By BETH MEYER

Calypso storms
the country

ARRY Belafonte’s ,sudden
popularity has once again
brought calypso singing into
great prominence. Every 10
years or so this music is re-
discovered in:North America.
The present vogue points to
the possibility that it will sup-
plant rock and roll before long,
and ‘recalls periods in the past
when calypso reached _ the
heights’ of popularity.

The last flurry of excite-
ment was in 1946, when Ella
Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan
recorded Stone Cold Dead,
starting a trend which even
crept into radio and television
commercial] jingles.

Calypso was originally .a
West Indian word-for African
folk. songs, but it has come to
mean the music that is the
Trinidadian offspring of this
tribal music.

Each West Indian island has
developed its own type of
song, stemming from _ that
same beginning: the Jamaican
mento, the Demarraran bagge,
the brumly of the Barbadoes;
the beguine, which come from
the French West Indies. In
Trinidad, the most cosmopoli-
tan of the islands, all these
songs are sung. But calypso is
Trinidad’s own individual folk
music.

Just as jazz grew out of the
songs which Negro slaves took
to the United States, altered
by American conditions and
the influence of the music of
other peoples who went there,
so a special kind of music re-
sulted from the same origins,
tempered by British colonial
conditions and the.insular so-
cial setup of the West Indies.

The first slaves who landed
there began singing for the
same reasons as those who

landed in the old Atlantic”
colonies — out of a deep need
for expression — social and

religious. Their music was a
mainstay of the underground
movement against ~ slavery.
Even after slavery was of-
ficially abolished in the West
Indies, near the middle of the
19th century, these songs went
on expressing bitterness
against the British govern-
ment.

This was true especially in
Trinidad, where the popula-
tion is overwhelmingly Negro.
There has been strict censor-
ship over calypso records,
many being confiscated every

year.
*

Calypso is based» upon the
same syncopated rhythms as

jazz, although it also shows
very strong influences of
Spanish rhythms. The instru-
~mentation in the two types of
music is also similar.

Calypso has in common with
jazz the fundamental charac-
teristic that it is spontaneous
and extemporaneous. But,
where the emphasis in jazz is
on the instruments, calypso is
always sung, the music being
actually secondary to the
lyrics. The singer improvises
the words and melody, around
which the band harmonizes.

Originally calypsos were
sung in patois, a jargon con-
taining English, French, Span-
ish and Hindu words. Now, it
is more usual for them to be
sung in English, but strangely
distorted, with the accent on
odd syllables — as in Stone
Cold Dead in the Market.

The strange accent here, as
in all calypso singing, guides
the band, giving new patterns
to old rhythms. There is a
great burden on the men to
follow the singer, sometimes
through unusually intricate
key changes.

This is the form in which
Calypsonians sing. The songs
themselves have become tradi-
tionally the ammunition in
battles between bands of musi-
clans.

lords, and the exchange of
songs is a form of jousting
which recalls the tournaments
of King Arthur’s Knights —
except that this is not a war
of spears or javelins. It is a
battle of words and music. It
is a friendly, jocular war, but
one that is waged fiercely by
its armies — the calypso sing-
ers of Trinidad.

*

Every February, at: Mardi
Gras, the great calypso carfi-
val is held in Port of Spain, al-
though activity begins actually
around Christmas time, and
there is much preparation in
advance for the festival itself.

Groups of musicians arrive,
dressed in brilliant costumes of
every rainbow color. Prizes are
awarded for the most original,
the most comical, the fanciest,
the most historical costumes,
and the winners are given the
freedom .of.the city.

Each group, consisting of a
singer and his band, establishes
headquarters in its own tent
for the duration of the Mardi
Gras.

During the festival, calypso
groups go from store to store,
singing the praises of each
shop. The proprietors offer
prizes for the best songs and
costumes — as much as the

The leaders are called war equivalent of $100 to $200 each.

Consolation prizes of $20 or
$25 usually go to the bands
which do not win. Individual
bands often represent specific
stores.

This kind of singing is the
Trinidad variation of the fam-
iliar American radio singing
commercial. In fact, some of
our own most: catchy advertis-
ing ditties are themselves
calypso-type songs.

At the carnival grounds, a
leader may, upon impulse or
inspiration, invade another

tent and sing a challenge to.

the war lord representing that
domain. He.may improvise on
any subject under the sun.

It is a disgrace for a singer
to enter a war with. prepared
songs. In fact, a challenger
tries to sing on subjects for
so varied that it is impossible
his rival té anticipate him.
Many of the songs describe
love affairs. Others tell of his-
torical events, loyalty to the
king, bits of personal philos-
ophy, and many show great
learning on the part of the
singers. Mostly, however, they
tell of current * happenings,
political or purely local.

The tradition is for the mu-
sical dialogue to begin with
an interchange of good-natured
insults — in verse and music.
It may be a long-winded affair
revolving around, for example

a noticeable hole in the defen-
der’s' stocking, or some of ‘his
domestic difficulties.

From there, however, it goes
from subject to subject, and
there is no predicting where
it may end — in the upper
reaches of higher mathematics
or on the wonders of West In-
dian cooking. Each singer tries
to confound the other. The
greatest disgrace is for a sing-
er to hesitate and have _ to
search for an answer. If the
song is not improvised, it does
not count.

Between formal contests, the
various bands travel on foot,
playing and. singing every-
where they go. In each vil-
lage, the shopkeepers get to-
gether and award prizes. for
the best songs and costumes.

The language is flowery and
roundabout, with a curiously
formal tone, even though not
always grammatical. The
rhymes themselves are often
not too accurate, but always
understandable and fitting.

Throughout the Mardi Gras,
the crowd dances to the music,
most of the dances.stemming
from two basic, simple conga-
like steps, danced alone or in
pairs. There is great abandon
and relaxation in the move-
ments of the dancers.

But at all times, the songs
and the singers themselves are
of top importance. Each leader
adopts a name, which becomes
so much his own that his fam-
ily name and the name with
which his parents baptized
him are almost forgotten.

Some of the best known
singers ‘have been known as
The Tiger, Atilla the Hun, The
Executor, Lord Beginner, King
Radio, The Growler, The Car-
esser, .Lancelot.

For a long time the King
of Calypso was Wilmoth
Houdini, author of Stone Cold
Dead, which had been popular
some 10 years ago before the
famous recording as He Had
It Coming. Houdini was first

prize winner for many years, i

including 1939, the last year
before the war that the calypso
festivals were held. They were
discontinued for the duration
and resumed in 1945.

What's so secret about science?

ing it to those sGiehtists who practice for many years are

T is an unwritten law that

scientists must publish the
results of their work. Not only
is publication an impersonal
way of communicating to one’s
fellow scientists what has been
done, but what one scientist
reports may be the means of
stimulating new ideas in other
scientists which lead to dis-
coveries that push even fur-
ther back the -boundaries to
the knowledge of man.

Access to what is being pub-
lished, colloquially termed the
literature, is nearly as import-
ant to. the scientists as the
wherewithal to carry out his
work.

Just how to get the know-
ledge of what is being done to
the working scientist a prob-
lem that with each working
day is becoming wore insol-
uble.

As an example: It has been
calculated there are as many
at 12,624 periodicals that deal
with medicine and medical
science published in the world.

If it is assumed that the aver-

age number of issues is 20 per
year and there are in each
journal 20 pages of informa-
tion and each page takes, say,
three minutes to read, then it
would require about a quarter
of a million hours to read a
year’s supply of journals.

There are nowhere near that
many hours in a year. And
the field of medicine is not
the only branch of science con-
fronted with this problem.

x x be

A recent issue of Science
News Letter, published by the
U.S. Institution for the Popu-
larization of Science, described
one way Soviet scientists are
working to help their fellows.

The publication points out
there is nothing isolationist
about Soviet science. The
USSR translates from other
languages more sciencé texts
than any other country. There
is no iron curtain sealing off
Soviet laboratories.

Something like a small army
is-engaged on the job of sort-
ing out information and rush-

are interested in it.
The Science News
quotes these figures:

A permanent force of 1800
translators and _  abstractors,
those who prepare condensed
versions of the papers they
examine, is aided by 13,000
scientists and engineers in
specialized fields who devote
some of their spare time to the
work.

Special express services rush
the news to those interested
within two or three weeks of
receiving the foreign paper or
article. Soviet scientists _are
provided with complete trans-
lations of any foreign paper of
request. :

a t m

The practice of reporting
the result of one’s work in the
scientific press is a recent de-
velopment. It was preceded
by direct communication
among scholars and savants, a
practice which is still carried
on by certain scientists.

Two who have followed this

Letter

the great scientists who shared
the Nobel Prize for Chemistry
in 1956, Sir Cyril Hinshelwood,
fessor at Oxford University,
and’ Nikolai Semenov, director
of the Institute for Chemical
Physics of the Academy of
Sciences of USSR.

Hinshelwood and Semenov
were recognized for their re-
search in the mechanism of
chemical reactions. Though
they have worked independ-
ently, their results generally
Supported each other. It is
impossible to say which con-
tributed the more to the de-
velopment of modern ideas on
chemical reactions.

It is ironic that with the
Soviet hastening to put into
their own tongue the ideas of
the world, Semenov’s. book,
Certain Problems of Chemical
Kinetics and Reactionability,
published in 1954 and- sum-
marizing his most recent re-
search, is only now being trans-
lated into English.

JUNE 7, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 12