Spoken Word Griots: African Oral Tradition in Caribbean Music (Third Part) - Calypso

Spoken Word Griots: African Oral Tradition in Caribbean Music (Third Part) - #Calypso
by K. Omodele

African traditions and customs are in the heartbeat of Caribbean culture; so, its not surprising that the African tradition of storytelling drums so deep within many forms Caribbean music, none more so than calypso. Matter of fact, whenever I think of calypso, I think first about lyrics - the buildup, the punch line and the reflection. Niceness. As a wordsmith, I marvel at the wordplay of the great calypso storytellers. Whether the lyrics be somber-social, political or commentary; or, whether they're witty and precocious slackness, or just straight, belly-bussing comedy, this Caribbean music with its roots planted in the African oral tradition is art, pure art, plain and simple.

A Short History of Calypso Music

Like many forms of Caribbean or West Indian music, Calypso's roots were dug up from Africa, then transported to the Caribbean on slave ships during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The slaves in Trinidad and Tobago weren't allowed to speak to one another while they slaved in the fields, so they sang to communicate. They kept the freestyle (improvisational), functional elements of West African kaiso as a form of covert communication (separate from the overt language of the slave massa). This early predecessor to calypso was rebellious chanting about their conditions and the status quo, i.e. plantation life. They were songs with clever lyrics about social conditions and often mocked slave masters or political leaders.

The French Influence: Carnival and Canboule 

Spain had first colonized Trinidad, but up to the 1770s the population was small, less than 3000, two-thirds of them Arawak. In 1770, a Frenchman made a proposal that would bring the French, their slaves and some free blacks from the French colonies/islands of Dominica, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent, to heavily populate Trinidad, which would help develop the plantation economy. These French (and blacks from French islands) turned the slow, undeveloped, Spanish colony, into a culturally French dominated one. And they brought the carnival and canboulay festivities and traditions.

Kaisos were now performed by griots and/or chantwells (from the French word chantuelles) at canboulays (harvest festivals, from the French cannes brulées), which was the black alternative to carnival (which neither slaves nor free blacks could attend). As a result, Kaisos and canboulay music became the voice of the people and  were the music blacks performed and listened, under tents at canboulays. 

In the old West African ways, the chantwells  often told stories that challenged each other in competition, boasting and ridiculing, while also challenging the audience to "keep up" with witty wordplay and double meanings. Sometimes songs were quick to make fun of adversaries within the griot fraternity - like free styles battles and clashes today. In other cases, the stories would be didactic, or cleverly packed with sexual undertones, or just analytic or critical of the authority and power structure. These early calypsonians were skilled wordsmiths, slamming, slicing and nudging each other with sharp verbal skills.

 

Spoken Word and Storytelling 

When you check the various components that make up calypso, storytelling and commentary are functional. The calypsonian (the calypso singer) is most definitely a spoken word griot, a djele. He or she is a storyteller in the true sense, relaying his or her take on social and political issues of the society. That calypso derived from African oral tradition is obvious and undeniable when you consider this music's functionality.

"A Calypsonian is a poor man newspaper."

 "I consider the Kaisonian  as the old African storyteller..."

Black History: The Haitian Revolution (The Revolt That Birthed a Nation-Part I)

  Black History: The Haitian Revolution (The Revolt That Birthed a Nation-Part I)

                                          by K. Omodele 2016 @TheAbeng

Introduction- Slave Revolts In the African Diaspora

There have been hundreds of slave revolts in the history of the African Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Africans resisted captivity in slave forts, on ships and plantations. In St. John and Guyana, slaves took over whole colonies, tasting freedom temporarily, before being re-conquered and re-enslaved.* Maroons in Jamaica, Surinam and Brazil, and Black Caribs in St. Vincent, fought colonial masters and militias to establish independent/sovereign societies that existed autonomously within individual slave colonies. However, the slave insurrection that is distinctive in achieving an ultimate level of success (freeing the whole slave colony AND forming an independent nation) is the epic Haitian Revolution.

"The revolution is made by ordinary people, not by angels, made by people from all walks of life." ~ Dr. Walter Rodney

The Haitian Revolution was the most successful slave revolt in the history of the so-called New World (i.e. The Western Hemisphere). This revolution significantly affected dynamics in the histories of the West Indies, both Americas, the African Diaspora and Europe. Its events gradually formed a nation, but the revolution's leaders didn't learn their tactics in military academies studying the art of war or political science; nor were they propagating a new economic system or faith. These revolutionaries emerged off fields and fled plantations, first brandishing cutlasses, machetes, hoes and fire; then, with guns, cannons, more fire and cries of freedom, they executed revolts that became a revolutionary war that gave birth to Haiti** - the second independent republic in the Americas and the first nation formed by former African slaves.

Saint Domingue In The 1700s

In 1697, Spain ceded the Western third of Hispaniola to France. The Spanish called their colony Santo Domingo, the French called theirs Saint Domingue. In the 1700s, Saint Domingue was the most prosperous colony in the world and the richest in the entire French Empire. Africans slaved on highly profitable plantations where sugar was the chief crop, but others included tobacco, coffee, cocoa, indigo and cotton. By the end of the century, estimates have the population in Saint Domingue at:

-  30-40,000 Frenchmen (grand blancs and petit blancs)

-  22-27,000 Mulattoes and free Blacks (gens de coleur)

-  500,000+  Black/African slaves

"Nowhere in the West Indies in 1789 was there a greater hell on earth than the French Colony of Saint Domingue..." ~ Dr. Eric Williams

These various classes/castes within the society resented, often despised, each other. Being outnumbered over 10 to one, the Frenchmen, the plantation owners, were constantly on edge to hold on to the balance of power and so kept their African slaves in line by brutalizing them for slight offenses and beheading and racking them for insubordination. But these Whites themselves were divided by class: the grand blancs were the planters and merchants, while the petit blancs were the lower-class workers and laborers.

The Mulattoes and free Blacks had the right to own property but resented the fact that they had little or no legal rights.

Of course, slaves had no rights and so they despised the other classes.

*some leaders and members of these rebellions committed suicide rather than be taken alive and forced back into slavery.

** Haiti ~ Ayti was the Taino Arawak name for the island Columbus "claimed" for Spain, calling it Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Ayti ,means "Land of high mountains"

The Haitian Revolution Part 2 - Leaders of the revolution: Boukman, Touissant, Dessalines, Christophe, et.al.

References:

Fick, Carolyn E. The Making of Haiti: The Revolution from Below. Knoxville, Tenn., 1990.

James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Touissant L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. 1938. Reprint. New York, 1963.

Williams, Eric. From Columbus to Castro- the History of The Caribbean 1492-1969

Williams, Eric. History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago. Reprint.

Perceptions In The African Diaspora- Latinos of African Descent (Part II)

copyright 2014 K. Omodele

...like the U.S. and the U.K., people in Latin American countries immigrated from all over the world...And yes, some of these Latin Americans are of African Descent.

"No matter where you come from/ as long as you're a Black man, you are an African."~ Peter Tosh

People of Latin America

Beginning in the late 15th and early 16th centuries (1400s and 1500s), Spaniards and Portuguese sailed to what we now know as the Americas. They promptly conquered the native people (Amerindians such as the Taino Arawaks, Caribs Incas, etc.), decimating whole populations of these people through warfare and disease. These Europeans first set up shop mining gold, forced Amerindians into slavery. After the Amerindian population was close to depletion, Europeans imported Africans to work the fields- mostly sugar cane and tobacco plantations in Brazil, Columbia, Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), Cuba,et al. By the 19th Century, in Latin America there were three different races/ancestries (Amerindians; Blacks/Africans; Whites/Europeans) and people of mixed race/ancestry (such as Mestizos and mulattos).

Over time, more people immigrated to Latin America- Asians ( Chinese and East Indians), other Europeans (Italians, Germans after WWII), and Middle Easterners (Lebanese and Syrians). But regardless of the diverse ancestry, the common thread that now weaves through Latin culture is language (Spanish and Portuguese).

African (Black) Culture in Latin America

Latinos/Hispanics don't share an exact, uniformed culture because dialects, music and dance, and other customs vary from one region to the next. For instance, some Latin American countries have large populations of Blacks (descendants of Africans) who have heavily influenced culture. Notice how Latin countries in and around the Caribbean , along with Brazil, possess customs steeped in African traditions. African styles permeate music and dance in samba, rhumba, merengue and just check out the strong rhythm of congas in salsa. Notice the spirituality of Yoruba deities and Orishas found in Santeria.

During the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, more Africans were imported into Brazil than any other country. If we include light and brown-skinned people of African descent (the so-called "mixed" or Mulatto), then Brazil's Black population is roughly forty-five percent of its total population of 190 million*, which means that Brazil has the largest population of black people in any country other than Nigeria.

Presently, people of African descent make up around 12 percent of South America's population.(McLeish 1997) Counting these descendants in the whole of Latin America (from A-Z, Argentina to Venezuela), more Blacks speak Spanish/Portuguese than English across the Americas, period. And these Africans have made undeniable and significant contributions to the collective Hispanic heritage.

In sum, it's full time we realize that people only "look Hispanic" (or look Puerto Rican, Cuban, Columbian, Dominican) if we misunderstand the meaning of these terms. Knowing that during slavery Africans were widely scattered throughout the Caribbean; Central, South and North America is crucial in understanding the nuances of ethnicity, nationality and race.

Sources

*The World Almanac 2012 (states that Brazil's population is comprised of 6% Black and 29% Mulatto)

**McLeish, Ewan. South America. Continents. Austin, TX: Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers, 1997

Perceptions In The African Diaspora: Latinos of African Descent -Part I