The birdie flying to 90!

“A CALYPSO NAME is given to you by your peers, based on your style. In the old days they tried to emulate British royalty. There was Lord Kitchener, Lord Nelson, Duke. When I started singing, the bands were still using acoustic instruments and the singers would stand flat footed, making a point or accusing someone in the crowd with the pointing of a finger, but mostly they stood motionless. When I sing, I get excited and move around, much like James Brown, and this was new to them. The older singers said ’Why don’t you just sing instead of moving around like a little Sparrow?’”

The Mighty Sparrow (Slinger Francisco) in his own words. As we know, the name stuck and the little sparrow became very mighty indeed. On July 9, he will celebrate his 90th birthday.

In our family home, when I was far too young to really understand or have an opinion, a debate raged between my teenage sister, who was herself an emerging singer of ballads, and my mother who also sang but in the classical tradition, about two young artistes who were changing the rules of acceptable on-stage behaviour.

To my parents, the hip-gyrating, morality-challenging Elvis Presley – the idol of every 1960s teen and preteen – was as beyond the pale as Sparrow was, with his wicked wining and salacious lyrics, but Elvis was innocent compared to our bard. Deciphering the double entendre in Sparrow’s calypsoes was a sport for us children who, through them, learned about the shocking things adults got up to. Sparrow was an important part of our unofficial education.

We had been protected from the real social impact of the US marines in our midst, from the violence of downtown Port of Spain during Carnival time, from the predatory relationship between men and women, the transactional nature of romantic liaisons, about the exploitative nature of British colonialism and the inadequacy of the school curriculum. We did not know why the West Indies Federation failed or the woes of being a slave. All of these are the subjects of Sparrow’s many beautifully lyrical, saucy and thoughtful calypsoes.

The shock of Ten to One is Murder remains. The speed and virtuosity of the delivery perfectly matching the intense danger of the situation induced fear and adrenaline spikes. It was a new way of experiencing the world we did not know existed. As an adult, I would argue with anyone that Philip My Dear, Sparrow’s satirical account of the Queen’s reaction to the intruder in her bedroom in Buckingham Palace, is a masterpiece. It manages with great sophistication to humanise the royal person while expressing a unique Trini irreverence and penchant for innuendo, mischief, subversiveness, dressing down of authority, and our gift for creolising the English language. Even the Queen uses our “dou dou” to express her affection for her absent husband who’s missing in other ways too.

In a handsomely-designed and produced new book, Donna Benny pulls together rare photos, paintings, images and some full song lyrics. Entitled Sparrow Take Over, it is principally a collection of new and some previously published essays that tell the context of Sparrow’s emergence, style, capabilities, themes, commercial nous and the naughtiness for which he was famous, even infamous. Sparrow wrote his own lyrics but Reginald (Piggy) Joseph penned many of his early hits. According to one of the essays by Prof Pat Mohammed, of the 200 songs written and sung by Sparrow, 20 are distinctly political, 43 relate to economics and social commentary, 40 are carnival and party songs, and 43 pertain to gender and sexuality.

Other insightful, easy-to-read contributions by Sparrow experts Prof Gordon Rohlehr and Hollis “Mighty Chalkdust” Liverpool, social commentators and journalists Keith Smith, BC Pires, Pat Ganase, Lennox Grant and Ira Mathur are as revelatory as the many aspects of Sparrow’s genius addressed by Ronald Noel, Gillian Moore, Donna Yawching, Sonja Dumas, David Cuffy, Vivien Goldman and Rudolf Ottley.

Born in Grenada, Sparrow became the very embodiment of Trini culture, winning eight road march titles and eight calypso king/monarch titles between 1956 and 1992. None other than that other embodiment of popular Trini music David Rudder dubbed Sparrow “one of the greatest artists ever produced on the face of the earth.” Sparrow Take Over explains exactly why. It is available at Paper Based and Metropolitan bookshops, the Frame Shop and School and Office Supplies in Port of Spain and at Blue Edition in Tunapuna.

Also in commemoration of Sparrow’s 90th is Ten to One – the final play in Rawle Gibbons’s calypso trilogy. It will be performed on the weekends of June 13-15 and June 20-22 at the Central Bank Auditorium. (Tickets: islandtickets.com /343-7713). The play focuses on Sparrow’s first 15 years, TT’s changing society at the time and the many hurdles he overcame to leave an indelible mark on the genre and our cultural history.