Caribbean Nights: Calypso, Carnival and Steel Pan, and Three Kings of Calypso
Screened online 6 - 10 October 2020 as part of Ilkley Literature Fest
The Covid-19 lockdown has meant the cancellation of Carnival, but here’s a new way to experience this most exuberant of outdoor parties. Made in 1986, the BBC’s Calypso, Carnival and Steel Pan and Three Kings of Calypso were part of a special series of Arena films entitled Caribbean Nights. Celebrating all things Caribbean just a few short years after riots had highlighted the country’s racial tensions, the programmes informed the UK about the rich cultural life of its citizens of West Indian heritage, connecting people through music and dance, traditions and stories. Host Darcus Howe chairs a lively discussion with Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, publisher and activist John La Rose and Trinidad’s 1986 Calypso King David Rudder, with performances from The Mighty Bomber, Arrow, The Renegades and David Rudder himself. Alongside this, Three Kings of Calypso celebrates top music pioneers Sparrow, Kitch and Roaring Lion.
Ilkley Lit Fest in collaboration with Your Local Arena screened these ground-breaking documentaries. You can stilll watch here the accompanying new short film, with academic Emily Zobel Marshall, literature producer Melanie Abrahams, sociologist Max Farrar and author Anthony Joseph responding to these Arena archives and talking about the resonances they have in an era of Black Lives Matter. You can also still enjoy exclusive new poems inspired by the film from local poets Khadijah Ibrahiim and Michelle Scally Clarke and learn how to start your own personal writing journey with a masterclass from noted non-fiction author Colin Grant, whose West Yorkshire Playhouse-commissioned play Queen of Chapeltown told the history of Leeds, the oldest UK Carnival.
CARIBBEAN NIGHTS: Calypso, Carnival and Steel Pan, and Three Kings of Calypso
Roaring Lion, Lord Kitchener, The Mighty Sparrow — names to bring a smile to your face and songs to make you think.
In 1988, Arena brought these three legends together as part of a four-hour transmission on BBC Two from the three great carnivals of the Western hemisphere: Rio, the Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Trinidad.
Carnival is a Catholic tradition. The word ‘carnival’ is derived from the Latin Carne Vale, literally farewell to flesh, a last grand party the day before Ash Wednesday, which heralds Lent and the abstinence ordained for forty days up to Easter. Pre-Lenten revelry in Britain is confined to the tossing and consuming of pancakes. This celebration deficit is an unfortunate penalty of the success of the Reformation. For several decades now, of course, the Notting Hill Carnival has made up for things here and has brought the Caribbean Carnival spirit to London in the height of summer. However, in nations with a Catholic heritage, Carnival is the star on Shrove Tuesday (as it’s known in the UK) in the spring, from Venice in Italy to the snows of Bavaria in Germany — but the biggest by far are the big three in the so-called New World. Their origin is shared, but each has its own unique character, traditions and music.
Trinidad and calypso are synonymous. Lion, Kitchener and Sparrow were invited to take part, representing succeeding eras of calypso and, by definition, succeeding eras of Carnival. Their meeting was one of the highlights of the programme, shot with elegant simplicity by director Julian Henriques. These three calypso kings are effortlessly cool; they could be candidates on a list of the world’s best dressed men. They swap memories and verses and ruminate on the role of the calypso singer in society. This is a gathering of equals who have nothing to prove. There’s no interviewer, no one is selling anything to anyone.
The newsreel of Kitchener singing ‘London is the place for me’ as he came off the SS Windrush in 1948 has become iconic following the Windrush scandal. Kitch had never seen it; we were able to show it to him for the first time. Along with surprise and nostalgia, more painful memories returned — of the gulf between the optimism of the song and the grim reception those first Caribbean arrivals received here in the UK. As the fame of the newsreel continues to spread, the song becomes an even more telling calypso, incorporating that irony to become increasingly poignant.
In 1986, two years before our celebration of Carnival, Arena presented Caribbean Nights – a Saturday evening, again on BBC Two, devoted to Caribbean art and history, with further films and programmes over the following week. The evening was anchored by the late activist Darcus Howe. One of its main items was a panel discussion devoted to calypso with David Rudder, the then current Calypso King; John La Rose, the London-based Caribbean historian, and Carlos Fuentes, the great Mexican writer. Fuentes represented the Latin Caribbean, with its own islands and a 2,000-mile coastline alongside the English-speaking islands and territories.
The question was: What is Calypso? It began in the days before Trinidad had its own government, radio and newspapers. In their songs, the calypsonians carried the news and their own take on it. They were the media. The year we made the programme, Rudder won the Calypso King title with a smooth, modern presentation supported by promo videos but, however much the style might change to suit the times, calypso remains a commentary on current events.
Calypso is the literary aspect of Carnival, by turns, satirical, sombre, comic and tragic, but always witty and sharp. Rudder’s two successful songs were ‘Bahia Girl’ in which he identifies the two traditions of Brazil and Trinidad as one, and ‘The Hammer’, which marked the passing of the great steel pan maker, Rudolph Charles.
As Howe says, the steel pan is the third element of the trinity: Calypso, Carnival and Steel Pan. There’s nothing quite like the power of a steel pan orchestra in full flight. The Renegades were on hand to prove the point.
The calypsonians practice a kind of verbal alchemy, turning events, emotions and ideas into sung poetry. The steel pan maker practices literal alchemy, transforming the base metal of a disused oil drum into an exquisite musical instrument. The great traditions of the trinity remain testimony to Trinidad’s ingenuity, imagination and artistry.
Anthony Wall
6 September 2020
YOUR LOCAL ARENA: RESPONDING TO Caribbean Nights: Calypso, Carnival and Steel Pan and Three Kings of Calypso
Watch Leeds Metropolitan academic and author Emily Zobel Marshall, literature producer and curator Melanie Abrahams, Max Farrar, sociologist and Leeds community activist, and Anthony Joseph, poet, musician and author of Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon, respond to the Arena films.
Responding to the film
Dr Emily Zobel Marshall is a Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature at the School of Cultural Studies at Leeds Beckett University. Her research specialisms are Caribbean literature and Caribbean carnival cultures. Her books focus on the role of the trickster in Caribbean and African American cultures; her first book, Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (2012), was published by the University of the West Indies Press and her second, American Trickster: Trauma Tradition and Brer Rabbit, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2019. Emily enjoys developing her creative work alongside her academic writing. She has had poems published in the Peepal Tree Press Inscribe Anthology (2019), Magma (‘The Loss’, Issue 75, 2019), Smoke Magazine (Issue 67, 2020) and The Caribbean Writer (Vol 32, 2020).
Melanie Abrahams FRSA is a literature producer, curator and an occasional lecturer and speaker who has channelled a love of words and books into initiatives. She consistently pushes for greater diversity in the arts, with a focus on narratives of race, class and background, and mixed-race identities. Melanie is the founder and the Creative Director of Renaissance One and Tilt, which both champion literature and spoken word through events, tours, mixed media and work in schools. She has curated a range of festivals, including CaribbeanFest at the British Library highlighting Caribbean literature and culture and, in 2019, Black Arts World: Slate Weekender, a City of Ideas/Eclipse Theatre showcase of fifty artists of colour at four venues in the north of England. She is an Enabler for Slate World, a Creative Europe-funded project exploring the connections between black artists within Europe (with a focus on Lisbon, Amsterdam and England).
Max Farrar is a sociologist and activist. He retired in 2009 as Professor for Community Engagement at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He was the organiser of Leeds University Union’s arts festival in 1969-70; he has a life-long engagement with the arts. Until the early 1990s he worked in Further and Adult Education — at the Harehills and Chapeltown Law Centre, for the Runnymede Trust, and as a freelance writer/photographer. His PhD examining the black-led social movements in Chapeltown, Leeds was published as The Struggle for ‘Community’ (2002). Edited books include Islam in the West — Key issues in Multiculturalism (Palgrave, 2012). His latest book (with Guy Farrar and Tim Smith) is Celebrate! Fifty Years of Leeds West Indian Carnival (2017). He is Secretary for The David Oluwale Memorial Association, a registered charity, which uses all forms of art and performance in communicating messages for inclusion, diversity and social justice. www.maxfarrr.org.uk
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Anthony Joseph is a Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician who has been referred to as ‘the leader of the black avant garde in Britain’. As a musician and spoken word artist he has released seven critically acclaimed albums which blend Afro-Caribbean music, free jazz and funk. The most recent, People of the Sun (Heavenly Sweetness) was recorded in Trinidad and released in 2018. In the same year he curated ‘Windrush: A Celebration’, a series of five events which celebrated the literary and musical legacies of the Windrush generation, culminating in a gala concert at the Barbican as part of the London Jazz Festival. Joseph’s novel, Kitch, a biography of calypso icon Lord Kitchener, was shortlisted for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize, the OCM Bocas Fiction Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award. In 2019 he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. His latest novel, The Frequency of Magic, is just out.
INSPIRED BY ARENA’S Caribbean Nights: Calypso, Carnival and Steel Pan and Three Kings of Calypso
New Poetry by Khadijah Ibrahiim and Michelle Scally Clarke
Listen to and read specially commissioned poems from two well-known poets from the region, inspired by the two films.
Commissioned Poets
Khadijah Ibrahiim was born in Leeds of Jamaican parentage. Educated at the University of Leeds, she is a literary activist, theatre maker and writer, who combines inter-disciplinary art forms to re-imagine poetry as performance theatre. Her collection Another Crossing was published by Peepal Tree Press (2014). In 2010 she was writer in residence for El Gouna writes, Egypt; she also travelled to South Africa as part of the British Council’s Verbalized sustained theatre programme. She is the artistic director of Leeds Young Authors, and executive producer of the award-winning documentary We Are Poets. In 2017 she was creative associate for the production Ode To Leeds at Leeds Playhouse. Khadijah is an associate artist with the Geraldine Connor foundation, where her recently commissioned work ‘Sorrel & Black Cake’ was part of their Heritage Lottery Fund A Windrush Story project.
Michelle Scally Clarke is a poet and playwright, as well as an actor and songwriter. She has been in the business for 25 years, working alongside greats such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Benjamin Zephaniah, Lemm Sissay, Brian Patten and poet laureate Simon Armitage. She has had two books published by Route Press and has released albums including I am and she is. Her work has also been published in numerous anthologies. Michelle made her name in theatre, in productions such as Word Temple and Carnival Messiah. Her own plays, First Cut and Suitcase, have toured throughout schools in Yorkshire. She was commissioned to write, tour and film a play for the NHS, called Who Genes?. Her most recent commission is piece reflecting on the Maya Angelou quote ‘we are only as blind as we want to be’, part of a response to Black Life Matters.
WRITING YOUR MEMOIR: A Masterclass from Colin Grant
Taking the two Arena films as a starting point, explore how you can begin to craft your own memoir or life writing with author Colin Grant, whose books include a memoir about his father and histories of Marcus Garvey and The Wailers among others.
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Colin Grant is an author, historian and Associate Fellow at the Centre for Caribbean Studies. His books include: Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and a group biography of the Wailers, I&I, The Natural Mystics. His memoir of growing up in a Caribbean family in 1970s Luton, Bageye at the Wheel, was shortlisted for the 2013 Pen/Ackerly Prize. Grant’s history of epilepsy, A Smell of Burning, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year in 2016. As a producer for the BBC, Grant wrote and directed several radio drama documentaries including African Man of Letters: The Life of Ignatius Sancho and A Fountain of Tears: The Murder of Federico Garcia Lorca. Grant also writes for a number of newspapers and journals including the Guardian, TLS and New York Review of Books. Grant’s latest book is Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation.
Interviews
Lucy Hannah with Anthony Wall
Lucy Hannah with Michael La Rose
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Michael La Rose is author and researcher, and Director of Savannah View. He was band leader of the Peoples War Carnival Band (1982-1998), Vice Chair of CDC (1978-1980), founder of APC (1989), and Chair of the George Padmore Institute educational archive (2006-2016).
