Dara E Healy

Take for instance the place of Arima town

A very promising one

With the closing of business places she cannot strive

She’s getting more dead than alive

It is keeping her down to a low degree

It’s that the government cannot see

It’s a flogging for each and every one

Advantage will never done

– Lord Kitchener, winning song, Arima Championship 1939

WHEN HE was born 100 years ago, a portal of a different kind opened. Lord Kitchener would change the genre of calypso in unpredictable and wonderful ways. From double entendre, to songs for the pan, he is equally famous for his dance and his wardrobe as he was for his calypsoes. In remembering his birthday on April 18, 1922, I was curious to learn more about his political side. I wondered, what would our beloved calypsonian have to say about politics and our society today?

Kitchener’s ability to treat with difficult sociopolitical issues began even before he left Arima to pursue his career in Port of Spain. His calypso about the closing of businesses was provoked by the 1938 Shop Closing Ordinance, a subject of public debate for over two years.

The legislation proposed early closing hours for businesses. However, as trade unionist Elma Francois pointed out, this would affect primarily small, African-run establishments, which did most of their business after hours and on the weekend.

Francois and her organisation clashed with then mayor Capt Arthur Cipriani. As Gordon Rohlehr points out, Francois and others viewed the law as “further proof of the limits which his (Cipriani’s) position as the white upper class liberal placed on his understanding of and sympathies with the black barefoot person.”

In the late 1950s Lord Kitchener contributed to protests about the proliferation of prostitution and decline of social morals. In Elsie’s River, he addresses the problem of venereal diseases. In 1946 during the American occupation, it is reported that there were some 9,600 cases of the disease in Trinidad alone.

Using the metaphor of a dirty river, Kitchener sang, “Ah turn and said to Ms Elsie/Your river not sanitary/Too many young fellars bathe here/Public place like a thoroughfare/And the grass that grow round the basin/Is dangerous to any person/Ah stood on the grass to jump in the water/Two blue crab near eat out meh finger.”

He showed that he was also concerned about another aspect of relations between men and women, for instance, the “emasculation of the Trinidad male by his American rival.” In My Wife Went Away with a Yankee, Kitchener lamented, “Kitch, I am so sorry/But you can’t afford to keep me happy/I told her Darling, come back to me/…I’ve made up my mind to go/You can’t support me on calypso."

In 1957, his growing consciousness about Pan Africanism could be seen with Birth of Ghana, celebrating their independence and removal of the colonial name Gold Coast. In fact, as early as 1953, he sang Africa My Home – “Gyal ah tired roam/Africa/I believe ah want to come back home/Africa.”

For all his accolades and global fame, I d