COMMENTARY: Cross And Nought By Dr Lester Simon

CROSS and NOUGHT

1. I can’t believe it. I say I can’t believe it. I drive across Cross Street. Cross Street stops. Normally, I stop, but this time, before I can stop, Cross Street stops. The street stops. Right in front of me. The vehicle almost stalled. Is what? 

2. I drive the only place I can drive, down High Street. When I reach Temple Street, I had a good mind, actually, a bad mind, to make an illegal left turn down Temple Street since I am going to St. Mary’s Street. With my Christian upbringing and my dead maternal grandmother watching over me, and my dead parental grandmother jealously watching her watching me, and knowing that St. John the Baptist and St. John the Devine at the head of Temple Street, guarding the Cathedral, were also watching, I decide to do the right thing and turn right and go up Temple Steet, right on Long Street, and then, out of sheer force of habit, I turn right on Cross Street, only to have an explosive, expletive conference with the pieces of wood crossing off Cross Street. Is what?

3. Finally, I get to St. Mary’s Street. Next thing I know more wood is blocking off the St. Mary’s Street side or Cross Street. I ask myself why? It must be that big ratta I saw the other evening that they are trying to catch. But a pest shop is nearby, so it can’t be that. 

4. They don’t want me to go to Deluxe Cinema? Deluxe that once was burnt to the ground, and big people cried and complained that their church had gone dust to dust and ashes to ashes? Deluxe, where Ray Charles not only sang but played the alto saxophone too? Whatever they are planning, I guess if cotton can come to Harlem, sugarcane can come to St. John’s. 

5. The hearsay is that it has to do with the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in November this year. News has it that Reparations will be at the centre of this meeting. Now I get it: the repairs to Deluxe are an ode to reparations. Brilliant! 

6. But what will we feature in the repaired and renovated Deluxe? Surely the music cannot be, it must not be, a pastiche of known classical music, jazz, and calypso, and whatever else. This renaissance demands the commissioning of either new music or a musical based on our music by our local musicians. But herein lies a fundamental problem. 

7. Recently, there has been talk about modernizing calypso. Like many of the responders, I am also somewhat lost when we talk about modernizing calypso. The only thing I can think of is the utilization of calypso in drama presentations, somewhat similar to but also different from opera, or a musical, which Obsti pioneered on the carnival stage with Children Melee. We need full-length plays and musicals in which calypso is an integral part. 

8. This will drive our musicians to make calypso music to marry or complement the words and actions on stage. The average person likes classical music largely, and even subconsciously, because of movies… so much so that they cannot separate the two and would say they hate classical music without “seeing it” in the movies!

9. This utilization of calypso will demand a keen understanding of the English language and patois so that the sounds and nuances of the languages are reflected and counterpointed in the music. Was it not Derek Walcott who said that the English language will be improved by the “Barbarians”, meaning that we have to incorporate modernity or outside influences into the old school? But first we have to have a deep sense and analysis of the old or the standard. Rules must be well known to be broken properly.

10. We cannot have music without language. Language and sounds and imagery enjoy, employ and deploy similar, if not identical, cerebral pathways and processes. The average Caribbean artiste cannot speak proper English! A deep understanding of patios will allow clever machination and alliteration of patios. But who is the audience here? The same sophistication used in playing and dancing with patios is needed to massage the English language for universal messages. 

11. After France’s devastating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), French composers shed the Austrian-German influence in classical music and found solace in the sounds of their native music in their heads and in their lives: The articulations of the French language. The Mighty Sparrow, 91 years old this year, our Caribbean bard and our treasured gift to the world talks about his deep love for languages.

12. Changes to the music will come as part of the changes in the other arts. Most people, probably all, write in rhythm. Words on paper and words spoken have articulations. These articulations vary according to accents within and without countries and ethics groups.  This is why, until well trained and schooled, most West Indian musicians have difficulties negotiating classical music and even jazz. And most non-West Indian musicians have similar difficulties negotiating calypso. And don’t talk about the dancing! Foot drop; mike drop! 

13. Is it too late to commission a particular body of music for CHOGM? The history of Deluxe demands it.  Businesses in town cannot and must not suffer just for a belching of the same familiarities. One silly example to try to make the point about the utilization of calypso: You visit a museum with an exhibition of paintings or sculptures, or a reading of poetry or parts of a novel, and a musician is commissioned to write calypso music to complement the environment. It cannot be flames of burning music only!

14. Anything other than a new, commissioned opus of our music would not be a dainty dish to set before the king. 

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