SOMEBODY DOING SOMETHING – for cane, for a cup or for country.
In some circumstances, these might be considered lofty aims. But unless we are the greener side of ten years old or older folks girding ourselves with bands of self-deceit, we know these things as expressed in calypsos often have nothing but very base ends in mind.
Still, every calypso season they burst into our presence – occasioning the obligatory battle between public outcry and the feisty rebuttal of artistes and their sympathizers.
But the first thing is this: with what people consider indecent – and any half-decent dictionary plainly informs us that double entendre is a word or phrase that is open to two interpretations, one of which is usually indecent – it should be understood that you are going to be playing with moving goalposts.
I worked for over 30 years in a place where people turned up an almost collective nose at the 50 or so “dirty” words thrown around the adult public space during that time. But there are other workplaces where in the adult space you have to duck about every five minutes to avoid similar words hitting you in the face or the back of your head – and nary a word of objection.
Insult to intelligence
So it will be with double entendre songs – there is no automatic right of way. And you cannot reasonably expect a one-size-fits-all approach.
That, however, may well be among the least of our problems with these songs that flirt with social acceptability – especially the ones about sex.
I don’t think people object mostly to the subject matter. Perhaps it’s the calypsonians’ two-pronged insulting of their intelligence: (1) boldfacedly trying to palm off what is clearly one thing as another and (2) offering listeners puerile stuff.
It is probably also about being crass (“showing a gross lack of intelligence or sensitivity”, the Concise Oxford Dictionary says).
Regional pedlars of such songs have the unbelievable nerve to look us in the eye and tell us that the sex is in our (dirty) minds. What an unforgiveable insulting of our intelligence!
Zero interest
Why should anybody think that a story about a man picking coconuts urged on by a woman telling him to “go right up in dey” is about anything other than sex? Or, for that matter, that somebody is really looking for fat porks and not sex? Such stories have no interest – zilch, zero, nada – unless they are about sex.
You know that you singing ’bout sex. And you got to know that I know. So cut the crap and give me a good vicarious adventure of genuine substance, of believable, engaging experience and I would be satisfied – if I am that kind of person.
The fumbling, stumbling effort to fool us in broad daylight wins few right-thinking friends.
But then people talk about our easy acceptance of similar stuff from other places, and I have to say that when they name names of songs from these other places, many of them are not raw, plainly offensive narratives feebly trying to get by as something else.
Those songwriters/singers stand by their products as being about sex and are prepared to let the chips fall where they may. The double entendre, the nicing it up, the euphemism en to try to fool you – simply to make the songs more palatable.
And I gotta tell yuh: I don’t want anybody telling me that Get Sexy by Paul Kelly or Let’s Get It On by Marvin Gaye or Slow by Lenny Welch is in the same rock-bottom class as Lovable.
Sample of Slow: “On the way to work how the traffic flies / quick phone calls, hello and goodbyes / Everything in life moves so fast / All I want to do is get you home / Where we can spend some time alone/ I’m gonna do all I can to make it last.
CHORUS: I wanna love you slow / Each part of you I touch I wanna get to know / Days keep moving at the speed of light / I’m gonna make time stand still tonight / And every inch of you feel so nice . . . by going nice and slow /
VARIED CHORUS: I’ll take my time behind closed doors / Till we reach that place we’re reaching for/ Till you tell me “Don’t go slow no more”.
Don’t tell me you got a problem with that! A song about consenting adults enjoying sex is not the same as some inane, non-authentic, non-viable sex “story” in which the writer does not engagingly depict sex – as is done in Sparrow’s May May – or something sex-related (as in Adonijah’s Something Left In De Bottle).
The question is where these songs belong.
I want to meet you here next week and give you more (he said, licking his lips at the prospect). And, yes, sex is on my mind – I en gine lie – for that article.
• Sherwyn Walters is a writer who became a teacher, a song analyst, a broadcaster and an editor. Email offwally@gmail.com
