Skilled calypsonians communicate a point with a pithy rhyme, such as “public transportation is an abomination” or “children come out of college without elementary knowledge” – both lyrics from the Mighty Sparrow, second most decorated Calypso Monarch after Chalkdust. Sparrow mastered the ‘cost of living’ genre with calypsos such as No, Doctor, No (directed at Williams) and even sang repeatedly in defence of income tax, with PAYE and You Can’t Get Away from the Tax. Sparrow’s sharp social critique and partisanship led him into conflict with fellow calypsonians and disgruntled politicians: “If you tell them that the economy is no longer in full bloom / Then you become a prophet of doom & gloom”.

Gazing outward

Some of the most acclaimed calypsos address racial segregation in the US, such as Lord Invader’s Crisis in Arkansas and the Mighty Terror’s Heading North about the colour bar in the southern states. The hypocrisies of Western democracies were critiqued by Lord Cristo:

They will lynch and torture you in Jacksonville

Frame and persecute you in Notting Hill

Exercising inhumanity

And still proclaiming to believe in democracy

Calypsos of the 1960s reflect a growing racial consciousness, as expressed by the Mighty Duke’s Black is Beautiful:

No more hot comb to press we hair

No more bleach creams to make us fair

Proudly I say without regret

No more inferiority complex

This theme had been articulated by Lord Kitchener in Black or White (“You can never get away from the fact / If you not white, you considered black”), which admonishes a mixed race woman for ‘passing’. Duke’s calypso similarly frames the matter in black/white terms:

There’s no in-between in race

You got to find your natural place

To live a lie it’s clear to me

You are ashamed of your ancestry.

Excluded from this “natural” classification are mixed-race Trinidadians, doubly rejected, as the Mighty Dougla points out in Split Me in Two. Trinidad is ethnically diverse – a rainbow Model Nation in Sparrow’s declaration – yet calypso, traditionally the art form of the Afro-Trinidadians, frequently reflects tensions with the wealthier Indo-Trinidadian community.