Calypso is history

As Calypso History Month begins, events, celebrations and accolades are planned for the music and its artistes.

Calypso is this country’s history— its highlights and low points set to melody and infectious rhyme, but one aspect of the celebration remains deeply ironic. Accessing this treasure trove of music and insight is difficult beyond the surface veneer of popularity and longevity.

For decades, calypsonians have produced hundreds of songs each season hoping to catch the ear of the public.

When the calypso tent was the premier space for introducing new calypsoes to the public, the audiences who frequented those venues heard calypsonians expound on a wide range of topics. It wasn’t unusual for widely divergent perspectives on a single issue to coexist in the same show.

The best of those songs was recorded and offered to radio stations, who then faced a deluge of new music and needed to filter it for their listeners.

Some songs that were unfashionably political were suppressed, others were too risque for public airwaves, and others, it is realistic to say, were played out of proportion to their actual popularity through private arrangements with disc jockeys.

On Ash Wednesday, even that limited window of airplay vanished.

In 2025, the challenge of live recording has largely been surmounted.

Over the last two decades, it has been possible to create a recorded database of soundboard recordings every song performed by a calypsonian who has not recorded their work.

That kind of aspirational thinking is probably beyond the capacity of the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians Organisation (TUCO), which is facing significant challenges in mustering even a third of its membership to convene an annual general meeting.

Despite concerns about the finances of the organisation, the executive, led by Ainsley King since 2021, has made some headway in managing the $7 million debt that it claims to have inherited that year.

The current executive must answer significant questions about its finances raised by its members generally, and Errol “Bally” Ballantyne specifically.

The NACC announced its list of this year’s Top 20 calypsoes on October 2, but there are songs on that list that are inaccessible to the curious listener, though the most popular songs are well-distributed by entrepreneurially minded artistes.

It’s a national embarrassment that the most authoritative resource and deepest wellspring of calypso music available to calypso fans are the songs distributed – with no opportunity for monetisation – across the breadth of YouTube.

That’s a stark indictment of TT’s inability to collect, organise, archive, and harness the collective ability of its calypso talent.

Calypso history month must be dedicated to offering a deeper dive into the vast catalogue of TT’s calypso music and set itself a goal of resurfacing lost works and identifying forgotten calypsonians for modern reconsideration.