Word: calypsos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Rupert ("Kontiki") Allen, Panama's calypso king, went on to give his customers a rhymed rundown on the latest theories about Pilot Murphy's mysterious disappearance in the Dominican Republic (TIME, Feb. 25). Kontiki was staying on top of his profession last week by wryly relating the vagaries and outrages of Caribbean power politics...
Like most calypso singers, Kontiki learned his trade on the streets, where, as one of 16 children in a poor family, he spent most of his time. Unlike most, he devoted himself from the start strictly to politics rather than other topical matters, praising democrats and making fun of strongmen. During the 1952 Panamanian elections he made his professional breakthrough with a glowing ditty about a democrat of sorts, the late President Jose Antonio ("Chichi") Remon. The lyrics, shunning excess modesty, called Remon "the saviour of Panama"; Remon used it as a campaign jingle, and after he won the election...
Most of his repertory changes as rapidly as political news, and in true calypso style he composes most of the songs on the spot. His current favorites are the Murphy song and a long, sad ballad mourning the recent, unsuccessful uprising in Havana
...wake of the record boom has come a spate of new calypso nightclubs, or old nightclubs in calypso dress, most of them in the East. In upper Manhattan a saloonkeeper from County Cork recently had his ceiling strung with fishnet, his mirrors adorned with palm fronds, and proudly announced the conversion of the back room into the Ekim Calypso Dock. Mid-Manhattan's Le Cupidon closed down when calypso became popular, re-draped itself in hammock and palms and reopened two months ago as a calypso club with a Bahamian trio, two steel drummers. It has since added...
King Radio. Already complaints are heard that U.S. calypso with its own topical allusions (e.g., "Don't blame Elvis for wiggling his pelvis," and "Happy Ireland has this to say: De Valera is here to stay") is corrupting a fine old tradition, just as oldtime jazz lovers thought big-band, arranged jazz was a sad decline from the old, improvised New Orleans roughhouse. In fact, few of the current U.S. calypso performers could compete with King Radio, a little one-eyed Trinidadian who is fondly remembered for his pithy self-portrait...