I started playing saxophone in the 1960’s after a singing competition in school to win the favours of a schoolgirl went awry. My competitor sang first and either he or someone else had turned off the microphone. Worse, the damsel in distress in my quixotic mind was totally oblivious of my gallantry before but certainly not after my ridiculous disaster on stage.
I grew up listening to West Indian music and everything else of the radio and I actually thought Mr Benwood Dick was a real, decent gentleman! Thanks heavens I did not have a sister then.
I played relatively little saxophone at home with schoolmate Dr. Charlie Roberts but I recall walking home from his house one night with the music Why Was I Born played by Stanley Turrentine ringing in my ears.
In Jamaica I was fortunate to fall under the spell of the American trombonist and arranger, Melba Liston who was the first tutor of the Jazz class at the Jamaican school of music. The late Jamaican Cedric “Im” Brooks taught me the vital link between music and society as we played in diverse venues from the common yard to the uncommon prison.
It was also in Jamaica that the late Vincentian medical student, Ronnie Saunders introduced me to Weather Report and Return to Forever, two groups that told me music was indeed the language of heaven. Cushioned between them and Bob Marley and playing in Cedric “Im” Brooks and the Light of Saba, music became an indispensable part of my life, jostling with my medical career.
Coming back home in 1983, I always wanted to play the pan much more than the occasional touch I had on campus in Jamaica. The Hell’s Gate Steel Orchestra afforded me that opportunity in the Golden Gates Steel Orchestra, the adult class of pan players taught by Stafford Joseph.
I consider myself a woodwind player with all the saxophones, flutes, English horn, clarinet and bass clarinet and bassoon fighting for space at home. But the pan reminds me of being transfixed by North Star Steelband as a little boy until the shrilling sound of my grandmother calling my name in a perfect fifth interval or an octave reminded me that I was on an errand.
The nexus between a single player and a symphony of musicians in a steelband brings about a unifying oneness that truly underscores the fact that music is the language of heaven. For a fleeting moment during a rehearsal or a performance, life touches you on your shoulder and bids you welcome.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
No Steelband Holds A Terror
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
If the best way to honor your parents is never to refer to them in the past tense then I must go to the graveside of my father to tell him I now understand what he says about Hell’s Gate: Whenever North Star and other steelbands compete, the supporters of Hell’s Gate say, (in “beautiful arrogance”), that Hell’s Gate have to win; even if they don’t compete.
After a few years of skirting around a single tenor pan, I made a second, successful attempt to play in panorama this carnival, in addition to playing in the All-Star Band for the calypso semifinals and finals. If music is the food of love, Shakespeare warned that excess of it can sicken the appetite. In fact, my appetite for pan music has increased immensely.
Almost everyone knows that Hell’s Gate is the “oldest, continuously operating steelband in the world”. Relatively few people have had the opportunity to witness or take part in the continuous evolution of this profound and essential institution. I am truly grateful and immensely thankful for the honor and privilege of being accommodated by the band.
A panyard is a social and cultural unit that brings together a cavalcading mass of people. Like seemingly disparate musical notes, this gathering can combine to produce the most remarkable treasure of communal bonding. The sharing function of music must not be confined to the stage and audience interplay. Indeed, as most artistes will confess, what happens on stage is sometimes a mere pittance of emotion compared to the richness and entanglement of rehearsals.
The late Jamaican saxophonist, Cedric “Im” Brooks, introduced me to this wonder of music in the making of the community, one Saturday afternoon in the 1970’s in Patrick City, Jamaica. There were woodwinds and brasses and double bass, drums and percussions all over the yard with women cooking, washing and plaiting hair and children running about. If music is the food of love it must be shared to avoid the consequences of excess.
Learning the flat tune, the original melody, and the complex arrangement was a challenge. Here I was among players, some just one year older than my eight-year-old granddaughter, who absorbed the music called out note for note and phrase by phrase by the arranger, Maestro Khan. After about the fifth phrase, I had forgotten the first phrase and so I had to rely on getting the music sheet to learn from the score what they readily grasped by rote like new, eager sponges.
This learning by rote was most remarkable in the extent to which an entire evening’s lesson was learnt and recalled the next day. What did these children posses that I didn’t, apart from their youthfulness and the color of their hair? There were older players too, including adults. But the children’s ability to harness the dictated music astounded and inspired me.
On one memorable occasion, Maestro Khan called out a set of notes that covered all 12 notes of the musical alphabet. My fascination was congested by the sheer musicality of the arrangement and the nimble control of this musical gem by the children. In equivalent music theory terms, it was as if Maestro had taken the three primary colors and weaved all the possible colors from this trichromatic chord to arrive at a kaleidoscopic rainbow of sound. The children, and some of the adults, did not recognize the music theory of the phrase, but certainly they must have had understood this musical nugget in ways more than those provided by the sheer geometry and geography of the pan. Certainly they knew the physical layout of the pans very well but there must have been something else, some sort of musical, sonic logic that complemented the pan structure and made sense to them in similar ways to how music theory informed others and me.
This learning by rote that in recent years has being taken by Maestro Khan far beyond the confines of simple musical patterns, speaks volumes about the way children learn music and warrants a scholarly dissertation. It also translates into the way children learn in general, freed from the restrictions of early, excessive theoretical explanations and undue machinations.
Not only can these children learn, they can teach. They taught me a thing or two. I was informed, very respectfully, by my nine-year-old pan teacher that when I was rolling the notes, my entire body was shaking, and that only my wrists should move! I told her I knew but I needed more practice. She kindly suggested I keep practicing. The fact that she was always stationed in front of me suggested that other players reported my Parkinsonian musical tremor to her.
Regarding my initial difficulty using my wrists for rolling and other technical maneuvers on the pan, my older musician, non-pannists, friends, suggested an exercise that cannot be mentioned here in detail. Suffice to say it gave new meaning to the suggestion an adult female might offer a rejected male by reciting to him King Obstinate’s line, “Wet you hand and wait for me”.
The panyard generates order, discipline, respect and reverence. Refreshments give the hands a break from the pan sticks and quiet the stomachs. From the caring of the pans to the pushing and guiding of the trolleys through the streets of the city to the Big Yard at the Recreation Grounds for the pan man war (with weapons of sticks and pans only), absolute dedication and the overwhelming feeling of being part of history surround you and take you in.
Hell’s Gate is an institution that must be nurtured with respect for history and with clear, present and future planning. The stage is set for a wonderful journey far into the future from the start in the 1940’s. With Maestro Kahn as arranger and an eager cadre of young players blending with mature pannists, and a supporting cast of good management and sponsorship, panorama is simply one of the many things Hell’s Gate does well and wins. Indeed, much more than winning panorama is expected of the “oldest, continuously operating steelband in the world”.
As an institution nurturing a community ranging from children to grandparents, musicians and others, and going beyond the confines of panorama criteria, I now understand what my father says the supporters say: Hell’s Gate have to win, even if they don’t compete.
If the best way to honor your parents is never to refer to them in the past tense then I must go to the graveside of my father to tell him I now understand what he says about Hell’s Gate: Whenever North Star and other steelbands compete, the supporters of Hell’s Gate say, (in “beautiful arrogance”), that Hell’s Gate have to win; even if they don’t compete.
After a few years of skirting around a single tenor pan, I made a second, successful attempt to play in panorama this carnival, in addition to playing in the All-Star Band for the calypso semifinals and finals. If music is the food of love, Shakespeare warned that excess of it can sicken the appetite. In fact, my appetite for pan music has increased immensely.
Almost everyone knows that Hell’s Gate is the “oldest, continuously operating steelband in the world”. Relatively few people have had the opportunity to witness or take part in the continuous evolution of this profound and essential institution. I am truly grateful and immensely thankful for the honor and privilege of being accommodated by the band.
A panyard is a social and cultural unit that brings together a cavalcading mass of people. Like seemingly disparate musical notes, this gathering can combine to produce the most remarkable treasure of communal bonding. The sharing function of music must not be confined to the stage and audience interplay. Indeed, as most artistes will confess, what happens on stage is sometimes a mere pittance of emotion compared to the richness and entanglement of rehearsals.
The late Jamaican saxophonist, Cedric “Im” Brooks, introduced me to this wonder of music in the making of the community, one Saturday afternoon in the 1970’s in Patrick City, Jamaica. There were woodwinds and brasses and double bass, drums and percussions all over the yard with women cooking, washing and plaiting hair and children running about. If music is the food of love it must be shared to avoid the consequences of excess.
Learning the flat tune, the original melody, and the complex arrangement was a challenge. Here I was among players, some just one year older than my eight-year-old granddaughter, who absorbed the music called out note for note and phrase by phrase by the arranger, Maestro Khan. After about the fifth phrase, I had forgotten the first phrase and so I had to rely on getting the music sheet to learn from the score what they readily grasped by rote like new, eager sponges.
This learning by rote was most remarkable in the extent to which an entire evening’s lesson was learnt and recalled the next day. What did these children posses that I didn’t, apart from their youthfulness and the color of their hair? There were older players too, including adults. But the children’s ability to harness the dictated music astounded and inspired me.
On one memorable occasion, Maestro Khan called out a set of notes that covered all 12 notes of the musical alphabet. My fascination was congested by the sheer musicality of the arrangement and the nimble control of this musical gem by the children. In equivalent music theory terms, it was as if Maestro had taken the three primary colors and weaved all the possible colors from this trichromatic chord to arrive at a kaleidoscopic rainbow of sound. The children, and some of the adults, did not recognize the music theory of the phrase, but certainly they must have had understood this musical nugget in ways more than those provided by the sheer geometry and geography of the pan. Certainly they knew the physical layout of the pans very well but there must have been something else, some sort of musical, sonic logic that complemented the pan structure and made sense to them in similar ways to how music theory informed others and me.
This learning by rote that in recent years has being taken by Maestro Khan far beyond the confines of simple musical patterns, speaks volumes about the way children learn music and warrants a scholarly dissertation. It also translates into the way children learn in general, freed from the restrictions of early, excessive theoretical explanations and undue machinations.
Not only can these children learn, they can teach. They taught me a thing or two. I was informed, very respectfully, by my nine-year-old pan teacher that when I was rolling the notes, my entire body was shaking, and that only my wrists should move! I told her I knew but I needed more practice. She kindly suggested I keep practicing. The fact that she was always stationed in front of me suggested that other players reported my Parkinsonian musical tremor to her.
Regarding my initial difficulty using my wrists for rolling and other technical maneuvers on the pan, my older musician, non-pannists, friends, suggested an exercise that cannot be mentioned here in detail. Suffice to say it gave new meaning to the suggestion an adult female might offer a rejected male by reciting to him King Obstinate’s line, “Wet you hand and wait for me”.
The panyard generates order, discipline, respect and reverence. Refreshments give the hands a break from the pan sticks and quiet the stomachs. From the caring of the pans to the pushing and guiding of the trolleys through the streets of the city to the Big Yard at the Recreation Grounds for the pan man war (with weapons of sticks and pans only), absolute dedication and the overwhelming feeling of being part of history surround you and take you in.
Hell’s Gate is an institution that must be nurtured with respect for history and with clear, present and future planning. The stage is set for a wonderful journey far into the future from the start in the 1940’s. With Maestro Kahn as arranger and an eager cadre of young players blending with mature pannists, and a supporting cast of good management and sponsorship, panorama is simply one of the many things Hell’s Gate does well and wins. Indeed, much more than winning panorama is expected of the “oldest, continuously operating steelband in the world”.
As an institution nurturing a community ranging from children to grandparents, musicians and others, and going beyond the confines of panorama criteria, I now understand what my father says the supporters say: Hell’s Gate have to win, even if they don’t compete.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
"Im"
On The Passing of Cedric "Im" Brooks, Jamaican Saxophonist
Cedric “Im” Brooks was a gentleman musician who spoke through his instrument. A generous and gifted man who inspired me. I vividly remember the first time I saw him play at the Creative Arts Centre on UWI Campus, and then many months later playing in his band on Campus and on many stages and in many places in Jamaica.
I fondly reminisce on our practices, especially practising in his yard, a place where music was the food of love as we played on and on. Cedric was the man who took me to Patrick City one Saturday in the shadows of the afternoon to a yard full of people and music and food and peace and love to see and hear musicians such bass man, Joe Ruglass, and to show me, in real time, the communal value of music.
As a young medical doctor in Jamaica, searching for the real remedies of life, Cedric lifted me up through the diverse places (including a prison yard) we visited in Jamaica playing his music, through the musical sounds I heard him create, and tried to create myself under his influence, through the life-long lessons of love and peace, and through the inner quietness of that warn and unique Cedric-smile and his bounteous, belly-full laughter. A musician without a sense of humour is a musician with no sense of time, and hence not a musician at all. Cedric could be jocular to the detriment of a jawbone.
My only regret is not keeping in touch with him after we left Jamaica. But Cedric taught me that listening to the music and taking the music back to its source, the people, is that cycle of life that all musicians must complete to be in harmony with each other and with “Im”.
Rest in peace dear master, teacher and friend.
Give thanks.
Dr. Lester Simon
Cedric “Im” Brooks was a gentleman musician who spoke through his instrument. A generous and gifted man who inspired me. I vividly remember the first time I saw him play at the Creative Arts Centre on UWI Campus, and then many months later playing in his band on Campus and on many stages and in many places in Jamaica.
I fondly reminisce on our practices, especially practising in his yard, a place where music was the food of love as we played on and on. Cedric was the man who took me to Patrick City one Saturday in the shadows of the afternoon to a yard full of people and music and food and peace and love to see and hear musicians such bass man, Joe Ruglass, and to show me, in real time, the communal value of music.
As a young medical doctor in Jamaica, searching for the real remedies of life, Cedric lifted me up through the diverse places (including a prison yard) we visited in Jamaica playing his music, through the musical sounds I heard him create, and tried to create myself under his influence, through the life-long lessons of love and peace, and through the inner quietness of that warn and unique Cedric-smile and his bounteous, belly-full laughter. A musician without a sense of humour is a musician with no sense of time, and hence not a musician at all. Cedric could be jocular to the detriment of a jawbone.
My only regret is not keeping in touch with him after we left Jamaica. But Cedric taught me that listening to the music and taking the music back to its source, the people, is that cycle of life that all musicians must complete to be in harmony with each other and with “Im”.
Rest in peace dear master, teacher and friend.
Give thanks.
Dr. Lester Simon
Thursday, March 14, 2013
JUMBIE JAMBOREE
WHERE DO JUMBIES GO?
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
I want to know where jumbies go. I want to know where jumbies go because I want to find them. I want to find them because I have a job for all the jumbies of all the fallen victims of crime in this country. I don’t have any jumbie money to pay them but I suspect they will rest in peace after they do the job I have for them.
A woman is shot dead in broad daylight and the next kneejerk, tear-jerk thing I hear my government talk about is the death penalty. State sponsored jumbies; if they can catch them and give them a fair, timely trail. Anyone who has ever stolen anything, from sugar cake and soda pop, to other people’s money; anyone who has committed a crime; anyone who has ever done anything wrong; anyone who bears a head above the shoulders; must know that all criminals have one thing in common: the central belief that they will not get caught.
How can we live in a modern society where the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force crawls out for the occasional crisis, and parade, but otherwise sits and awaits an invasion from outer space? All the while, we are being regularly and constantly invaded by body snatchers on earth. Absolute vodka.
The Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force is part of the Regional Security System (RSS). The web site for the RSS states, "The Regional Security System (RSS) is a "hybrid" Organization, in that its security forces comprise both Military and Police personnel who remain under the command of their respective forces. It was created out of a need for collective response to security threats, which were impacting on the stability of the region in the late 70’s and early 80’s".
The RSS has been engaged in a wide range of operations, from the 1983 uprising in Grenada to the 2010 operations in Haiti, including hurricanes and other real and potential disasters in the region.
The Mission Statement of the RSS reads: "To ensure the stability and well-being of Member States through mutual cooperation, in order to maximise regional security in preserving the social and economic development of our people".
In response to the latest, brazen murder, the local arm of the RSS is being called out for joint stop and search operations, etc. We have done this before. Criminals may do stupid things but criminals are not stupid. The time has long passed for the re-engineering of the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force so that there is a regular, visible presence of appropriately dressed and equipped security personnel punctuating this entire land. Violent crime and murder are the real, manmade destabilizing disasters that are threatening the social and economic development of our people. The invasion is here, clear and present.
To do anything less than to redeploy, retool and retrain the local arm of the RSS and indeed the entire RSS is to play into the hands of criminals. The hybrid force that the RSS refers to must be a regular, common and constant active feature of national security. The kneejerk reactionary call for the death penalty must be superseded by clear thinking. Think like a criminal, and you might not get caught out, again and again.
I want to put the politicians in this government and in the opposition on notice that if the local Defence Force is not restructured to effect a regular hybrid force suitable to our needs, and if anything untoward happens to me or my family or my friends, I have an army of jumbies (including mine) ready to hunt and haunt every single last one of them and chase them to the hottest part of hell, where the burning flames are neither red nor blue; just eternally hot, hot, hot.
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
I want to know where jumbies go. I want to know where jumbies go because I want to find them. I want to find them because I have a job for all the jumbies of all the fallen victims of crime in this country. I don’t have any jumbie money to pay them but I suspect they will rest in peace after they do the job I have for them.
A woman is shot dead in broad daylight and the next kneejerk, tear-jerk thing I hear my government talk about is the death penalty. State sponsored jumbies; if they can catch them and give them a fair, timely trail. Anyone who has ever stolen anything, from sugar cake and soda pop, to other people’s money; anyone who has committed a crime; anyone who has ever done anything wrong; anyone who bears a head above the shoulders; must know that all criminals have one thing in common: the central belief that they will not get caught.
How can we live in a modern society where the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force crawls out for the occasional crisis, and parade, but otherwise sits and awaits an invasion from outer space? All the while, we are being regularly and constantly invaded by body snatchers on earth. Absolute vodka.
The Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force is part of the Regional Security System (RSS). The web site for the RSS states, "The Regional Security System (RSS) is a "hybrid" Organization, in that its security forces comprise both Military and Police personnel who remain under the command of their respective forces. It was created out of a need for collective response to security threats, which were impacting on the stability of the region in the late 70’s and early 80’s".
The RSS has been engaged in a wide range of operations, from the 1983 uprising in Grenada to the 2010 operations in Haiti, including hurricanes and other real and potential disasters in the region.
The Mission Statement of the RSS reads: "To ensure the stability and well-being of Member States through mutual cooperation, in order to maximise regional security in preserving the social and economic development of our people".
In response to the latest, brazen murder, the local arm of the RSS is being called out for joint stop and search operations, etc. We have done this before. Criminals may do stupid things but criminals are not stupid. The time has long passed for the re-engineering of the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force so that there is a regular, visible presence of appropriately dressed and equipped security personnel punctuating this entire land. Violent crime and murder are the real, manmade destabilizing disasters that are threatening the social and economic development of our people. The invasion is here, clear and present.
To do anything less than to redeploy, retool and retrain the local arm of the RSS and indeed the entire RSS is to play into the hands of criminals. The hybrid force that the RSS refers to must be a regular, common and constant active feature of national security. The kneejerk reactionary call for the death penalty must be superseded by clear thinking. Think like a criminal, and you might not get caught out, again and again.
I want to put the politicians in this government and in the opposition on notice that if the local Defence Force is not restructured to effect a regular hybrid force suitable to our needs, and if anything untoward happens to me or my family or my friends, I have an army of jumbies (including mine) ready to hunt and haunt every single last one of them and chase them to the hottest part of hell, where the burning flames are neither red nor blue; just eternally hot, hot, hot.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Carnival of the Animals
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
Apologies to Camille Saint-Saens
I am guilty. But musicians are a wicked set of people. My girlfriends and I are having a girls-night-out and so we are sitting and talking, and generally having a good time. One of the musicians sends over a bottle of wine. But I don't drink, so I don’t business. My girlfriends suggest I take a little sip. Just a teeny, weeny sip, like we do at communion. They encourage and remind me that Jesus turned water into wine. And so I take a sip.
I just smell the thing. My lips hardly move, more-less open. Suddenly, the band strikes up this soca music. The next thing I know is that one on my brand-new, expensive, high heel shoes just slide off my foot, and dance away, without my permission.
I work hard for my money. I can't afford to lose anything. So naturally, I get up to get back my wandering shoe. The next thing I know is that the other shoe I still have on, or think I have on, decides to become an apostrophe and follow the walk-way one.
Contrary to what some people think, I am not a bad girl. I just can’t help it. Some people are addicted to drugs and alcohol, and even sex. All I need is music. I am not even an addict, really. I am a slave (from a land so far). The story I hear is that my great grandfather used to play organ in church; and the Sunday when I was christening, he played the organ so well (after drinking off the communion wine, on top of a flat of white rum), the whole church, including the parson, and innocent, baby me, put down one piece of dancing in the house of the Lord.
So I have to dance out the penalty for that Sunday by being a slave to music. Being a slave is a very complicated thing. Long ago in Africa, before the Atlantic Slave Trade, we had domestic slavery. In African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade, Anne C. Bailey tells us that domestic slaves were usually criminals or debtors sold into slavery, and that domestic slavery played the role prisons serve in industrialized societies today. So it is not hard to understand how some domestic slaves were sold by Africans to Europeans. We have to study this because revisionists are saying all sorts of things about how many domestic slaves Africans sold, and how many Africans who were not domestic slaves were captured by Europeans by themselves or in cahoots with Africans.
Domestic slavery in Africa was totally different from the chattel slavery we ended up in after we crossed the Atlantic. Anne C. Bailey tells us that chattel slavery in the Americas meant servitude in perpetuity, and the inhumane, chattel slavery system was codified in law. The African, domestic slavery system was much more varied and sometimes included ways in which slaves could rise above their station and even become chiefs.
But I don’t like to talk about this slavery business because my girlfriends get upset. All I am trying to tell them is that they should not mix up domestic slavery in Africa and chattel slavery across the Atlantic. A chattel is an item of movable personal property, such as furniture, domestic animals, etc. But I know why they get upset.
The way I see it, some of my girlfriends are still in chattel slavery. One of them cannot go anywhere without her extensions. The amount of hair she has in her bedroom, you will think her bedroom is a saloon or a barbershop. Stories say she got recently left because when her boyfriend pulled on her extensions one night, her extension clean gone, and his extension gone too.
Another one is said to take fastness on holiday in Florida and go on the Ferris wheel with her extensions and her boyfriend. When the Ferris wheel and the breeze rise up, the extensions rise up too and fly clean off like an airplane. The gal so embarrass by her nice, natural, ebony, nappy hair, she covers her head (as if her head bald), and bawl and bawl until the whole Ferris wheel wet down. But the boyfriend, playing big man when they reach back home, is telling a different story on how the whole Ferris wheel get wet.
So when it’s carnival time, and I dance, and my shoes go away and sometimes parts of my body look like they want to jump up and get out of prison, it’s not my fault. But I ask why. Why we have carnival celebrations right beside Her Majesty’s Prison? It is so sad and ironic. First of all, as a reminder of domestic slavery in Africa, all people of African descent should have a completely different approach to prisons. How can we lock up our people who have wronged our society and make them wrong each other (again and again) in a prison society? They are not animals; not chattel.
This is why carnival is always so very sad to me. We celebrate emancipation and we fight for reparations. Good. One of my friends says that reparations must come and that reparations have nothing to do with how we treated or treat each other; even if we eat each other. True. (Good thing I am vegetarian). But why are we so afraid to confront our native past and fix our prisons and prisoners as a reminder of our glorious and inglorious past and customs?
And so I dance. I dance half naked even, at carnival time. Police can lock me up, again. I dance until they move carnival celebrations from Antigua Recreation Grounds, next to the prison, or reform the prison to liberate our memories of domestic slavery in Africa. Only so I can keep my brand-new, expensive, high heel shoes from wandering.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Fit For A King
Without Load
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
I hear how they planning. To celebrate fifty years of singing calypso, Sir McClean “King Short Shirt” Emanuel is being honoured. A potpourri of activities is being put on buffet, ranging from informal to formal events including magazine publication and awards as well as invitations to calypsonian from near and far. Excellent; well deserved. But there is something lacking in the way a king should be honoured, especially a calypso king.
To begin to understand how a calypso king should be honoured, we have to remind ourselves that calypso is our life in song in all guises and disguises. The presentation of this life-art has changed over the years since the King started singing, and some attention to a uniquely and originally Antiguan format should guide us to the way we honour one of our calypso kings.
In 1983, I came back home after some 13 years of absence. I was initially shocked when I watched the 1983 carnival calypso show on television. In addition to a calypsonian singing (Children Melee) on stage in front of a band, there was a theatre of characters all over the stage, acting out various parts of the song being sung, with props and costumes galore. To my returning eyes, this was not a calypso show at all. This was a spectacle of nonsense; an orgy of confusion.
But it soon occurred to me that there was a reason for this novel presentation. Gone was the BBC radio drama that glued us to the radio like clammy cherry on corn meal paper in an exercise book. Gone was the regular sustenance diet of theatre plays. Gone was the hot and sweaty dance hall with live bands. Maybe some of the past had deservedly disappeared so that a young searching teenager did not see when adults behaved like little children; like the time when we sneaked into a dance at Princess Elizabeth Hall and saw someone hand a grown woman a piece of cloth from the dance floor, and say, “Miss, look you blouse.”
Now, everything was rolled into one big production. The calypsonian had taken our life in hand and whilst echoing it in song, all forms of art were mixed into a spirited jamboree. It seems to me therefore, that the way we honour a calypso king is not just to let him get up on stage and sing, if sing at all; not just to invite his peers to his court to sing; if sing at all; not just to hand out awards, the handing out of which we almost always make mockery.
We must invite the King and his entourage to sit down, observe and enjoy his majesty. We must call on our composers, arrangers, musicians and artistes. We must take the songs of the King and embellish and transform them musically and dramatically; such that the King hears and sees his works in indigo and tangerine, black and blue and white with slices of lemon green, dashes of bright yellow and drops of bright red and burgundy.
But to do all this, we have to revalue our musicians and we musicians must reinvent ourselves. We were once in the service of kings. We were commissioned by royalty and noblemen to compose and perform music. In modern times, the record companies became our commissioners and now we struggle to play at hotels and fight over meagre wages with less meagre principles, weeping by the rivers of Babylon.
If the King and his peers have to sing, why not do what Jamaica did with Beres Hammond a few years ago (and John Holt before him) by adding a sinfonietta, including viola, cello, bass clarinet and bassoon, asking our Venezuelan and Chinese musician friends for assistance, along with local musicians who play some of these instruments, adding the unique touch of steel pan. The King’s “Lamentation” is lamenting for this.
If music is our life in song, we must complete the circle by transforming our music to showcase the very life from whence it came. To do this, our composers and musicians must learn to compose, arrange and play in ways far more complex than what now passes for excellence. There is a direct connection between the lack of music orchestration and arrangement, and what passes for verbal discourse, dialogue and discussion in our society. This is so because one cannot regularly and seriously compose and orchestrate banality and the audience cannot listen and appreciate sterile, pedantic nonsensical sounds forever. Music, like any other language must be a story, a tale; and it must be logical, or even deliberately illogical. It is like human form; it must have a head, a body and a tail or a foot. Music make us reason and reasonable.
Recently Mr. Rick James has called for the replacement of the Carnival Chairman with an Artistic Director. Apart from the fact that artistic people do not often make good managers, the suggestion is a reflection of the lack of art forms in the land and the unreasonable expectation that all our art forms must be wrapped up and boiled down into Carnival, since they are lacking or diminishing or dead otherwise. If Carnival were a woman, some of us would be arrested for unlawful cultural knowledge for the myriad things we put into and take out of her.
When will we rescue our musicians? Why don’t we have a musician in the commission of the Governor General? Where are the families and businesses that can invite and pay musicians to play in their chambers? Where are the musicians to station themselves at vantage points in our city and play their hearts out for us natives? Before we came over here, we showed the world the value of music. Long before Bach spoke to us through his first recorded work, “Air on a G String”, we were talking music to each other through the air, without a string; wireless before cable. And so, the police band can get vexed with me till their grey uniforms turn blue. When they really play, they must arrest our ears and hearts with bars of music instead of incarcerating our souls behind bars of iron.
Only when we begin to reconfigure our calypso, which is our folk music, back into the lives of folks, can we breathe extended life into this art form, complete the circle, and push the cycle of creativity and really honour a calypso king with a spectacular cavalcade of his music. And when we do that and allow the King to see and hear his music and his life transformed by arrangers, musicians, dramatists, singing-meeting orators, artistic directors and dancers, into dimensions he never imagined, he will have a very difficult choice.
At the grand ceremony, either the King will have to be manually extricated from his throne at the end, or, some time before that, as he sees and hears his life and our lives in conjoint retrospect, and in an assured artistic, cultural future, he will jump up from his throne and run away, like a pleasured child stuffed with pockets of confectionaries. And then, as he himself sang, “A motor car without load, couldn’t stop shorty down the road.” (Sing the chorus).
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
I hear how they planning. To celebrate fifty years of singing calypso, Sir McClean “King Short Shirt” Emanuel is being honoured. A potpourri of activities is being put on buffet, ranging from informal to formal events including magazine publication and awards as well as invitations to calypsonian from near and far. Excellent; well deserved. But there is something lacking in the way a king should be honoured, especially a calypso king.
To begin to understand how a calypso king should be honoured, we have to remind ourselves that calypso is our life in song in all guises and disguises. The presentation of this life-art has changed over the years since the King started singing, and some attention to a uniquely and originally Antiguan format should guide us to the way we honour one of our calypso kings.
In 1983, I came back home after some 13 years of absence. I was initially shocked when I watched the 1983 carnival calypso show on television. In addition to a calypsonian singing (Children Melee) on stage in front of a band, there was a theatre of characters all over the stage, acting out various parts of the song being sung, with props and costumes galore. To my returning eyes, this was not a calypso show at all. This was a spectacle of nonsense; an orgy of confusion.
But it soon occurred to me that there was a reason for this novel presentation. Gone was the BBC radio drama that glued us to the radio like clammy cherry on corn meal paper in an exercise book. Gone was the regular sustenance diet of theatre plays. Gone was the hot and sweaty dance hall with live bands. Maybe some of the past had deservedly disappeared so that a young searching teenager did not see when adults behaved like little children; like the time when we sneaked into a dance at Princess Elizabeth Hall and saw someone hand a grown woman a piece of cloth from the dance floor, and say, “Miss, look you blouse.”
Now, everything was rolled into one big production. The calypsonian had taken our life in hand and whilst echoing it in song, all forms of art were mixed into a spirited jamboree. It seems to me therefore, that the way we honour a calypso king is not just to let him get up on stage and sing, if sing at all; not just to invite his peers to his court to sing; if sing at all; not just to hand out awards, the handing out of which we almost always make mockery.
We must invite the King and his entourage to sit down, observe and enjoy his majesty. We must call on our composers, arrangers, musicians and artistes. We must take the songs of the King and embellish and transform them musically and dramatically; such that the King hears and sees his works in indigo and tangerine, black and blue and white with slices of lemon green, dashes of bright yellow and drops of bright red and burgundy.
But to do all this, we have to revalue our musicians and we musicians must reinvent ourselves. We were once in the service of kings. We were commissioned by royalty and noblemen to compose and perform music. In modern times, the record companies became our commissioners and now we struggle to play at hotels and fight over meagre wages with less meagre principles, weeping by the rivers of Babylon.
If the King and his peers have to sing, why not do what Jamaica did with Beres Hammond a few years ago (and John Holt before him) by adding a sinfonietta, including viola, cello, bass clarinet and bassoon, asking our Venezuelan and Chinese musician friends for assistance, along with local musicians who play some of these instruments, adding the unique touch of steel pan. The King’s “Lamentation” is lamenting for this.
If music is our life in song, we must complete the circle by transforming our music to showcase the very life from whence it came. To do this, our composers and musicians must learn to compose, arrange and play in ways far more complex than what now passes for excellence. There is a direct connection between the lack of music orchestration and arrangement, and what passes for verbal discourse, dialogue and discussion in our society. This is so because one cannot regularly and seriously compose and orchestrate banality and the audience cannot listen and appreciate sterile, pedantic nonsensical sounds forever. Music, like any other language must be a story, a tale; and it must be logical, or even deliberately illogical. It is like human form; it must have a head, a body and a tail or a foot. Music make us reason and reasonable.
Recently Mr. Rick James has called for the replacement of the Carnival Chairman with an Artistic Director. Apart from the fact that artistic people do not often make good managers, the suggestion is a reflection of the lack of art forms in the land and the unreasonable expectation that all our art forms must be wrapped up and boiled down into Carnival, since they are lacking or diminishing or dead otherwise. If Carnival were a woman, some of us would be arrested for unlawful cultural knowledge for the myriad things we put into and take out of her.
When will we rescue our musicians? Why don’t we have a musician in the commission of the Governor General? Where are the families and businesses that can invite and pay musicians to play in their chambers? Where are the musicians to station themselves at vantage points in our city and play their hearts out for us natives? Before we came over here, we showed the world the value of music. Long before Bach spoke to us through his first recorded work, “Air on a G String”, we were talking music to each other through the air, without a string; wireless before cable. And so, the police band can get vexed with me till their grey uniforms turn blue. When they really play, they must arrest our ears and hearts with bars of music instead of incarcerating our souls behind bars of iron.
Only when we begin to reconfigure our calypso, which is our folk music, back into the lives of folks, can we breathe extended life into this art form, complete the circle, and push the cycle of creativity and really honour a calypso king with a spectacular cavalcade of his music. And when we do that and allow the King to see and hear his music and his life transformed by arrangers, musicians, dramatists, singing-meeting orators, artistic directors and dancers, into dimensions he never imagined, he will have a very difficult choice.
At the grand ceremony, either the King will have to be manually extricated from his throne at the end, or, some time before that, as he sees and hears his life and our lives in conjoint retrospect, and in an assured artistic, cultural future, he will jump up from his throne and run away, like a pleasured child stuffed with pockets of confectionaries. And then, as he himself sang, “A motor car without load, couldn’t stop shorty down the road.” (Sing the chorus).
Sunday, June 3, 2012
The Art of Listening
Listen Up
Did you attend the Spring Garden’s Moravian Church service in celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II? No one I know will say it publicly so I will. The members of the Royal Antigua and Barbuda Police Force Band should be locked up with their musical instruments, and maybe also with small rations of bread and water. The keys to their cells should be smelted and the amalgamated, melted mass poured, over separate locations, into the Atlantic…no... the Pacific Ocean; far, far away so that they can only get out of musical jail after doing penance for the harm they are doing to the ears, minds and hearts of normal people and to themselves.
Listen here. At some time in the life of a musician or any professional, a decision must be made on the quality of service provided. Even prostitutes know this. The problem with the members of the police band is generic to a fundamental issue facing all professionals in a developing country (including doctors, and not excluding myself).
Music is a listening art. The innumerable times I have not listened and fallen flat (or sharp) are testaments to how easy it is to miss the beat; to stray; to get caught up with oneself; to think one is wonderful and smart, and brilliant like some big, bad musical wolf; when all the while even Little Red Riding Hood can see under the blanket cover. You cannot hide inside the music forever.
The fundamental paradox boxing all of us in a developing country is how we balance the sands of opportunities against the singular rock of reliability, hard work, and the quiet satisfaction of a job well done. It is difficult. It is not impossible. We have to learn to listen and set limits and standards. Three disciplines in life with which I am familiar enforce the importance of listening.
Medicine demands listening. And this listening is not just listening to patients and colleagues. A good doctor must listen to the inner voice. Allow me to add this virtue to the list of deserving accolades in respect of the recent celebration of the life and work of our eminent surgeon, Mr. Cuthwin Lake. (Someone else will say why doctors respectfully refer to surgeons as Mister instead of Doctor). Mr. Lake is a great doctor because he is, above all else, a great listener.
Marriage demands listening. A young, female friend of my wife once revealed that she had discovered the hidden secret of a good marriage. She was buoying (and “boy-ing” ) as if she had had a moment of eureka (probably in a bath tub too). She let out that husbands will do whatever their wives tell them to do; and so all wives have to do is to tell their husbands what to do. It was that simple, like all great discoveries. This lovely, neophyte wife must never be told that her good, listening husband had made the simultaneous Archimedean discovery (in the same bath tub) that if he wanted peace (and its homophone) he must, at least, pretend to listen.
The problem with music is that it is all timing. It takes time to learn an instrument, to play it well, and to listen. In the life of a musician there are long periods of being away from others, immersing oneself totally in sounds of music. There are many stories of some women who swore they would be the happiest women on earth if only they received even less than one per cent of the love, care and attention their musician partner showered on their instrument. There are also stories of some women dropping musical instruments “accidentally”.
It is extremely difficult to be a policeman or a doctor or any other professional, and also play music well. We have to be prepared to make huge sacrifices in securing and maintaining a good instrument, spending countless hours and years practising and listening to the inner voice that tells us when our playing is neither cerebral nor cordial but simply anal.
In a developing country like ours, anything passes for everything. We argue that checks and balances are not in place and official standards are lacking. But how can we call ourselves musician, transfused with the healing elixir vitae from Apollo; entrusted to speak and heal with this wonderful universal language, as all musicians must be, and not have that inner, personal, listening sense of good and bad, right and wrong? Yes, we do not get sufficient time off to practise and yes, we have to have more than one job to make ends come a little closer to meeting. So what do we do? What song shall we sing that is acceptable in our sight in this strange land?
The words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart must be in consonant harmony. Those in professional and national authority must stop pussyfooting, understand the immense value of music, and stop devaluing musicians. On the personal level, we musicians must either find the flipping time and make more than the flippant effort that music demands, or stop disturbing, and provoking, the beautiful instrument. Play it right or do not play it at all.
A friend of mine, who is also a doctor and a musician and married, and hence is a great listener, reminds: “Some are deaf; many more do not listen.”
Did you attend the Spring Garden’s Moravian Church service in celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II? No one I know will say it publicly so I will. The members of the Royal Antigua and Barbuda Police Force Band should be locked up with their musical instruments, and maybe also with small rations of bread and water. The keys to their cells should be smelted and the amalgamated, melted mass poured, over separate locations, into the Atlantic…no... the Pacific Ocean; far, far away so that they can only get out of musical jail after doing penance for the harm they are doing to the ears, minds and hearts of normal people and to themselves.
Listen here. At some time in the life of a musician or any professional, a decision must be made on the quality of service provided. Even prostitutes know this. The problem with the members of the police band is generic to a fundamental issue facing all professionals in a developing country (including doctors, and not excluding myself).
Music is a listening art. The innumerable times I have not listened and fallen flat (or sharp) are testaments to how easy it is to miss the beat; to stray; to get caught up with oneself; to think one is wonderful and smart, and brilliant like some big, bad musical wolf; when all the while even Little Red Riding Hood can see under the blanket cover. You cannot hide inside the music forever.
The fundamental paradox boxing all of us in a developing country is how we balance the sands of opportunities against the singular rock of reliability, hard work, and the quiet satisfaction of a job well done. It is difficult. It is not impossible. We have to learn to listen and set limits and standards. Three disciplines in life with which I am familiar enforce the importance of listening.
Medicine demands listening. And this listening is not just listening to patients and colleagues. A good doctor must listen to the inner voice. Allow me to add this virtue to the list of deserving accolades in respect of the recent celebration of the life and work of our eminent surgeon, Mr. Cuthwin Lake. (Someone else will say why doctors respectfully refer to surgeons as Mister instead of Doctor). Mr. Lake is a great doctor because he is, above all else, a great listener.
Marriage demands listening. A young, female friend of my wife once revealed that she had discovered the hidden secret of a good marriage. She was buoying (and “boy-ing” ) as if she had had a moment of eureka (probably in a bath tub too). She let out that husbands will do whatever their wives tell them to do; and so all wives have to do is to tell their husbands what to do. It was that simple, like all great discoveries. This lovely, neophyte wife must never be told that her good, listening husband had made the simultaneous Archimedean discovery (in the same bath tub) that if he wanted peace (and its homophone) he must, at least, pretend to listen.
The problem with music is that it is all timing. It takes time to learn an instrument, to play it well, and to listen. In the life of a musician there are long periods of being away from others, immersing oneself totally in sounds of music. There are many stories of some women who swore they would be the happiest women on earth if only they received even less than one per cent of the love, care and attention their musician partner showered on their instrument. There are also stories of some women dropping musical instruments “accidentally”.
It is extremely difficult to be a policeman or a doctor or any other professional, and also play music well. We have to be prepared to make huge sacrifices in securing and maintaining a good instrument, spending countless hours and years practising and listening to the inner voice that tells us when our playing is neither cerebral nor cordial but simply anal.
In a developing country like ours, anything passes for everything. We argue that checks and balances are not in place and official standards are lacking. But how can we call ourselves musician, transfused with the healing elixir vitae from Apollo; entrusted to speak and heal with this wonderful universal language, as all musicians must be, and not have that inner, personal, listening sense of good and bad, right and wrong? Yes, we do not get sufficient time off to practise and yes, we have to have more than one job to make ends come a little closer to meeting. So what do we do? What song shall we sing that is acceptable in our sight in this strange land?
The words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart must be in consonant harmony. Those in professional and national authority must stop pussyfooting, understand the immense value of music, and stop devaluing musicians. On the personal level, we musicians must either find the flipping time and make more than the flippant effort that music demands, or stop disturbing, and provoking, the beautiful instrument. Play it right or do not play it at all.
A friend of mine, who is also a doctor and a musician and married, and hence is a great listener, reminds: “Some are deaf; many more do not listen.”
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