By Zeno Constance
And I want all dem know I’m the warlord in calypso. (Blakie, 1977)
In the last three decades there have been a handful of calypso musicals, specifically showcasing individual calypsonians. Ah Wanna Fall ( Spoiler), Ten to One (Sparrow), The Road Make to Walk (Kitchener) and Rhoma Spencer’s Tobago duo Shadow (Winston Bailey) and Calypso Rose (Linda Sandy-Lewis).
Now mas man’, historian, author and Carnival activist Dawad Phillip will focus his playwrighting prowess on the self-acclaimed bad boy of kaiso, the venerable Lord Blakie (Carlton Joseph) in Sunday With The Warlord-Lord Blakie in Brooklyn.
The one-show-only play will be staged at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s, on Sunday.
Blakie had his heyday in the ’50s and ’60s, but was still a very potent force up to the end of the century. The Warlord, as he was affectionately called, was famous for his devilish laughter and his small conducting baton in hand when he graced the stage.
Whereas his most remembered songs are ‘Steelband Clash’, with which he won the 1954 Road March, his salacious ‘Hold the P—-‘, his mepris against Grenadians (‘Send Them Back’) and the romantic ‘Maria’ were part of a repertoire that stretched much deeper and wider.
Blakie was already featured in Gibbons’ Ah Wanna Fall and Ten to One, albeit as a supporting character to the legendary Spoiler and Sparrow. When Blakie died, he was memorialised in kaiso history by calypsonian Conqueror.
Blakie once regaled that he spent some time in the Youth Training Centre but on more than one occasion he ‘escaped’ to go and enjoy the Carnival celebrations before voluntarily returning to his prison cell.
But was Blakie really a fighter, badjohn, rebel, a man quick with his fists or always ready with a knife? Some of his songs-‘Self Defence’ (Blakie kill a man’), ‘Valdez Coming’, ‘Fight Them’ and his self-acclaimed ‘Warlord of Calypso’- seem to imply such. But it may just have been the fascination of the times, all gallery, all image-creating.
Now for the celebratory Independence weekend of 2024 Dawad courageously invokes the ghost of a legend to examine his life, his love, his kaiso. And experienced actor Kurtis Gross, famous for bringing to the theatre stage masters like Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts) and Tiger (Neville Marcano), will now delve into the life of the Warlord Blakie.
You could hear Kurtis summoning the calypso and theatre spirits: Never me again To jump in a steelband in Port of Spain.
Zeno Constance is a playwright.
