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Inside This Issue:
Documenting Calypso by Stephen Stuemple
Brooklyn’s Jazz Renaissance by
Robin D.G. Kelley
Bolly’hood Re-mix by Kevin Miller
Johanna Beyer by
Melissa J. de Graaf
Exploring Roots Music: Review by
Charles K. Wolfe
Cage and
Carter DVDs: Review by Anton Vishio
ISAM
Matters
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Documenting Calypso in New York
and the Atlantic World
By
Stephen Stuempfle
In early 2000 I received a telephone call
in Miami from Judge Ray Funk of Alaska. Though in his professional life he
holds court in Fairbanks and various Arctic villages, Funk is well-known to
music researchers for his massive collection of African American gospel audio
and visual materials. He has produced and/or written liner notes for numerous
gospel reissues and was a major contributor to Wade in the Water: African
American Sacred Music Traditions, a traveling exhibition organized by the
Smithsonian Institution. I first met Funk in 1987, shortly before heading off
to Trinidad to research steelbands. At the time, he was beginning to develop
a collection of calypso materials that would eventually surpass the scope of
his gospel archive. So it came as no real surprise that he would call to
propose an exhibition focused on the 1950s “calypso craze” that
swept across the United States and influenced many other countries.
Funding from the National Endowment
for the Humanities enabled the Historical Museum of Southern Florida to adopt
Funk’s proposal and develop Calypso: A World Music, a project that
encompasses a major online exhibition, a traveling exhibition, and related
public conferences. At the core of the project is Funk’s in-depth calypso
research and wide-ranging collection of sound recordings, songbooks and sheet
music, movies and television shows, movie posters and lobby cards,
photographs, and advertisements. Funk has collaborated with the museum on
additional research and collecting, with guidance from an international
advisory committee of calypso scholars. In essence, our objective has been to
use visual materials to trace the dissemination of calypso from Trinidad
across the Americas, Europe, and Africa from the 1930s to the 1960s. It was
during this period that mass media, migration, military service, and tourism
transformed calypso from a local musical tradition into a “world
music.”
Calypso, in fact, was one of the
first popular music traditions from outside North America and Europe to be
commercially recorded. In 1912 a Trinidadian band led by Lovey (George
Bailey) traveled to New York to record for both ViPctor and Columbia. Two
years later Victor representatives visited Trinidad to record calypso and a variety of other local musical styles.
During the 1910s and 1920s, American companies continued to record calypso in
New York for distribution to Caribbean and Latin American markets. It was during the 1930s, however, that
the recording and international dissemination of calypso intensified. In 1934
top Trinidadian calypsonians Atilla the Hun and the Roaring Lion recorded for
the American Record Company in New York. According to Atilla, Rudy Vallee heard them sing
and arranged their appearance on his NBC nationwide radio broadcast. The pair
later wrote a calypso, “Guests of Rudy Vallee,” that celebrated
this historic occasion. During the following years, Atilla and Lion traveled
to New York for more recording sessions, as did Lord Executor,
the Growling Tiger, and other leading calypsonians. By 1939 calypsonians were
appearing at the Village Vanguard and enchanting New York club-goers. Meanwhile, calypso singers were
performing at parties within the anglophone Caribbean community in Harlem. In a 1939 New Yorker article, Joseph Mitchell offers
a detailed account of a late-night “picnic” thrown by the popular
calypsonian Houdini in a hall on Lenox Avenue.1 Known as the “Calypso
King of New York,” Houdini chronicled his observations of city life in
songs such as those featured in a 1940 Decca album set titled Harlem Seen
Through Calypso Eyes.
Broader American awareness of
calypso developed during World War II. Thousands of U.S. Army and Navy
personnel were stationed in Trinidad, where they became enamored of the music. The
servicemen’s encounter with Trinidadian women was captured by Lord
Invader in his calypso “Rum and Coca-Cola.” The Andrews
Sisters’ recording of the song in 1944 became one of the top hits of
the war era and, subsequently, sparked a major copyright battle in the
courts.2 Following the war, U.S. record companies promoted new Trinidadian
singers, including Sir Lancelot, the Duke of Iron, and Macbeth the Great.
Although these artists had little or no experience in the calypso tents
(halls) of Trinidad, they packaged calypso in a form that was more
intelligible and appealing to American audiences.
During the postwar years, calypso
was embraced by the American folk music revival. Moe Asch recorded calypso
singers for both his Disc and Folkways labels, while Alan Lomax produced
Calypso at Midnight in 1946 at New York’s Town Hall as part of People’s
Songs’ Midnight Special folk music series. This concert featured
performances by calypso singers Lord Invader, the Duke of Iron, and Macbeth
the Great, interspersed with commentary by Lomax and the artists. Gerald
Clark’s band, well-established in New York, provided the accompaniment.3 The following year,
calypso reached Broadway in Caribbean Carnival, a show produced by Adolph
Thenstead and directed by Trinidadian vaudevillian Sam Manning. Billed as the
first “calypso musical,” it included a mix of drama, song, and
dance from Trinidad, Haiti, and other parts of the Caribbean. Haitian American Josephine Premice appeared as one of the
vocalists, while Trinidadian Pearl Primus’s dancing was a highlight of
the production. Pan-Caribbean shows, featuring a variety of art forms, became
a standard stage format in New York in the following years.
During the 1950s, fast and
affordable airline travel contributed to a sharp increase in American tourism
to the Caribbean. By this point, Trinidad-style calypso had spread
across the anglophone Caribbean and was providing a soundtrack for American
tropical fantasies. Tourists enjoyed calypso in hotels and nightclubs and
wanted to hear more on their return home. This general American interest in
calypso paved the way for the “calypso craze” of 1956-1957, which
was sparked by the release of Caribbean American Harry Belafonte’s
Calypso (RCA Victor, 1956), the first single-artist album to sell over one
million copies in entertainment history. Only two of the selections on the
record were actually calypsos, but the entertainment industry frequently used
the term “calypso” to refer to any type of anglophone Caribbean song. Meanwhile, record companies quickly released dozens of calypso
singles and albums by artists ranging from the Duke of Iron and the Jamaican
mento singer Lord Flea to Nat “King” Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, the
Tarriers, and Stan Wilson. Record sales were so strong that the entertainment
industry initially believed that the music would lead to the demise of rock
and roll. New
York
publishers churned out calypso songbooks and sheet music, while Hollywood released three calypso-themed movies, including Bop
Girl Goes Calypso (United Artists, 1957) with a plot that revolved around a
contest between calypso and rock and roll.
During the calypso craze, numerous
nightclubs in cities across the U.S. shifted to an all-calypso format. Among the
best-known venues were the Calypso Room and Le Cupidon in New York, the Blue Angel in Chicago, and the Malayan Lounge in Miami. Typically, calypso clubs created an imaginary Caribbean atmosphere with fishnets, palm fronds, and other trappings.
Performers often wore straw hats and striped and floral outfits, unlike the
dress suits worn by calypsonians in Trinidad. Among
the many artists who worked the clubs were Lord Flea, Calypso Eddie, the
dance team of Scoogie Brown and Leo Ryers, and the singer Maya Angelou,
before embarking on a literary career. In spring 1957 Angelou and Flea
appeared in Caribbean Calypso Festival, a short-lived revue produced by
Trinidadian dancer/painter Geoffrey Holder at Loew’s Metropolitan
Theatre in Brooklyn. The show also featured Latin
bandleader/percussionist Tito Puente and Lord Kitchener, a top Trinidadian
calypsonian based in England.
By the 1950s, England had developed
its own vibrant calypso scene.4 In 1948 Lord Kitchener and his compatriot
Lord Beginner arrived on the MV Empire Windrush, a ship that marked the
advent of large-scale Caribbean migration to Britain. Kitchener and Beginner
began recording in London in 1950. In 1951 the Trinidad All Steel Percussion
Orchestra traveled to the Festival of Britain, a major cultural showcase, and
appeared at various other prestigious venues. In the course of the decade,
other Caribbean migrants continued to record calypsos in England, and the music gained a presence at London nightclubs and private parties. During the late
1950s, Cy Grant, a Guyanese RAF veteran and actor, performed a calypso every
night on BBC’s Tonight, a television news show. Though the overall
popularization of calypso in Britain was less extensive than in the U.S., London nonetheless served as an important center of
calypso creativity and international dissemination.
During the postwar era, calypso
artists and recordings also reached many other parts of the Atlantic world.
In addition to its substantial influence on musical traditions in anglophone Caribbean islands, calypso was performed in Caribbean immigrant communities in Venezuela, Aruba, Curaçao, Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. At the same time, calypso influenced kaseko music,
both in Suriname and in the Netherlands. Calypso singers also appeared in France, Germany, and other European countries. Particularly
creative expressions emerged in anglophone West Africa, where artists like Ghanaian E. T. Mensah and
Sierra Leonean Ebenezer Calender blended calypso with highlife and other West
African musical styles.
The dissemination of calypso in the
Atlantic world was a complex process that was shaped by imperial networks,
migration patterns, commercial markets, diverse mass media, and international
tourism. Though calypso faded during the late 1950s as a mass music in the U.S., it remained a standard component of the repertoire
of Caribbean hotel bands. Moreover, it continued to thrive as a
popular music in Trinidad, other eastern Caribbean countries, and the Caribbean diaspora. Following the 1965 U.S. immigration reform act, Brooklyn emerged as a major center for calypso, with its own Caribbean recording companies and its massive Labor Day Carnival. Today,
calypsonians perform on a Carnival circuit that extends from the Caribbean to diasporic communities in Brooklyn, Miami, Toronto, London, and other North American and
British cities.
Exploration of these international
dimensions of calypso is the goal of the exhibitions and conferences that
comprise
Calypso: A World Music. The project will reinvigorate public interest in
calypso history and generate new perspectives on how a musical tradition from
a small country has had a far-reaching impact on Atlantic popular culture.
—Historical Museum
of Southern Florida
Notes
1 Joseph Mitchell, “A
Reporter at Large: Houdini’s Picnic,” The New Yorker (6 May
1939): 61-71. For an overview of calypso in New York during this period, see
Donald Hill, “‘I Am Happy Just to Be in This Sweet Land of
Liberty:’ The New York City Calypso Craze of the 1930s and
1940s,” in Island Sounds in the Global City: Caribbean Popular Music
and Identity in New York, ed. Ray Allen and Lois Wilcken (University of
Illinois Press, 1998), 74-92.
2 For an account of this case, see Louis Nizer, My Life in Court (Doubleday
& Company, 1961), 233-286.
3 A selection of Lord Invader’s Disc and Folkways recordings is
available through the compilation Lord Invader: Calypso in New
York (Smithsonian Folkways SFW CD 40454). The 1946
Town Hall concert is available on the CDs Calypso At Midnight! and Calypso
After Midnight! (Rounder 11661-1840-2 and 11661-1841-2).
4 For a discussion of calypso in England, see John Cowley, “London is
the Place: Caribbean Music in the Context of Empire 1900-60,” in Black
Music in Britain: Essays on the Afro-Asian Contribution to Popular Music, ed.
Paul Oliver (Open University Press, 1990), 58-76.
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