Word: calypsos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Last week, with the annual pre-Lenten carnival at hand, Attila the Hun journeyed to Port-of-Spain's Mucurapo Stadium to compete with other island troubadours for the unofficial title of Trinidad's 1950 calypso king. A crowd of 3,000 sweating Trinidadians-black, white and East Indian-sat jampacked under the glaring lights. A steel band, hammering biscuit tins, old oil cans and brake drums, made the place hotter with ear-splitting overtures. Then judges were picked from the audience, and the calypsonians started in. Besides Attila there were old master-singers with such names...
...most remarkable men in Trinidad is a thin, leathery mulatto known as Attila the Hun. Born in Port-of-Spain 58 years ago of a Venezuelan father and a West Indian mother, he claims, to have been singing calypso songs for half a century-"long before they took it out of the backyard slums and put it on Frederick Street." His Rover Calypso Tent, made of sheet iron and boards on Frederick Street, the town's main street, is the island's calypso center...
...master of satire and quick wit, Attila has made the calypso, often called Trinidad's "living newspaper," a potent force in local politics. Under his real name, Raymond Quevedo, he has been elected on the Labor Party ticket to Port-of-Spain's city council...
When shaggy-haired William Alexander Bustamante tours the Jamaican countryside, field hands from the cane and banana plantations crowd around him singing a native song called We Will Follow-Bustamante Till We Die. Last week it was clear that the chorused pledge was something more than a catchy calypso lyric. In the British island's general election, Bustamante and his Labor Party squeezed back into power for a second five-year term. It was Bustamante's faithful plantation workers, overpowering the heavy urban vote rolled up by the rival socialist People's National Party, who saved...