Thinking about Shadow: Poverty is Hell

Oct 28, 2018 Features / Columnists, Hinds' Sight with Dr. David Hinds

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As a student of the mother music of the Anglophone Caribbean, the calypso, I weep for our region whenever one of the giants of the art-form passes on. Yes, I am saddened when the artist is called to the great beyond, but I worry about the consequences for our region.
From 1838, when slavery was forced into exile, to the present, one of our principal preoccupations has been the continued recovery of identity and humanity as free people. And central to that process has been the creative intellect and imagination of our people. Of course, that creativity and imagination were indispensable aspects of the quest for freedom—bondage invariably breeds a culture that imagines freedom.
That is the source of the popular music and the wider popular culture of our Caribbean. The calypso, born in the crucible of resistance and affirmation of humanity, remains part of our socio-cultural and political reason for being. The calypsonian, then, does not go away; always reminding us of our collective history, struggle and identity. So, when I awoke last Tuesday to the news that Shadow, the uniquely Trinbagonian-Caribbean calypsonian had died, I went into a period of reflection on the state of our Caribbean.
Only a few days before, I had listened over and over to his masterpiece, “Columbus Lie,” in preparation for my class next semester on Political Music.
The man with the Santa Maria
Was as great as a man can be
He sailed down to Venezuela
For another discovery
He said he discovered new lands
And he thought I wouldn’t know
He discovered a lot of Indians
Who discovered the lands before
Columbus lied
Columbus lied
Columbus lied so bad
I believe Columbus was mad
I reflected on how he, The Shadow, with no training as a historian, could compose such historical narrative that surpasses those in our history books. And, I of course, wonder why our political and education managers have not seen it fit to make the lyrics of our calypso and reggae part of the texts in our schools. I know the answer, but I still bother to wonder where the creative imagination of our political leaders is.
I have noted the hype about STEM and I do welcome the emphasis on Science and Technology. But why not Science, Technology and Humanities? Why do we always think it has to be one or the other? Are we so incapable of seeing the interconnectedness of phenomena? A society of scientists without any relationship to humanism is as troubled as one without any science at all. Maybe, one day, not long from now, we will finally get it.
So, as I think about The Shadow, I think about his creative intellect and his imagination—the man in black, jumping in one place, but owning the stage with the sheer depth of his lyrics and the unique African bass in the music.
I was still a little boy becoming familiar with West Indian literature, when Shadow sang these graphic words “I am musically sick/ Mommy beat me with music stick.” What imagination! He had a few years before taken the Caribbean by storm with his “Bassman.” It was in the middle of what another calypso legend, Brother Valentino, calls the “roaring 70s.” It was the year Walter Rodney returned to Guyana to begin what would become a “civil rebellion” that is still seen as the defining moment in our modern political history. Shadow and Rodney are still linked in my mind—one born in 1941 and the other in 1942. There is something magical about that generation.
As I thought about Shadow, I reflected on poverty—still the scourge of our Caribbean. Our president recently said he wants to beat poverty in Guyana. I was glad to hear a political leader actually utter those words. I have to take the president at his word. But I have been around long enough to know that that is quite a challenge. Poverty in our post-plantation spaces is systemic– institutional. So, it would take a comprehensive, visionary intervention to root it out. Its not going to be rooted out by neo-liberal economic policies. Shadow says “poverty is hell.”
Poverty is hell and the angels are in Paradise
Driving in their limousine where everything is nice and clean
A poor man living in a teeny-weeny hut
The children hungry, nothing in the pot
He gone by the neighbour to beg for some rice
The neighbour under pressure, “Boy, things ent nice.”
He gone in the big shot area to beg
A police put a bullet in his teeny-weeny leg
He gone in the courts and he lost the case
The prosecutor say he have a bandit face

Wake up in the morning and the baby cry
The sugar pan empty, the milk bottle dry
The little boy child on the mango tree
The mango green, hurting up his belly
The young girl bawling, she wouldn’t settle
She wipe she bumsie with stinging nettle
Toilet paper they never had
They used to tootoo in the gully by the old backyard
They rub she down and they put she to sleep
The rain come down and the house does leak

A poor man always dream a lot of dream
He happy like a puppy when he dream another dream
He dream that he have a new roof on the hut
He dream that he have some good food in the pot
He dream that he have a rich friend name Frank
He dream that he have a lot of cash in the bank
He dream that he pay all his bills for the month
He dream that he have a new car in the front
He dream that he have to go to a fete
He dream that his pocket have a big, fat wallet
He wake up in the night and he rush for his pants
All he found in the pocket was a whole lot of ants
Poverty is hell! Poverty is hell!

More of Dr. Hinds ‘writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.news. Send comments to [email protected]

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