“A dyslexic man walks into a bra . . . .” Yes, bra!
“Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, ‘Dam!’”
“There was the person who sent ten different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.”
“Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: ‘Does this taste funny to you?’”
Does any of this sound familiar to you – giving you a feeling of déjà vu? Or déjà moo: the feeling that you’ve heard this bull before? All of the above, excluding the first sentence of this paragraph, are said to have been among the best entries in some international punning contest.
Puns, as the Americans (more anon) would say, are a dime a dozen, and they (the Americans) are felt not to have the greatest tolerance for them. But in the Caribbean the above bits would almost certainly garner a laugh – even a belly laugh – every time they are delivered.
And so, the pun, which has a long, if not glorious history, has become a staple in our calypsos.
In most of its appearances in those songs, it is referred to as double entendre (originally a French expression, pronounced as “doob-lah-tahdr” by those who hold to its origin, while many others here, following the Americans, insist on pronouncing it “dubbull ontondruh”).
Some would argue that if you are going to be so English as to call the first word “dubbull” you should call the second “enntenndruh” or “enntennder” or “enntenndree”. Was it Georges Clemenceau or George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde who said, “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between”?
But I digress. There and here: for the record, I am not one of those Barbadian bashers of America – pigging out on Kentucky and McDonalds, flying off to the “States” every chance they get, encouraging their “illegal alien” relatives not to leave there, glad that Bajan athletes get scholarships there, glad that they have family up there while they are back here enjoying the “remittances”. . .
And more: over the moon about Rihanna, who only America could make so big, lapping up American TV, music, stars and all that stars and stripes nation could send forth, but yet bad-mouthing the place like if they getting paid to do it, wishing it ill like it is their worst enemy. No, that is not me. I see United States as a mixed blessing: having a lot that I admire, but with quite a few warts – something like Barbados.
Anyway, back to plays on words and such. Our calypsonians love to play with words. In fact, some have made great reputations with the pun – what Henry Erskine or Noah Webster or Mark Twain once called “the lowest form of humour/wit”. To which, if they feel it was from Twain, some incensed Barbadians, fighting back the urge to curse, would probably respond, “Huck you!”
Unfortunately, even as Barbadian (and other) calypsonians boldly say that they are using double entendre, they often show a degree of ignorance when challenged about the smuttiness of their lyrics, telling supposed detractors, “It’s all in your mind.” Meaning: “Not me. I don’t mean anything obscene.”
Well, a simple check with a dictionary reveals that double entendre means “A word or phrase open to two interpretations, one of which is usually indecent” (Concise Oxford Dictionary); “a word or phrase with two meanings, one more or less indecent” (Chambers 20th Century Dictionary).
Yuh want more? Well, Webster’s Eleventh New Collegiate Dictionary says it’s “a word or expression with two interpretations with one often having a risqué connotation”, and Webster’s New World Dictionary calls it “a term with two meanings, especially when one of them has a risqué or indecorous connotation”.
So, there: if you describe your calypso as double entendre, you are singing something indecent. If you own up, it could pave the way for us to chat about morals and values, about which, of course, you are going to sing in your other song – yuh know, the “social commentary” one.
It might even allow us to talk about how in opting for the punning or strictly double entendre approach, you are generally not meeting some of the more creative (and difficult) requirements of producing song art: insightfulness; our stories; potent cleverness; poignancy; “authenticity”; sensory evocativeness; the engendering of emotional resonance and participation; avoidance of facile rhyming that hinders closure or dissipates emotional energy.
More next week – God willing.
• Sherwyn Walters is a writer who became a teacher, a song analyst, a broadcaster and an editor.