Blazing bard

SEARCH for him on music-streaming sites and the first result likely to come up is his popular hit Black Man Feeling to Party.

But if it was about having a good time, the music of Leroy “Black Stalin” Calliste – who has died at the age of 81 after a period of illness – was also about anti-colonial thinking, global politics and self-empowerment. It is hard to separate his career from Trinidad and Tobago’s sense of self as an independent nation.

From the very beginning, it was clear Stalin had his eyes set on more than just the party.

The first of his five Calypso Monarch titles was won in 1979 with the song Caribbean Unity, in which he canvassed the long and sordid history of attempts at regional integration from the West Indies Federation and Carifta to Caricom and socialist movements. He called on countries to truly unite, noting how we all “made the same trip on the same ship.”

Stalin won the title again in 1985 with Ism Schism, which took a sceptical view of political movements embracing communism given the raw military power of global actors. While critiquing the US invasion of Grenada, he wryly lamented “while we keep fighting an ‘ism’ war, the people getting more and more poor.”

Bun Dem, a song that won him the crown once more two years later, is a curse poem to colonialism addressed to St Peter at the gates of heaven, which takes on figures such as Walter Raleigh, Benito Mussolini and Cecil Rhodes.

“We could make it if we try,” he sang in his 1991 hit of the same name, amid post-recession blues.

Thus, to pigeon-hole Stalin as merely the author of infectious ditties is to completely miss the subversive qualities of his music. It is to misapprehend the scope and reach of the Caribbean bard, something younger generations of calypsonians should take note of.

Stalin was born in San Fernando on September 24, 1941. He reportedly began singing calypso in 1959, just as the country was about to attain independence, but his big debut came in 1967 when he joined Lord Kitchener’s Calypso Revue tent.

He later moved over to the Mighty Shadow’s King of the Wizards and went on to work with producers such as Roy Cape, cementing his lineage in the calypso firmament.

Except for other icons such as the Mighty Sparrow and Chalkdust, few calypsonians have won the coveted monarch title in successive decades.

But Stalin recorded victories in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

For his efforts, he was awarded an honorary doctorate and bestowed the Hummingbird Medal (Silver) – all of which seems to pale in comparison with his blazing contribution.