MUSIC: Sparrow Gets Caribbean’s Highest Award

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Feb 27 2001 (IPS) - The Mighty Sparrow, has come a long way since the days calypsonians were put on par with dogs in Trinidad and Tobago.

Arguably the world’s best-known calypsonian, Sparrow, was one of three Caribbean nationals given the region’s highest award, The Order of the Caribbean, for outstanding contribution to the development of the region.

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders gave Sparrow the award during their annual inter-sessional summit in Barbados in early February.

“I thought of mentioning why couldn’t we have something like this before, so that I would be a little bit younger and enjoy it a little bit more,” he told reporters after accepting the award. “But they say good things come to those who wait, you can’t get certain things before time, I realise that.”

Sparrow now joins the likes of Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott, former Belize Prime Minister George Price, Director of the Pan-American Health Organisation Dr. George Alleyne, the late Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley and the late Barbados Governor-General Nita Barrow, who have been so honoured for their contribution to regional development.

It is not the first award the veteran calypsonian has received. In 1987, the University of the West Indies awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contribution to West Indian culture. Last year, the City of Baltimore in the United States made him an honorary citizen.

Born Slinger Francisco on Jul. 9, 1935 in Grenada, he immigrated to Trinidad and Tobago in 1937 when his mother came to join his father who had travelled to Port of Spain several months earlier.

Sparrow’s dominance of calypso music began in the 1950s, and over the past 45 years he was won almost every title associated with the music, including ‘Calypso King of the World’ and being crowned Calypso Monarch a record 11 times in Trinidad and Tobago, considered the Mecca of Calypso music.

He first won the calypso crown in 1956 with a song ‘Jean and Dinah’ which celebrated the departure of US troops from the island. It ushered in a newly politicised form of calypso that, in conjunction with the Peoples National Movement (PNM) facilitated Trinidad’s independence from Britain in 1962.

After he was presented with the Caribbean Order, Sparrow broke into an impromptu rendition of a song he said would show support for the region’s move towards establishing its own Judicial Appeals Court as well as the Single Market and Economy (CSME).

In the notes accompanying his Caribbean Order, it was pointed out that Sparrow “was responsible for changing the structure of calypso from the restrictive 12-bar music idiom to an internationally acceptable form of letting the lyrics dictate the idiom and the notes”.

Calypso was the Caribbean’s best known music from the 1940s until the 1970s when Jamaican reggae, spurred by the international success of singer Bob Marley, began to make inroads inside and outside the region.

In its early days, however, calypso and its performers were considered not quite respectable. In the early days signs outside restaurants and other popular places read “No entry to dogs and calypsonians”.

Sparrow recalls singing at weddings as a means of getting exposure. “I used to find myself in weddings sometimes without being invited. I would push myself up front and call out loud to my friend so people would know I am there,” he said.

Popular throughout the West Indies, calypso is believed by some industry experts to be a corruption of a West African word “kaiso” a cry of encouragement.

“It was a means where men proved their manhood and also where some women proved their womanhood,” said Gordon Rohler, a professor at the University of the West Indies and an expert on the calypso art form.

The outside world embraced the music when US entertainer Harry Belafonte released ‘Calypso’ in 1956, which became the first album ever to sell more than a million copies.

Earlier calypso-influenced US hits included the Andrews Sisters’ cover of Trinidadian calypsonian Lord Invader’s song ‘Rum and Coca-Cola’.

Sparrow has produced 70 albums containing songs that range from the humorous to the thought-provoking and from the bawdy to the bitingly satirical. He is now working on a 600-song compilation ‘Millennium Series’, an anthology of his entire music career in which he produced an average of 10 new songs annually.

“He is threatening the Godfather of soul, James Brown for the title of the hardest-working man in show business,” says Peter Ray Blood, the arts and entertainment editor of the Trinidad Guardian newspaper of Sparrow’s hectic schedule.

He gives three concerts a week in North America, he has his own two-hour radio programme in Florida and two New York radio stations have also approached him to syndicate his Sunday-morning programme.

Last year, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) engaged him to do a concert to motivate the population in Suriname to vote in the May 25 elections there.

“The best way to get a message to the people is through a cultural icon,” says Hans Geiser, UNDP’s resident representative to Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles and Suriname.

The concert was part of a European Union-UNDP initiative to raise public awareness and participation in the polls. Geiser said that the concerts were well attended and in between his exuberant calypsos, Sparrow urged his audience to perform their civic duty on polling day.

As Trinidad and Tobago observes its annual carnival celebrations, the National Cultural Committee (NCC) and the government have dubbed the season ‘Sparrow Carnival’ in recognition of the award and his contribution to culture.