Dancing with Dirty Jim
Posted: Thursday, November 13, 2003
By Terry Joseph
Just the name Dirty Jim's Swizzle Club conjures up low-life imagery of a 1950s hole in the wall, on the floor of which you just might find a down-on-his-luck calypsonian sleeping—but that is precisely the rubric under which a new CD from Maturity Music is being released.
Calypso @ Dirty Jim's—the CD—is being launched tonight (from 8 pm) at the Mas Camp Pub in Woodbrook, featuring live performances by the recording artistes of the works that, using modern technology, captures the sound of the fifties.
For those who came in late, Dirty Jim Swizzle was a South Quay nightclub (located just south of where the CCN building now stands), reflecting none of the unsanitary images that may be construed from its marquee which, in fact, had more to do with advertising the preparation of cocktails.
A haunt of calypsonians and other persons looking for nightclub adventure, Dirty Jim Swizzle also functioned during daylight hours as one of the earliest entertainment centres for cruise-ship passengers, putting on special shows for that clientele; not that its proprietor outlawed jamettes but they hardly priority items on his menu.
They couldn't be, given the proximity of Club Miramar, where the likes of Mayfield (Sparrow's "May-May") and Delilah effectively catered to such needs and because La Plata bar stood at the South Eastern apex of Charlotte Street, upstairs of which was a cheap hotel.
La Plata is more than neighbour to Dirty Jim in the ongoing calypso story, having doubled as the official mailing address for the 1955 king, Mighty Spoiler, and being the place where his 1964 counterpart, Mighty Bomber, secured his first job—as a bartender. Interestingly, Bomber won his only title with a song called "Tribute to Spoiler".
Such stories were being made as calypsonians socialised at Dirty Jim, which also offered them a performance space. It was where Lord Superior first met The Mighty Sparrow in 1955 and now, nearly 50 years later, they meet again on the CD, with Supie doing justice to "Jean and Dinah", the song that won Birdie his first crown (1956), when Spoiler did not defend his title, being on tour in Panama during Carnival season.
To hear the Calypso @ Dirty Jim, the CD, is to relive the period through the music. With names like Syl Dopson and John Henderson on cuatros, Ralph Davies on upright piano, Knolly Ahloy shaking shac-shac, Hayden Robin playing a muted trumpet, Leslie Clement on tenor sax and flute, Ken Clark's congas, Harold Richards on upright bass and Holly Betaudier adding ambience as MC (and assisting the producers as historian); the disc captures beat, harmony, swing and consequently the era's dance-friendly calypso music in its fullness.
Produced by Thierry Planelle for Maturity Music, Calypso @ Dirty Jim's is a 14-track (only 13 are listed) album featuring lead vocals by The Mighty Sparrow, Bomber, Calypso Rose, The Mighty Terror and Relator and Lord Superior, the latter two doubling as guitarists with the band. Candice Antoine-Roberts and Judy Davies supply background vocals. It was recorded at Caribbean Sound Basin and mixed at studios in Paris, New York and at Studio 161 by Omari Ashby and Giandre Diaz.
Conceptualised by two Frenchmen, Planelle who lives in Paris and Jean-Michel Gibert who has been resident here and boss of Rituals Music, the project was born out of love for calypso. "We both wanted to do something with the older calypsoes," Gibert said yesterday, "and we immediately agreed to bring back these songs and locate them in a scenario that people of that time would remember.
The title of the CD and genesis of its locator came from Alaskan Ray Funk, a celebrated calypso historian. The team felt a need to create from indigenous stock a virtual Buena Vista Social Club, as Gibert put it. "This has been three years in the making," he said. "We met with Syl Dopson to get a group of musicians who understood the work and would play acoustic instruments.
"We recorded each musician on separate channels at Caribbean Sound Basin and did the remixing in Paris, using several top engineers. The mix is designed to attract local audiences as well as tempt the global market and a tour by the lead characters and a documentary is on the cards. Already, Warner Bros (France) is listed as one of two top labels that have expressed interest.
The work was recorded on August 12 and 13 and has been quickly packaged, hoping to begin delivering returns over Christmas, for which it is well suited, containing appeal for the more mature and by the same opportunity, offering a level of nostalgia often sacrificed by such productions in the attempt to "modernise" intrinsically vintage work.
No such foolishness is present on Calypso @ Dirty Jim's, the CD presenting aura and ambience of the period by sheer choice of repertoire, using acoustic instruments exclusively and shac-shac to compliment the high-hat, enriching the feel of the overall work, whose liner notes were prepared by Funk.
Apart from "Jean and Dinah", Superior sings Lord Pretender's "Never Ever Worry" and Viper's "White Man Wife", a comment on upper-class philandering of the day. Relator does Lord Melody's "Shame and Scandal in the Family (Woe is Me)", Kitchener's "Nora, Nora" and The Roaring Lion's "Mathilda". Bomber is good for another Roaring Lion hit, "Ugly Woman", Kitchener's "Doctor Kitch" (which enjoyed a revival this year in a cover version from Kaiso All Stars lead singer Deryck Seales) and "Bam Bam" a non-calypso from Toots and the Maytals conscripted to the cause on account of its resemblace to the mood.
Terror does "Life in London", Sparrow offers "Memories" as the CD's poignant piece and Calypso Rose is in with good voice and scatting on Lord Invader's "Rum and Coca Cola", the song that was unlawfully lifted by American producer Morey Amsterdam and given to The Andrews Sisters ("America's Wartime Sweethearts") making them the first foreign act to score with calypso.
As a bonus, the band's rendition of "C'est Si Bon", one of the most popular dance numbers of the period being recreated, is added to the CD; rekindling memories of dancing on polished pitch-pine floors perhaps at The Princes Building. Although not part of the planning, members of the band wafted into the tune at the end of the session, not knowing it was being recorded. The result is wonderfully honest.
If you're in the market for vintage calypso at easy dance tempo, rendered by artists of the finest diction, with excellent accompaniment (the muted trumpet, flute and plunking piano styles have been carefully guarded), then Calypso @ Dirty Jim's is a suitable way of telling yourself (or the recipient of your choice) "Merry Christmas"; knowing the sentiment will really last the whole year through.
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African males 17 to 24: So what?
Posted: Thursday, November 13, 2003
By Bukka Rennie
November 12, 2003, www.trinicenter.com/BukkaRennie
When will we get the message? When will we come to comprehend that 12 and 14-year-old African males created the steelband? Do we understand what that means?
A 10-year-old boy on his way home from school initiated the burning of the Red House during the Water Riots of 1903!
Wasn't it African males of the very age group 17 to 24 that virtually took T&T apart in 1970, questioning everything from religion, to education, to the mode of governance, to the system of economic relationships that obtained and continue to obtain?
Wasn't it the same age group that felt so bitter about their oppression by the coercive forces of the State that, in the period 1973-76, elements, from among them, took to the hills, so to speak, and confronted the State in suicidal battles?
And again in 1990, the very said age group 17-24 proved to be the bulk of the insurgents who were prepared to follow Abu Bakr in open confrontation with the powers that be.
And do you know when and how Abu Bakr gained this following? It all began that fateful day when a group of people was protesting outside the Queen's Park Oval against the presence of a cricketer who had disregarded the rules of the ICC and had played in apartheid South Africa.
The police attacked the protesters and had them on the run. The police were beating protesters mercilessly until a group of Muslims led by Abu Bakr intervened and formed a human wall of protection for the protesters, and the police in turn beat a hasty retreat.
That was the moment! The folklore took over. The Muslims took on an image of fierce invincibility. The 17-24s joined in droves as they would any group who "make the police run."
The point is that this age group of African males will again and again rip this society apart until and unless society addresses their fundamental concerns such as the lack of relevance of the education system to everyday existence; the seeming partiality of the judiciary and coercive arms of the State to the big shots and their offspring; and the lack of equality in the distribution of the wealth of the nation.
We will ignore these concerns at our own peril and continue our merry way as the world's most "constipated" society according to Dennis Solomon.
Daily the heap of bunk and trite nonsense, that is being pontificated as analyses and prescriptions, has been growing by geometric proportions. I do not think that in the past 30-40 years more "b-s" has been foisted on this population than is the case today.
All over one hears the cry "...young African males 17 to 24 are underachieving" and immediately the literati and cognoscenti have a field day with their instant "high-falutin" prognoses about downright laziness, cultural inferiority and dependency syndrome that derived from State handouts via Special Works and URP.
Are these people serious? Laziness? Yet when there is menial, cheap, back-breaking work to be done around our yards or on our construction sites, such as digging foundations or throwing up buckets of cement, invariably it's done by a young Afro-Trinidadian. Nevertheless, the laziness talk abounds. Ah wonder why?
One person even goes as far as to assert that, though it is difficult to prove, there is circumstantial evidence that political party patronage served to destroy the independence of Afro-Trinidadians and deterred them from passing on their skills of craft as legacy to the present generation, or some such subjective stupidness.
In other words that political independence of 1962 and the development of party politics destroyed the economic independence of Afro-Trinidadians largely because of political patronage. Such the like is what passes as scholarly analysis in T&T today.
Three years ago, in my columns titled the "Quan Soon replies", I had cause to rebut similar silliness. I said then:
"...all the reports on the economy of T&T indicate that after Independence all the sectors, save agriculture, expanded. And that was possible because people shifted capital investments out of agriculture, ie cocoa, coffee, citrus, etc, into manufacturing and the screwdriver industries.
"Large capital investments now emanated from the USA and elsewhere rather then from Britain which was no longer the economic leader it once was. There was no depression associated with Independence, instead there was a boom as potential investors competed to come into T&T.
"Texaco of the US took over from the smaller British concerns of KTO, UBOT, APEX, etc, consolidated and centralised the oil industry and trained and developed many under the apprenticeship system as required by the then government.
"As in all economic boom periods, those who could no longer compete fell by the wayside. The small African businesses such as those involving the artisan trades, eg shoemakers, tailors, seamstresses, joiners, etc, could not compete with Bata, Standard Distributors, one-stop commercial stores such as Woolworth, Huggins, etc.
"Many of these artisans ended up as salaried personnel employed by the large commercial houses. That is natural to capitalist expansion. The shop-floor production system had taken over from, and impoverished, the masters of hand-craft..."
Extending the logic, I said further:
Salary and wage do not by necessity generate wealth accumulation. Salary and wage are prices of labour which in quantum are socially necessary requirement for the basic upkeep of the people who sell that labour. It keeps you barely alive and ticking to continue working. And inflation keeps eating away at the power of purchase and at whatever savings the better salaried people may prove able to set aside over and beyond the maintenance of their standard of living.
"Not so with a person who is the owner or renter of land, or has access to a piece of land, or the owner of any means that can be utilised for trade or be exchanged or invested with labour to generate profit. Such a person can accumulate for the future and buffet himself from the ravages of inflation...
"It is the inability of large numbers of Afro-Trinidadians to accomplish the latter that is the basic cause of their predicament..."
If "float and accra" and tanty-teashops have been superseded by "doubles carts and roti shops" - roti being a most ingenious version of a cheap meal - then whose children are more likely to be the lawyers and doctors of tomorrow, especially since it takes a doctor some seven years after graduation to pay off his/her student debts?
The point is this: nobody who is solely dependent on the wage relationship can accumulate wealth, it is the total dependency on wage and salary that has impoverished Afro-Trinidadians. Political patronage for Afro-Trinidadians is a job, dependent on a wage, while for others political patronage is about big and small government contracts.
No other commentator makes that point. They all seem to talk as though "gimme, gimme" dependency is only about make-work jobs, CEPEP and URP, and not about government contracts.
Yet where there is a will, there is a way. Education, particularly tertiary education, is very expensive. Most workers cannot afford this expense, particularly those who are committed to 25 and 30-year house mortgages, something that most Indo-Trinidadians have astutely rejected.
Afro-Trinidadian youths have opted as a result to take the American SAT and gain scholarships to US universities. Others, both male and female, have gone for football scholarships.
Nobody can seriously talk about "17-24 under-achieving" without first imputing figures to represent the hundreds that have been forced to choose these different routes to personal development.
Afro-Trinidadians 17-24 are not to be blamed. It is this society in which the system of socio-economic relations has become so anachronistic that it marginalises and pigeon-holes people, whether economically or culturally, and needs to be freed of its constipated stasis.
http://www.trinicenter.com/BukkaRennie/2003/Nov/122003.html
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Michael Anthony cultivates a subtler kind of fiction
Posted: Friday, November 7, 2003
By Raymond Ramcharitar, Express/TT
At the age of 73, Michael Anthony lives in the same house he has lived in for 30 years, and continues to do, in a self-effacing way, the thing he has been doing for most of his adult life: serious writing. The difference between his 73rd and his other years, is that this year, Anthony will be given arguably the widest recognition he has ever enjoyed for his efforts, which have included the production of 25 books of fiction and non-fiction (mainly local history); the recognition will take the form of an honorary doctorate from UWI, St Augustine.
The only other award Anthony has received is a Humming Bird medal from the government of Trinidad and Tobago-but you don't get the impression that this apparent lack of recognition bothers him overmuch. In the study of his house on Long Circular Road, Anthony produces a series of commemorative plaques he has received over the years. A good number of them are from Mayaro, where he was born and spent the first 10 years of life. These, from the pleasure evident in his handling of them, are worth a great deal to him. "My friends in Mayaro don't forget me," he says with a grin.
Anthony left Mayaro in the 1930s to go to San Fernando to attend technical college, and thereafter, began an apprenticeship with Texaco at Point Fortin. "I was in the foundry," he says, "it really wasn't what I wanted to do. There wasn't very far you could go from there."
He was interested in writing from them, and had published poems in the Trinidad Guardian. But a friend of his, with whom he shared a passion for sports, acquired a scholarship to England, and encouraged Anthony to come there if he was really serious about writing.
"Once there, I realised that the (British) newspapers and magazines weren't for me… it was another reality than the West Indian," he says. He concentrated his efforts on writing stories for Bim, the Trinidad Guardian, and the BBC's Caribbean Voices radio programme. A young Trinidadian named Vidia Naipaul, who had recently completed studies at Oxford, was working as a producer for Caribbean Voices, and Anthony recalls sending him some poems and a short story.
"He wrote back to me saying ‘Michael Anthony, promise me you will never write another poem. But the short story has promise,'" recalls Anthony in remarkably good humour. The story, and others, was broadcast, but Naipaul was to figure again in his life.
After the Caribbean Voices went off the air in 1958, Anthony was left with a number of short stories, which he compiled sent to a publisher. The publisher advised him that he ought to try a novel, since short stories didn't sell unless they were by an established writer. So he set about doing that.
Shortly afterward, he met Naipaul in the street, and Naipaul told him he had just sold a novel to the publisher, Andre Deutsch. "And he (Naipaul) told me ‘I told the lady there (Diana Athill) that she should expect something from you, soon' so the other publisher shot out of my mind," says Anthony. He began to work on what would become The Year in San Fernando.
When he submitted it, he was told that it was autobiography, and wasn't really a novel. He was advised to "‘put it down for three months then look at it again'. But I didn't intend to look at it ever again. I started to work on another story"-this was The Games Were Coming.
But that wasn't a straightforward success either. In the first draft of Games, the novel ended without the protagonist ever taking part in the games. The publisher requested that Anthony actually put in the climax rather than, in a prematurely postmodernist stroke, leave the reader hanging. He did, and the novel was published.
A few months after, he went back to the first manuscript, "and I was shocked. It was awful," he says. He duly rewrote The Year In San Fernando. But if the publishers were pleased, the critical reception of the work was, as Ken Ramchand put it, "cool". Neither does Anthony enjoy as high a profile even locally as Earl Lovelace or even Leroy Clarke. This is a loss to local discourse, as well as Trinidadian literature.
In the first major work on West Indian literature, The West Indian Novel and Its Background, Ramchand devotes a generous portion of his chapter on "Novels of Childhood" to enjoining readers to appreciate Anthony, and not to misinterpret the precision of capturing the consciousness of his young narrator, as a limitation on the part of the writer, as the "patronising" reviewer in Bim had done-in fact, wrote Ramchand, "Anthony is practicing an art of fiction of a very subtle kind".
Edward Baugh, writing in the major (1979/1995) collection of critical essays, West Indian Literature, concurred with Ramchand, and amplified this assessment, saying that Anthony's leaving the "big" themes like colonialism and nationalism allowed him to master the smaller, but no less important areas of the psyche, landscape, and particular moments. And indeed, Anthony admits to the heavily autobiographical leaning of his work-though he says he this is true of every writer, from Hemingway to Dickens.
The last of what are considered to be Anthony's major works of fiction, the collection of stories Cricket in the Road, after the novels The Games Were Coming, The Year In San Fernando, and Green Days by the River, was produced in 1973. But the years of that productive decade which began with his first novel being published in 1963 were also active ones for him. Three of his four children were born in England, and the fourth was born in Brazil. (All the children now live in the US, but returned for the presentation ceremony on Friday.)
Anthony had been advised to leave England for health reasons-a chronic condition hospitalised him every few years, and he was told by doctors that the reason was the British climate. He tried unsuccessfully to get a job in Trinidad from England, and was advised by friends that Brazil was the better bet-and it was; he left England in 1968. He worked in Rio de Janeiro as an English teacher, but by 1970, he had met the Trinidadian consul there, and was working for the Trinidad government. It was around this time that the deteriorating economic situation in Brazil forced him to return to Trinidad.
On his return, worked for about two months at the Trinidad Guardian, and he was offered a job by his erstwhile foundry employer, Texaco, to produce their in-house publication. But the job he wanted was on the National Cultural Council, then headed by JD Elder.
"But Elder wouldn't take me on," he said. But Elder's boss did.
A number of writers were commissioned by the national library in 1972 to produce articles for publication on literary topics; as it turned out, the editor of the newspaper which was supposed to publish the articles lost all but Anthony's, which was on literature for young readers. After it was published, says Anthony, Dr Williams instructed Elder to hire him.
Thus began 16 "very pleasurable" years with the National Cultural Council, wherein Anthony directed his attention to history. His interest was first piqued by street names in Woodbrook, (Carlos, Ana etc) which were the legacy of Siegert family, who brought Angostura bitters to Trinidad. He subsequently produced works of history on Port of Spain, San Fernando, towns and villages in Trinidad, and a book of "firsts" in Trinidad, which was reissued by Paria press this year.
After he left the National Cultural Council in 1988, Anthony was left free to pursue his writing full time. He had recently ventured into fiction again-he published All That Glitters, last year's High Tide of Intrigue, and has Butler-Till the Final Bell (on the 1930s labour leader, TUB Butler), forthcoming in December.
The honour from UWI, though, is by no means a pinnacle, if it is long overdue: apart from the forthcoming novel in December, Anthony has three projects in progress: a work on culture and custom in Trinidad, one on Trinidad and Tobago since Independence, and another novel.
Hopefully, with the attention from UWI will come another long overdue installment in Anthony's career as a writer: a serious, full-length critical study. As a first step towards that, the Creative Arts Centre will host a "semi-lime" on Sunday on Agostini Street, where dramatised portions of Anthony's works will be read.
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Top pan tuner dies at 61
Posted: Thursday, November 6, 2003
By Terry Joseph
November 06, 2003
www.trinicenter.com/Terryj
The name Leo Coker, for decades standard imprint on several banners at the annual Steelband Panorama competition, will appear no more, as the celebrated pan tuner passed away yesterday morning.
Coker, 61, died at 4.30 am yesterday at his Erin home from complications arising from a diabetic condition with which he lived for several years and for which he was twice hospitalised recently.
Among the steelbands for which he tuned instruments was Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars, Exodus, Tropical Angel Harps and Tokyo.
"He was among the most humble and dependable of persons supplying services to our band," Exodus manager Ainsworth Mohammed said. "He would make appointments for up to three years in advance for tuning or blending instruments for Panorama and you really never had to double-check.
"Leo would be there from as early as 5.30 a.m. on the appointed day, working non-stop, taking a break only for the lunch that was prepared by his wife and brought in his little bag. He was a gentleman and a leading light among his peers and we at Exodus will miss him a great deal," Mohammed said.
By his own admission, Coker was inspired to learn pan tuning after watching the work of James Jackman, who was among the team that produced instruments for the Desperadoes steel orchestra.
Former Pan Trinbago president and current manager of Solo Pan Knights, Owen Serrette said: "To merely say Leo Coker was an extraordinary tuner is to devalue his total contribution to our band, with which he has worked from inception. He was also advisor to and a friend of Solo Pan Knights.
"I had been in touch with the family through his illness and recent bouts of hospitalisation, still, when his son called to say he passed on it brought a level of sadness that no one could really plan for, as he was the kind of man you really didn't want to see die any more than you could bear his suffering in the late stages of his condition.
"I know I speak for the entire band and our arranger, Robert Greenidge when I say we will miss Coker, not just for Carnival but for the relationship he built up with us, his flawless punctuality and dependability and the gentlemanly examples he left with particularly the younger members of Solo Pan Knights. We would like to offer our condolences to his wife and family," Serrette said.
Coker's daughter Carlene told The Express the funeral service will be held tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the Buenos Ayres RC Church. Apart from Carlene, Coker leaves to mourn his wife Monica and son Keston.
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