- (To my friend and colleague Zeno Obi Constance, and one of the people who has supported my work since I started this series in 1993, Pat Landreth-Smith)
By Tony Deyal
The great Lord Kitchener came up with “Pan in A Minor” in 1987. The “Merchant” calypsonian sang “Pan in Danger”. And then there was Peter Pan who liked to eat out at Wendy’s. There were also Europeans who liked frying pans. They had Greece at the bottom. In my case, I started before all of them.
What happened was that I spent a lot of time at my grandfather’s house. He was a “contractor” in the relatively new Gas field, and he spent his money freely to show people how rich he was. Even though his house was almost falling apart, he had one of the most expensive cars, had a hunting gun and dogs, and in the house, there was a phonograph or music box. Even though in 1948, I was just three years old, I was Pan in T (for Tony) Minor. What caused that and remained with me for my entire life so far was calypso.
The one I first fell in love with because of the music box was a song that we listened to all the time because it was the only one that my grandfather had got when he bought the box. It was “Mama Look a Boo Bood Day” by The Lord Melody. It helped me to develop my love and skill with words and humor. I still sing, “I wonder why nobody don’t like me/ But is it the fact that I’m ugly” and head into “Shut you mouth, / Go away, / Mama look a boo, boo dey.” What bothered me after the death of the Bomber, and even more now. Is that while other Caribbean singers ran with it after his death, especially one of my friends and present calypsonians, The Mighty Gabby, I was upset when I heard Harry Belafonte take it as his own. When I read him claim the song and lyrics, I told my friends who the real Boo Boo was.
However, even while Bomber was alive, I had moved to my greatest calypsonian of all time. What made that an easy choice was his sense of humor and his way with words. I heard of him one night when I was three years old and sitting next to my mother listening to a calypso by the Mighty Spoiler. He won the crown with a song “Guest of the Royal Wedding” which I can neither remember nor find. But the good news for me was in 1953, when I was eight years old, we were in our own house and my Mom sat with me listening to Spoiler with one of his great songs, “Bed Bug.”
This is how it went:
Yes, I know when you die, after burial
You’ve got to come back as an insect or animal
Yes, I know when you die, after burial
You’ve got to come back as an insect or animal
Well, if it’s so I don’t want to be a monkey
Neither a sheep, a goat, a donkey
My brother says he want to come back a hog
But not Spoiler, I want to be a bed bug.
Why?
Because
I want to bite them young ladies’ pardner.
Like a hot dog or a hamburger
Even though they’re thin don’t be in a fright
‘Cause only big fat women I want to bite.
By then I was already in my own pantomime. I used to hang about where a steel-band group was getting ready for Carnival. We had run into “Jab-Jabs” (Diable-Diable or “Devil-Devil” who carried whips and wore little anklet bells on their costumes. They moved in groups, terrorized spectators and fought pitched battles in front of the rum shops. In those days I learned to sing along with the men and women thundering past our house, the men displaying their privates and, beating pieces of iron, shouted more than sang, “Drink JuC in a calabash.” It was scary. I eventually got over it the year I was six when I read a poem in the West Indian Reader about a pirate named Captain Kidd and I told my mother I wanted to play him since he was the biggest robber there ever was.
She was a seamstress and made the costume immediately for me- big hat and cape and decorated shoes. My Uncle Jacket made a wooden sword, and I had my Christmas toy, a “cap” gun to complete my ensemble. I was a hit to the extent that “Sonny Boy” B.M. Singh, the owner of the De Luxe Store and Chairman of the Carnival Committee, ran back into his business place to fetch two Comic Books for me, a Batman and a Superman, to add to my prize. “Oh, my name is Captain Kidd/ And God’s laws I did forbid/ As I sailed the seas…”
I followed the calypsos but for me, 1955 made it clear to me that The Mighty Spoiler was the best. He gave me the mix that became my style of writing. It was the combination of hard-core facts and humour for days and daze. He won the crown for the third time with what was my favourite of all time “Pick Sense Out of Nonsense.” Here are two verses from the calypso which shows why I am totally convinced that Spoiler was the best of all time:
Then this one happen to a man named Bob
A night up at the Perseverance Club
He drink all his whiskey, brandy and gin
And on the partition, he started spitting
The manager came and said, “Ey gentleman!
Why the France you spitting on the partition?”
He said, “I am right, like you want to fight,
But I will spit on the partition whole night tonight!”
Again the manager held him on his right hand,
“Tell me, boy, why you spit on the partition?
Tell me, tell me, boy, what you spit there for?”
He say he see the notice mark, “Don’t spit on the floor.”
Then I heard this one up at Arouca,
It was about the cricket in Australia,
A fellow say the boys from the West Indies,
Can play cricket like they eating bread and cheese,
Another fellow said he too feels they are the best,
But he don’t know how France lose all the tests,
A Carriacounian didn’t know when is night down here,
In Australia, it is broad daylight over there,
So he said he would explain if they’d like to know,
He does hear them in the night over his radio,
Our boys accustom bat in broad daylight,
Now they send them over there to bat in the night.
*Tony Deyal was last seen jumping through the window to join the Carnival while his wife was sleeping.
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