Roaring Lions: 'Calypso Dreams'

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CALYPSO WAS ONCE the musical equivalent of a tabloid newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago.

Songs with lilting melodies about politicians and colonialism were mashed up against percussive and ribald sexual and drinking tales, but they all had rich word play and double-entendre-filled lyrics that could make pointed social criticisms just as well as they could make listeners double over in laughter.

Of course, calypso's clever lyrics usually baffled American artists such as The Andrews Sisters, who had a huge hit in 1945 with a cover of the Lord Invader and Lionel Belasco tune "Rum and Coca-Cola."

The U.S. had set up military bases in Trinidad during World War II, and Lord Invader's lyrics speak to the way women were becoming prostitutes "working for the Yankee dollar."

Meanwhile, The Andrews Singers plowed through "Rum and Coca-Cola's" words in perfect harmony and made the angry tune sound like a happy-go-lucky party jam.

That is one of the better known tales in calypso lore, as is the controversy surrounding Harry Belafonte's massively successful 1956 LP, "Calypso." Both of these stories are recounted in the documentary "Calypso Dreams," but the film also digs deep into the history and artistry of this distinctly Trini roots music.

Trinidad and Tobago will celebrate its 45th year of independence from Great Britain on Aug. 31, and the T&T embassy in Washington, D.C., has prepared a weeklong celebration, which kicks off Friday with a free screening of "Calypso Dreams" at Howard University's Armour J. Blackburn University Center.

Co-directed by Geoffrey Dunn and Michael Horne — two Californians — "Calypso Dreams" might be one of the most definitive documentaries on this art form.

It's also one of the only ones.

"We started preproduction on this film in the 1980s, but we couldn't raise the money and there was no interest," Dunn said.

But when legendary Lord Kitchener died in 2000, Dunn said, "We realized that if we didn't make the film then, it was never going to be made. In fact, seven people from the film have passed away."

The movie, which was co-produced by calypsonian Lord Superior, features interviews with and/or performances by Mighty Sparrow, Calypso Rose, Lord Kitchener, Lord Blakie, Brigo, Mighty Terror, David Rudder, Mighty Chalkdust, Black Stalin, Harry Belafonte and Lord Pretender, among many others.

And, in actuality, the film that will be shown on Friday still isn't truly complete.

The footage in "Calypso Dreams" was recorded during the course of several years and trips to the capital city Port of Spain. An early edit of the movie made it to several film festivals in 2004, with the goal of a theatrical release in late 2005.

But plans were derailed when Dunn was diagnosed with cancer two years ago and given six weeks to live.

He underwent several surgeries, was treated with radiation and survived. Today, Dunn's healthy and back to work as a teacher of film and digital media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

While his illness delayed the finished product, the extra time allowed Dunn to turn up rare film and photos, which he's working on incorporating into a new edit of "Calypso Dreams" that he hopes to complete and release by October.

"While I was ill, I found a collection of amazing footage from the '40s: Trinidad carnival in 1942 and one in 1949," he said. "So we'll be adding that to the film. And I actually shot some more of Black Stalin for the film as well. I also bought a collection of photographs, so that will be added to the film. So it will be a little more in depth and with a lot more texture."

While the first calypso recordings came out in the early 1900s, the earliest footage in the current cut of "Calypso Dreams" is from a 1948 English newsreel that shows Lord Kitchener arriving in Great Britain aboard the Empire Windrush, an iconic ship that carried the largest influx of West Indians after World War II.

When Kitchener is asked by the newsman to do a song, he relies on calypso's extensive use of extempo performance, free-styling a tune about how "London is the place for me." (That later became the title of a compilation series put out by Blur's Damon Albarn on his Honest Jon's label: The series debuted with "London Is The Place For Me: Trinidadian Calypso In London, 1950-1956.")

But it's not for lack of trying that Dunn couldn't find vintage film footage of the older calypsonians in action; it likely just doesn't exist.

"It's a very different cultural approach to historical archives," Dunn said. "There are no historical archives really in Trinidad and Tobago; there are very few. In fact, the footage and photographs that are used in the film came primarily from the United States, Canada and England.

"Part of the reason is just the weather," Dunn said. "That moist, hot weather is not good for preserving photographs, and especially film. It's a miracle I found this footage — and it actually came from Canada.

"The culture doesn't look back in history the way we do; they live very much in the present," Dunn continued. "I asked the group Regeneration Now if they had any old photographs, and they came with photographs that were two years old. They had nothing. … That really reflected the Trinidadian approach to history, but also the calypso approach to history. They just live so much in the present; they're so much about this year, that they really don't save archives like we do."

But calypso's history is available for all to hear in its topical songs, which have their roots West African styles, particularly kaiso.

"The film argues that calypso comes out of the slave experience in the Caribbean," Dunn said. "There's no doubt about that. It has a real rich and thick, Afro base to it. So the double and triple entendre and the word play all come out of slavery — it's a secret code."

While slavery ended in the Caribbean before it did in America, many of the counties had to wrestle with colonialism and its attendant issues well into the 20th century. As the post-World War II independence movement spread throughout the West Indies, calypso was right there to give voice to the people's concerns.

"So that even in the '50s, where this great post-war resurgence of calypso with the Young Brigade [collective of singers] — and really with the generation that's in our film — it's still anti-colonial music," Dunn said. "And it's still an anti-ruling-class music. … That whole generation that really is the focus of the film is the last generation that [lived under] those conditions."

But with end of colonialism and the rise of soca — a harder-charging, bacchanal-ready form that dominates the music scene and carnival season now — calypso's presence in Trinidad and Tobago is somewhat muted today, Dunn said. In one short "Calypso Dreams" scene, pre-teen calypsonians are shown in competition singing their own songs, but they are the exceptions in T&T's soca-crazed society.

While there's no doubt soca grew out of calypso, it generally lacks the social commentary and winking word play of its predecessor. Part of that is simply generational, Dunn said. There's no outside political oppressor to rail against in Trinidad and Tobago, which, despite a troubling crime rate, is on the climb economically thanks to oil revenues and outside investment. In fact, T&T has the second highest GDP per capita in the Caribbean with $19,700, which ranks just $600 below the Bahamas.

"Now, I would argue that soca and the various manifestations have so broken with that past that it's hard to trace the real roots of it anymore," Dunn said. "How much of it is [inspired by] American rap, pop, [dancehall], whatever? So the roots are very different."

"Calypso Dreams" doesn't address soca, but it does wonder where the calypso art form is today and where it will be in the future since so many of the legends have passed on.

"That's the question the film poses at the end," Dunn said, "with Superior in the cemetery talking about all the people who have died. It raises the question, 'Where is calypso?'"

» Armour J. Blackburn University Center, Howard University, 2397 6th St. NW; Fri., free, 7 p.m.; 202-806-5983. (Shaw-Howard University)

» For a full listing of events for T&T Week in D.C., click here and scroll down.

Young Brigade photo (top); Michael Horne, Lord Superior and Geoffrey Dunn photo (middle); and movie poster (bottom) courtesy Pulse Productions

Posted By Christopher Porter at 12:35 PM on August 24, 2007 Tagged in Arts & Events , Film , Howard University , Music , Shaw-Howard U , The District , Top Stories , Universities

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