Wash Your Hands

Akhenaton de Leon remembers his father, Rafael “Roaring Lion” de Leon, saying to him that when he wrote a song, he wrote it for a 1,000 years.

It seems Roaring Lion’s Wash Your Hands is set to live up to that. The 1930s calypso has been remade and repurposed by a New Orleans-based music group, Galactic, to aid in the fight against the covid19 pandemic. The group was formed in 1994 and its genres include jazz-funk, acid jazz and New Orleans R&B.

Galactic has worked with artistes like Macy Gray, American singer/songwriter Mike Doughty and American gospel singer, Mavis Staples, its website says.

Hand washing is a major requirement in the world’s fight against the covid19 pandemic. This basic hygiene practice is also being espoused by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its campaign.

The first verse of Roaring Lion’s Wash Your Hands says:

Melda why yuh so nasty,

Why yuh keep yuhself so untidy.

When yuh wake in the morning, Melda,

Before yuh wash yuh hands,

Yuh start to knead flour.

Wash yuh hands and clean yuh fingernails,

Darling, yuh shouldn’t fail...

On recording  Wash Your Hands, the group said on its Facebook page, “We are excited to share the release of our adaption of the 1930’s calypso song Wash Your Hands (Roaring Lion). Our version features Chali 2na (vocals), Anjelika ‘Jelly’ Joseph (vocals), Ivan Neville (vocals); David Shaw (vocals), Zack Feinberg (guitar), Andrew Campanelli (vocals), Rob Ingraham (sax and vocals) and Michael Girardot (vocals) from The Revivalists, Eric Gordon (trumpet) and Mike Dillon (congas). Each video was recorded within our own homes.”

While the lyrics, adapted by Andrew Campanelli, spread the message of personal hygiene during the covid19 pandemic, the video also seeks to benefit its Tip-It Foundation, which aims “to support and promote the future of the Gulf South’s music, culture and heritage.” The foundation also elevates musical and cultural legacies through community outreach and education.

Steve Kelly did video production and the music was produced and mixed by Robert Mercurio.

For those unfamiliar with Roaring Lion, he was a calypso singer/composer, whose career spanned more than 65 years beginning in the late 1920s. He is known for calypsoes such as Netty, Netty, Mary Ann and Ugly Woman –which was the first calypso to be used in a movie, Happy Go Lucky, by Paramount Studios. A cover version in the movie was done by Trinidadian Sir Lancelot.

Lion’s songs have been used in other Hollywood and Bollywood movies and covers of Ugly Woman and Mary Ann also made it to the Billboard charts. His melody was also used in the British sitcom Love Thy Neighbour’s theme song, and his Caroline was used in Captain Ron in the 1980s. He was awarded the Humming Bird Medal (silver) in 1981 and the Chaconia Medal, gold, in 1994. He died on July 11, 1999.

Allmusic.com says, “In the 1930s, Roaring Lion (with help from partner Atilla the Hun) was crucial to the development of calypso, devising the calypso duet and calypso drama, and introducing new melodies to a style that originally had very few. Between 1934 and 1941, he was the most prolific calypso recording artist, cutting nearly 100 singles, including some of the music’s most popular standards, such as Mary Ann, Netty Netty, and Six Feet High. One of his most famous compositions, Ugly Woman, formed much of the basis for Jimmy Soul’s 1963 number one hit If You Wanna Be Happy.

“Roaring Lion performed and recorded in the United States occasionally during the 30s and 40s. In fact, he spent much of 1945 singing in New York clubs, including the Village Vanguard, where he was replaced by a young Harry Belafonte.”

The video on Galactic’s Facebook page has had over 117,000 views.

De Leon in a phone interview with Newsday, said he knows that Wash Your Hands was written sometime in the late 1930s and it was recorded in the early 1950s.

“The version that you’re hearing on YouTube is the early 50s version. But the song was a song that my father liked, he had done it several times, and, at times, changing the lyrics to suit the occasion,” he said.

De Leon said the song is basically about hygiene even though it alludes to other things.

“We know in TT in the 30s and 40s, the social conditions were ripe for different types of illnesses. So it is a universal message about hygiene and warning people to be as clean and tidy as possible because that is a governance for good health,” de Leon said.

He could not say how the group in New Orleans picked up on the song, but it showed the message was universal. The adapted version speaks to a man, advising him to stay inside and to wash his hands and clean his fingernails.

De Leon said calypso in the 30s and 40s had quite a lot of universal messages. “Therefore, based on that universality it was easy for the music to cross borders and appeal to different people across the world.”

He said the ability and skills of calypsonians of that era are still evident today.

De Leon said the New Orleans group gave credit to the author, Roaring Lion, and the song was being used in a philanthropic way to spread a message, and not in a commercial way.

De Leon said calypsonians of Lion’s era were not parochial.

“The topics were things people could identify with anywhere you go, just like love. Just like the issue of hygiene.” Calypso is literature and poetry, he added.

Calypsoes of that era did not only spread universal messages but also documented the important happenings of that time. Roaring Lion and his peers documented World War II and “were always topical and on the ball with what was happening,” De Leon said.

He said calypsonians of the 30s, 40s and 50s were the newspapers of their time and “their songs and lyrics were always relevant.”

Wash Your Hands is successful because it is able to stay in your head, De Leon says.

“That message is being relayed and repeated over and over and hopefully most of us get the message.”

Lion would test his songs on children and if children went with the song that meant he was in business.

De Leon hopes the history of calypso becomes a part of the schools’ curriculum and the lyrics to calypsoes are compiled.

“Calypso is what documented our history in the last century. A lot of what the newspapers of the time didn’t write or the politicians did not raise, we find it in the calypsoes and from different perspectives,” he said.

He said he was happy to know that Lion is still relevant and it was a testimony to his ability to write.