Forward home, Black Stalin

DR GABRIELLE HOSEIN

WHEN A giant passes on, all should pay their respects.

So it is with Leroy Calliste, better known as Black Stalin. Mine is just an inexpert murmur in a chorus of bigger voices, but none in our nation should fail to recognise this elder, now gone, and his genius. He documented hardships and voiced hopes, mirroring ourselves and our world, both the ugly and sweet.

When I heard of his journey to the afterlife, I went back to listen to his songs, realising that I knew far too few beyond his hits. I chided myself for not teaching Ziya his music, but was grateful that his recorded legacy gave us time. She’s just 12 and next to me as I write.

His songs are an education in pan-African consciousness, black power, colonial genocide and underdevelopment, and the inequity of poverty. He was an internationalist, in solidarity with a panorama of struggles.

He could denounce attacks on those in Namibia and Hiroshima, and the Native American Lakota, in just one song, More Come from 1986, naming the assassination of African leaders, and promising more warriors will fight.

He encouraged such solidarity and togetherness, whether with migrants, among those from country and town, and regardless of race and colour.

In his 1999 tune, Sufferers, he reminds “…visit my village called Talparo/Where they ent get no water for years/So much different race/So much different colour/With a bucket sit down shedding tears.” It’s a warning against being easily divided and ruled.

His lyrics were scathing and fearless, whether targeting Cecil Rhodes, Queen Victoria, Mussolini, the Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan or PW Botha from South Africa. In his musically and lyrically brilliant Bun Dem, he advises Peter to condemn them to the fires of hell.

It’s the empire striking back with righteous moral authority at the very gates of heaven, something wielded against African, Caribbean and colonised people since the invasion of Christopher Columbus, whom Black Stalin reserves for himself, telling Peter not to fuss.

Caribbean Man is devotedly remembered for its catchy dream of regional unity, but it similarly lambastes those responsible for our independent Caricom nations. Black Stalin sings: “Mister West Indian politician/Ah mean you went to big institution/An' how come yuh cyar unite seven million?”

Avoiding imported isms and the schisms they cause, such unity needs to emerge from grounding in our history, experience, landscape, people and identity, for “How could a man who don’t know his roots/Form his own ideology?”

After observing political rallies held by both parties, he asserted his right to civic resistance and a refusal to vote for those who don’t think culture, whether chutney music, pan, dance, theatre or calypso, has worth. In Nobody Cares, he consciously objects, “when I see how they treating culture so bad, I send back their polling card.”

The song speaks to a failure of governance with which we are all familiar, but is a call to each citizen to make his or her vote matter. There is injustice, but every individual has power.

Besides his deep and insistent politics, his music is full of black joy, such as with his 1991 Calypso Monarch hit, Black Man Feeling to Party, and concern with black lives as expressed in Black Man Killing Black Man.

Over and over, his songs expressed a call for justice with a melodiousness, and jaunty horn section call and response, that transports you with its timeless vibes, making his lyrics reach more powerfully than any speech or words on a page.

Through it all is a message of hope, generosity and optimism. It’s not superficial positivity. It’s a trenchant commitment to the consciousness and work that goes into making betterment, one which we can exuberantly celebrate. And, we can indeed make it if we try.

With respect, I make space for Black Stalin in my first column of 2023, so we can continue to hear his advice, from In Times:

“In times of plenty we must be grateful/In times of sorrow we must be strong/In times of joy we must be thankful/For life really have its ups and its downs/In times of disaster we must be ready to get together and move racism out the way/And if you listen to this watchword from your lover, Black Stalin/Tomorrow would be a better day.”

Finally, I end with words he sang at Andre Tanker’s passing, as Black Stalin is himself welcomed by ancestors and spirits, “I glad. I so glad. He forward home. He forward home.”

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 490

motheringworker@gmail.com