations for the 2013 Calypso competition in Waitukubuli. Eliminations took place at Krazy Koconuts, owned by Franky Krazy T Bellot. The number of participants has not been constant over the years. Neither has it been decreasing. Thirty years ago, it was a mere fifty. In 2012, the number swung between fifty-five and fifty-nine. As usual, a few Calypso fringe-interests turned up on the night; others had registered weeks before, practiced and were present and ready. On December 22, the seventy-six or so who were expected were the magic of the mystic that was Eliminations.

My colleague Nadine Edmond captured the best she could: calypsonians Calypso names, their legal names, their song titles. She had a row for the writer, but was not able to receive any information in that regard from either commentators or masters of ceremony during Eliminations 2013. Could be that commentators did not announce it, said it when the band had struck up and broadcast technical control moved from commentary to on stage, or the masters of ceremony said it, but commentators were speaking at the same time and she could not distinguish announcement of a writer’s name. In fact, as seen below, Edmond, who is quite Calypso savvy, did not hear announced necessary information. In one instance, she heard the calypsonian’s Calypso name and not his legal name or song title. In others, she deciphered the legal name and not the song title. There was no consistent format, no agreed-upon structure for presenting those eliminees. So trusting her keen ear, I decided to drift on whatever data she provided.

They enter competition, all of them from communities where they carried legal and Calypso names with meanings founded in other institutions, among their peer groups, their eating and drinking buddies, in their churches, schools, workplaces, and recreation centers. They bask in rivers, soak in seawater, and relieve their stresses in Sulphur. Their song titles could’ve been born of ecoexperiences, yardy conversation, reflection, injustices experienced or observed, contemplation, political tensions, and dream. These factors, those occurrences contribute to their imaginative awarenesses, their methods of song deliverances, of rendition, their props, their entrances on stages constituting biographies prepared for them, biographies preceding their appearances before an audience. It is worth knowing a slither about them, whoever they are! I drift, developing a paragraph for each eliminee.

Chapter 5:

2012 Eliminees and their Eco Sobriquets

Energizer. In this case, Nadine Edmond heard his Calypso name, not the legal one. His song title might have been announced, but that was not distinct to her. He is a former roadmarch King, having won in 2009 with Carnival is Color. He bubbles from Melon City, Salisbury.

The Souffe. Levi Thomas. One Labor. Here she picked up his Calypso and legal names, plus the song title, with no certainty regarding the spelling of his first name, Levi or Levy. Neither did they announce a writer. Observe too his first name and the possibility of a church/biblical influence. His song title, One Labor, suggests political commentary, a call to unity within a political party.

Soundproof. Michael Paul. Concerned Citizen. Calypso needs plumb the concept citizen for its internal inconsistency, its meaning specific to a postcolonial nation-state given the rise of dual citizens. Observe too that an idea for commentary and lyrical development has already risen even from these microcosmic traces. Soundproof might not have intended this opening of a contradiction, but we need take these concepts seriously when they are signed into song titles. As for his Calypso name, Soundproof has not succeeded in keeping the sound out. He has appeared in Eliminations before.

The Elf. Cyrille Henderson. Badge of Honour. She hears this one, though his writer is not mentioned. Just his Calypso name suggests a diminutive and the history of diminutives and dwarfs in Dominica, and there have been a few scattered over island. Remember too, he called on Tasha P in 2012 to hand the crown over to a male, since her 2011 queendom had caused them much pain. He used a Cadence-Lypso beat to do so. Elf. Henderson, a surname prominent in Grandbay and parts of the east and pure north.

Seastorm. Cry of the Youth. Seastorm’s legal and Calypso names were not audible. On many occasions, both the masters of ceremony and radio commentators spoke at the same time. We, the listeners, can hear both. The master of ceremony announces the next singer, which commentators do not hear. They have a running order that has no biographical notes, thus the superficiality. The broadcast technician just goes to stage. We hear comments made after, but the singer has to be significant to draw comments of any value. The name Seastorm is strong and perfect for equating with the mounting cry of Dominican youth in 2013.

Lady Claudie. Claudia Lavernier. True Leader. Lavanier. The French thing. Wonderful last name. The sound of it is that of a fragrance, something lemon, lime, green, citronelle. A number of female calypsonians have called themselves lady. In addition to Lady A and Lady Edna, in 2013 there was Lady Star. Lady signals royalty, monarchy. She uses her legal to form her Calypso name as Leandra and Tasha do. Claudia is a popular Dominican name representing a strong beauty.

Judgment. Jaster Williams. When Judgement Comes. Jaster. Nadine might’ve guessed the spelling of this name, though I do not doubt her skill at name spelling through sheer sound.

Exposer. Alvin Gachette. Who’s Bad. This Gachette family loves singing. Remember Della an’ Fadellah Gachette? Singing families in Dominica are just as prominent as political ones. What does he hope to expose throughout his Calypso trials?

The Eagle. David Lewis. Stop It. Swoop. Excellent eyes. Sees from a distance. It should be that a calypsonian’s name says something about the character, precise breaks in melody, or just her/his performance quality and, in this case of The Eagle, always representing pure perception, a hope that is caring and living.

Della. Della Gachette. Nadine does not get her song title and knows her from previous contests. She uses her legal first name as her Calypso name.

Ghetto Prince. Chris Metor. Stock Farm Blues. I had never seen his last name written. Those who said it at past Quarters, just said it. It did not matter how others thought about its spelling. That should’ve been on a DCA website. Stock Farm is where Dominica’s prison is located. He was there for a while, this prince of the ghetto. He therefore relates a personal story. How pedagogic commentators deliberations could be, given the individual nature of his experience. They could reach into his text to find what one critical realist writer calls novel schematic projections. Mark Fettes, in his 1999 essay titled, Critical Realism and Ecological Psychology: Foundations for a Naturalist Theory of Language Acquisition, recommended a shift from surface commentary. When developed, conversations move beyond the obvious to embrace the gracious granting of significance to performers, making possible connections between their life experiences and their lyrical selections when in good taste—these should push commentators over above their literally set discourse categories. Says Fettes,

Literal cognition encourages the organism to remain within known confines, while imaginative awareness projects the familiar on the unknown, with potentially catastrophic results. Literal cognition rests on ecological integration, with individuals relying on the constant feedback from their environment to guide their awareness; imaginative awareness is built on novel schematic projection within the individual. Taken together, these observations suggest that imaginative awareness becomes a viable evolutionary strategy. (www.criticalrealism.com/archive/mfettes_crep.html)

This imaginative awareness presents other tales, stories, narratives, biographies, juxtaposing unfamiliars, informing with history, tendencies to the sociological, and of course, reflections on their fascinating publics. They gather each December or January to hear, sing, laugh, drink, eat, dance, make friends, fall in love, be stunned, staggered, bewildered, thrilled, trace, note, and play. They’d come to see Insighter. Henson Prosper. I will sing Calypso. When I heard the sound of his Calypso name, I thought Inciter. He had appeared before, and I had to go back to Calypso Drift to correct Inciter and make it Insighter. It is another imaginary being, is it not? This is one who insights, interior gazes, discerns, looks within maybe to incite!

We play mas. It is linguistic play too. By its very nature in language and descriptives, commentary is evolutionary, flowing with appearances on stage, themselves another commentary from another tent, community, another family, another imaginative jot, another meal drawn from another river, another telling time.

Here is Sour Sour. He and DBS have been taken over by the ever-popular Wuk Suk. In 2011, he won roadmarch with Yowe Yowe. Visualize now his little window in 2008.

Chris B. Only his Calypso name was presented, but such an important if not controversial contributor to the calypso-scape; one likely to strip lyrics from their normative subject; one who in collaboration with his writer(s) could bring jestering to a striking philosophy of human life. Let’s wait and listen!

Lady Star. Maja Jeffers. Bail. We did not then have her songwriter, thinking at one time it might’ve been Freddie Man Himself Mendes. Another Lady. In 2008, Lady Star saluted greats in Dominica Calypso who had transitioned: Lady Charmer, Idol, Roy Alton, Spider, and Allan JnoBaptiste. That 2008 song was composed by Gina Letang. In 2010, Lady Star’s Payback Time noted that no matter how rosy things look with all these Venezuelan and Chinese gifts, one day Dominica is going to have to pay back.

Rachel JnoBaptiste. The Disappearing Voice. Sounds like the name of a movie full of mystery, shot primarily over and around a lake of some circumference under a full moon in Dominica’s January. Echo: a rock guitar in Calypso!

Mistiq. Ronie Angol, One of these Days. We’re not sure whether his first name is spelt Ronnie or Ronie; in fact, I am intrigued that Nadine chose to spell his Calypso name Mistik instead of Mystique. Two words may sound alike and different in spelling, not just meaning. Eliminations allow for the free flow of information from an external source, but it allows too for the flow of thoughts from a word-sound, a name sound, its possibilities for creating other meanings touching other words, wavelets cresting sensually to shore and breaking.

It is what we find in the name Lady Hershema, who sings Show Love and Kindness at the 2012 Eliminations. She signals integration of words and sexes, even formation of a single body by way of her and she. Points of discussion, you’d think, given shifts in gender expression in a twenty-first-century open Caribbean, not forgetting power in naming person, thing, or place. I like the name Hershema. To me, the shema belongs to her. Then there’s her house and she house, meaning the same depending on whether the calypsonian sings in Dominica or Antigua. The double feminine is powerful as well, a power held compact or fluidly coherent by ma, another feminine sound. Let’s cast our thoughts beyond our judgments, see what happens as the season of song evolves and its schemata emerge.

We could extend ourselves thinking of the other sobriquets, but here are their names and song titles as captured by Nadine Edmond, Edmond with an o. Hear the sound of those sobriquets and song titles as you water-laugh:

Politicks, Hardline Sleek; Lie ah’ Lieing, Lightning; Do unto Others, Leona; Cost of Living High, Mighty Aka; No Hope, The Calm; Madness, Daddy Chess, Chester Letang; Espwa Mal Papay, Trendsetter; A Woman’s Worth, Electra, Sherian Letang; Boomboom Burst Legal, Picklock, Cecil Lockhart; My Cousin Laptop, Sting Ray; Don’t Blame the Youth, General Kendees; De Shoes Squeezing Me, Ras Kelly, Kelly Williams; Dominica Rise, Original Kimbo; Living above our Means, Sugar S, Sherline Dangleben; Man Bad, But Woman Baaad, Twanna; Unforeseen Circumstances, Son Of Saint, Stanley Stowe; Sharptooth; Come Rally, Beetle J, Darin Labad; Bef Dey Ponging, Big Jeff, Jefferson Charles; Raise Your Camera, Wuk Suk; Voodoo on Dem, Coco Tea, Clifton Lewis; Copy China, Mr. Waves; Rum an’ Party, Shadow Flow, Wayne Robinson; Passion for Calypso, Intruder, Wilfred Peltier; Ba Yo Babalen, Deros, Dexter Peltier; Sapphire; Royette; ghetto prince of Peace, Queen Skilette; Beno; A Liar Lies, Freddie Man Himself Mendes; Open De Hole, Lady B, Beryl.

Did you listen to the sound of patterns in that notation, their names, song titles, and other sibilances? Causes me to transcend sometimes. Even if I were not Dominican, I would find delight in rolling their complex formations on my tongue! Unfamiliarity is tantalizing sometimes.

There might’ve been others eager to jump on stage, afraid to take the chance, those who just didn’t show up, dem dat dreamed but never registered and others who procrastinated. Next year. When all was done, there were about seventy interests, but the final count was fifty-somethin’. Twelve would go to the Quarterfinals.

Chapter 6:

2012 Eliminations, Reflections

Eliminations Calypsos which began the 2013 Calypso season concerned themselves with man/woman relations, illegal appointments, constitution