My thoughts: Calypso Monarch Finals 2013!!
Pink Panther's elevation to calypso monarch 2013 is metaphoric. His final song "Crying in the Chapel" in which he enacted this gloomy funerary scene exploring the protagonist, Death’s, inclination to seize calypsonians in the throes of the carnival revelry unwittingly spoke volumes beyond its theme. Indeed, Pink Panther’s demeanor along with the coffin, hearse, and mourners he used as props to augment his song served as the perfect allegory of the death of the calypso itself.
Witness Pink Panther’s dreary, discordant and depressed reaction after he was catapulted to the rarefied space of the greatest of bards: the Calypso Monarchy. Has anyone ever - in the history of calypso - seen such a joyless newly-minted calypso monarch? The 2012 competition left one searching amidst what seems to be the final remains of calypso for the message. How did we come to lose the excellence of the 19th Century where larger than life personalities blew calypso - this amazing concoction of poetry, melody and sentiment – deep into your belly, leaving one with only enough breaths to scream KAISO! KAISO!
In those days, the calypso bards carried the Dimanche Gras making all other programming on that wondrous night feel like an interruption! Now calypso, kicked out of the Dimanche Gras - standing naked – features a parade of competitors who could largely be exchanged one-for-the-other like a bag of salt biscuits. The form was insular and identical like it all came from one mediocre brain.
“By calypso our stories are told,” is a phrase that is often used by TUCO, the leading calypso organization. Calypso has long been said is the voice of the people. If one accepts this to be so, then what does last night offerings say about the people?
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