Tribute to Black Stalin - Bun Dem!

DR JOHNNY COOMANSINGH

During my childhood days, I came into contact with quite a few senior folk in the countryside. These compatriots spoke in very quiet and somewhat surreptitious tones about certain practices among their peers for fear that our little “eyes will be opened.”

In my presence, my godmother and her old cocoa producing neighbours never spoke in the English language.

It was always patois, this broken French. It seemed that they were more comfortable with the countryside
lingua franca. So, as our elders will instruct, we had to “cork our ears.”

Language with a clandestine tone was a way of hiding from us what they wanted to say or explain to one another.

Patois was an “app” in those days, a kind of tight shortcut, a decoy to keep you guessing.

My guessing was short-lived. Little did they know, those patois-speaking elders who shot words and phrases over my head, that I was learning French in high school.

With the little French I learnt, I figured out at least 99 per cent of the times that the topic was, for the most part, about some sexual encounter or a steady focus on some man or some woman.

Innuendo prospered in those days. The laughter between them was enough to figure out their “dirty” conversation.

When you heard a phrase such as gardez non mon cher, belle femme garcon! know for sure that there was a beautiful woman passing by and so you are compelled to watch; especially with respect to certain aspects of her rear anatomy.

When the term caca mange was used to name a dog, it was simple to figure out that the dog was caught eating fowl droppings on more than one occasions. Words such as genneh (feeling awkward), mon cher (my dear, hunny), cochon (pig), and couyon were frequently used.

Couyon, which of course, meant foolish or stupid or what Trinis understand as “dotish.”

It was easy for me to pick up on the slangs because of my acquaintance with the French language.

I learnt more “untidy,” crass, and derogatory statements (expletives) used in patois. For now, I will hold such statements hidden in the bosom of my soul. In fact, my godmother and her husband had serious “cuss outs” using these patios invectives.

Someone told me that this vestige of colonialism is still hanging around. Patois seems to be an integral part of our culture, but I am not hearing the younger set speaking any of it.

Nonetheless, just like patois, the political arena in TT has similar hush-hush, under-handed shu-shu, kankah, and mauvais langue.

Today, we are hearing fewer and fewer voices of people speaking patois about who is coming, who is going, and how they’re looking with regard to the happenings in TT.

The calypso as a medium for communication is now speaking volumes about the happenings in Trinidad. So according to calypsonian Leroy “Black Stalin” Calliste: “Peter wait! Peter wait!”

Black Stalin sang about who to burn in hell and that “Jah know, Jah know.” In his calypso Bun Dem, released in 1987, he even asked “fuh ah wuk” with Saint Peter on “judgment morning.”

Black Stalin was not singing any patois in this song and I understood exactly what he was saying in his poetic satire. I did not have to fight to translate the language used in the lyrics presented here:

“Judgment morning, ah by the gate and ah waiting

Because ah begging di Master, gimme ah wuk with Peter

It have some sinners coming, with them I go be dealing

Because the things that they do we, ah want to fix them personally.

Peter wait, Peter wait, Peter, look Cecil Rhodes by the gate.

Bun he! Bun he!

Peter, look the English man who send Cecil Rhodes to Africa land.

Bun he! Bun he!

Peter, take Drake, take Raleigh, but leave Victoria for me.

Bun she! Bun she!

Peter, ah doh care what you say, but Mussolini, he cyar get away.

Bun he! Bun he!”

Stalin’s rendition was poignant when he called for the “bunning” of the above colonial miscreants and then some more, for example, Queen Victoria, Ian Smith, Christopher Columbus, Ronald Reagan, Adolf Hitler, Pieter Botha, and the man in the Ku Klux Klan. He gave a clarion call in this song to bun oppressors when he quipped:

Peter you don’t know, the pressure that I undergo,

from these mad man and woman, I feel the full weight of their hand They make their oppressed law, they never care ‘bout the poor

Stalin’s song spoke of his opened eyes that saw the nepotism and inequality extant in Trinidad. In this case, Vidia Naipaul was correct when he quipped: “…it is only in the calypso that the Trinidadian touches reality.”

Stalin was true to form with his expressions in Bun Dem.

We in TT asked to be free from the shackles of colonialism, and yes, we gained independence from our colonial masters. We even became a republic for crying out loud! Today, what have we? Economic slavery is rife. There are vestiges of colonialism that still haunt us, mentally, socially and physically. As a former rich hydrocarbon producing and exporting country, the serious inequality that plagues us as per the distribution of resources is a nightmare; a nemesis. There are those who are flagellated to the point where they think or are rather hypnotised that it is normal for them to be beaten down and derided. The “make-up” and “break-up” syndrome in Trinidad is a fact.

Whom do we think that Saint Peter should earmark for “bunning” in Trinidad? Oh, I could name a few. There was one who said: “…and dey eh riot yet” when he raised gas prices. The mockery of the people by those in authority in a democratic state does not augur well for a decent and progressive society. While the parasitic oligarchy in Trinidad are living in their ivory towers drinking champagne and eating caviar, the proletariat are struggling to get a few crumbs that fall from their tables.

Taking a closer look at what is happening to us in our beloved country, Black Stalin revamped the fact that the government in a certain era sought desperately to stifle the voice of a people when he asked Peter to refrain from holding him back. He was interested in “bunning” the one who drafted the Public Order Act. Stalin did not put his mouth in water, he was not talking patois or talking inside “boli” (calabash) as they say when he raised the cry to “catch that big belly fella, whe carry my money down Panama.”

In view of Stalin’s song written way back then, we must be allowed to think about the seriousness of the political arena where we have become pure pawns to be used, abused, confused and finally refused by the political directorate. Saint Peter yuh dun know how
genneh ah feeling.
Couyon is now an understatement to describe how some individuals are treated in Trinidad.