Joseph Kitch

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-84523-443-0
Verlag: Peepal Tree Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

The poet and musician Anthony Joseph met and spoke to Lord Kitchener just once, in 1984, when he found the calypso icon standing alone for a moment in the heat of Port of Spain's Queen's Park Savannah, one Carnival Monday afternoon. It was a pivotal meeting in which the great calypsonian, outlined his musical vision, an event which forms a moving epilogue to Kitch, Joseph's unique biography of the Grandmaster. Lord Kitchener (1922 - 2000) was one of the most iconic and prolific calypso artists of the 20th century. He was one of calypso's most loved exponents, an always elegantly dressed troubadour with old time male charisma and the ability to tap into the musical and cultural consciousness of the Caribbean experience. Born into colonial Trinidad in 1922, he emerged in the 1950s, at the forefront of multicultural Britain, acting as an intermediary between the growing Caribbean community, the islands they had left behind, and the often hostile conditions of life in post War Britain. In the process Kitch, as he was affectionally called, single handedly popularised the calypso in Britain. Kitch represents the first biographical study of Aldwyn Roberts, according to calypso lore, christened Lord Kitchener, because of his stature and enthusiasm for the art form. Utilising an innovative, polyvocal style which combines life-writing with poetic prose, the narrative alternates between first person anecdotes by Kitchener's fellow calypsonians, musicians, lovers and rivals, and lyrically rich fictionalised passages. By focussing equally on Kitchener's music as on his hitherto undocumented private and political life, Joseph gets to the heart of the man behind the music and the myth, reaching behind the sobriquet, to present a holistic portrait of the calypso icon.

Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, musician and lecturer described as 'the leader of the black avant-garde in Britain'. He is the author of Kitch, which was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and four poetry collections. His written work and performance occupies a space between surrealism, Jazz and the rhythms of Caribbean speech and music. He lives in London and performs internationally.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Joseph, Anthony

Leseproben

TOWN SAY BEAN STANDING IN THE MORNING YARD under the kitchen window where the earth was slippery with mud from washbasin water, scent of stale soap, swill, and cow dung and frangipani in the fields. He washes his face in the enamel rainwater bowl, wrings and flicks the water from his hands. In the bedroom he combs his hair in front of the mirror. He wears the white shirt he has starched and ironed himself, the brown trilby, pinched in the peak, the school blue suit his father left behind, the one with the pants a lighter blue because his mother once washed the thing with coal tar soap on the river rocks and it faded. The black shoe cracked across the axle of the instep from walking long and hilly places. While dew still drying, he leaves the wooden house on St Joseph Road with his grip and box guitar in a burlap sack, grease from two fried bake oozing grease through brown paper in his inside jacket. His sister watches him from the front door, as he crosses between the fowl shit and the mud and onto the government road. Bean turns back to wave, sees the house leaning to one side like it want to fall, the wood corroded, termite in the ceiling, wood bug in the rickety balustrade, and his sister stand up there silent and proper, reserved. But is gone Bean gone. When the people of the village see Bean walking along the gravel road with his suitcase, they come to their fences to wave. Sister Mag stops from sweeping her yard to smile broad and whisper a prayer for Bean. The Deacon stop bulling he craft, to watch the young man go, and Pundit, who old, turn from throwing his bowl of rancid urine on the breadfruit tree root. ‘Bean boy, is you dress up like a hot boy so? This early morning, where you going? America?’ Bean grin like horse teeth, ‘Is town, in town I going.’ Bean walking the slow incline, remembering down what Lord Pretender tell him. ‘Good as you is,’ the younger veteran say, ‘you not really a calypsonian till you sing in Port of Spain. That is where the angle does bend, me boy, that is where real calypsonian does get born. You could win all them country champion, but you must, you must come in town.’ Down from the east through rustling villages, brisk with raw country on either side, and the black wavering line of the main road stretching out in the bright morning. Bean sit on a smooth wooden bench in the back of the rickety Darmanie bus, and six cents to town he gone rocking in the bounce and swinging tug, with his long mango head leaning against the window watching the sun cast its buzz across so much wild countryside. D’Abadie Tacarigua Five Rivers over iron bridges, through pasture land with churches hid in bush, a pink orphanage beside a river, the mint and white minaret of a mosque… Arouca Tunapuna St Augustine St Joseph Mt D’Or A wire-veined man sits in the seat across from Bean with reddened eyes that bulge in the leathered cage of his head. Two red fowl cocks caw and flutter in a wire cage between his knees. He wears raw brown linen trousers with frayed hems, a sky-blue shirt. His corns and mud-stained feet slip between rubber slippers. He shifts nervously, tapping his feet in some hidden rhythm. Bean lowers his gaze when the man turns towards him, then he catch the scar on the side of the man jaw. Entering the village of Champs Fleur, a song begin to compose itself in his head: Pa pa dee, pa pa dee-o Ah come from the country Pa pa dee, pa pa dee-o cock fight in the country The man fowl cackle and cussing, but nobody will say anything. What you expect people to do? Bring complaint? And get cuss or badjohn beat them? But a middle-aged woman, sitting in the back, just wringing her wrinkled hands over the beaded purse on her knee. She wears a green lamé dress of her dry season menopause, patent leather court shoes, her feet shut at the ankles, church hat tilted on her head. When the chickens fuss and flutter and fowl shit start to funk up the bus, she put one dark gaze down heavy on the cock merchant, so he could feel the full weight of her stare, then she turn back, with the same pious gaze, suck her teeth to steups and summon a hymn. Mt Lambert Petit Bourg Silver Mill San Juan The bus trembling, troubling the road. Bean, rocking between the fowl thief and the Adventist, leaning in the corner side the back seat with suitcase between his knees. Barataria Morvant Laventille These northern hills of Port of Spain, laden with wood-shacks and galvanize roofs, sparkle in the sun. Open sores of ghetto ravines. Slum wood. Hillside tenements where the heat burst like pepper in a pot. Driving down past the La Basse, on with its stinky sweet smell of black mud rotting in swamp land, and the rum and coconut oil factory, citrus scent, distilleries, and the sky extending out to brightness over Port of Spain, where human cargo spills out into the streets like ants from under a hessian sack of forgotten meat. Policemen in white custodian helmets measure the traffic. Jay walkers and small-island market women stroll past carrying baskets on their heads. Walk a mile and a half. Bats in the garret of the big house, big men playing wappie there, slapping harsh cards down, and the drain in the abandoned land behind the barrack yard festering with thick black-blue love fly hissing, so the air there always have muscle. A dog licking salt from the edge of the world, in Marine Square where the tamarind trees grow high and wide, and black dravidian beggars stew in heat and piss at the roots. Bean puts down his grip on Henry Street, letting the city rock him in its river of flesh and concrete. He not sure what to do. Not sure how to move. Road running left, road running right, and he now come to town on the Darmanie bus. He step to cross the people road and a jitney near bounce him; was a Yankee Willys jeep that pass and splash a puddle on him; US Navy. One stink puddle, funk up with rancid water and genk that run ’way from the Syrian steam laundry, wash up on his foot, like baptism in the city. ‘The Champion, boy!’ The voice startles him. This man, Mr Gary, waving, crossing the road towards him. Bean notices his wide bandy gait, like the curving limbs of a calliper, the unlit cigarette between the fingers of his right hand, and his voice pitched high and almost girlish, to cut through the noise of the street. Mr G puffing from the exertion of running behind the calypsonian, but he is the kind of man who seems to wear a permanent grin. ‘Where you going, Saga boy? I tell you wait for me by the bus depot and you walking like you know where you going?’ Extending a hand for Bean to shake, patting the young man’s shoulder at the same time. ‘Ha, you walking like a drake, like you know Port of Spain, but you don’t know town no arse.’ Now he laughs, his head slung back. ‘I just s-seeing what I could s-see. I thought maybe you did come and gone,’ Bean says. ‘If I say wait is to wait, man. How you mean? You feel you could just come from country and start perambulating up here? You want these vagabond rob you? Anyway…’ He lights a cigarette, whipping the match shut, then flinging the wick to the ground. ‘Come with me.’ But it is this word ‘perambulating’ that Bean considers as he follows Mr Gary through the mess of black shack alleys and thoroughfares that is eastern Port of Spain. Unfinished wooden houses, barrack yards. The promoter stops grinning at the corner of Observatory Street. ‘Now, champ, let me tell you from now,’ he says, ‘don’t think because I bring you down from the country it mean I have hotel room for you, eh. You eh make a red cent yet, much less to pay rent. Once you start working in the tents, you can rent bungalow, but for now you could stay in the Harpe.’ Bean turn. ‘La Cour Harpe? Is there you-you carrying me? I hear that place very terrible.’ Without turning to face Bean, Mr Gary says, ‘Don’t worry yourself, people does say it bad, but it not so bad in there.’ So they walk the slight incline up Observatory, cross a bridge, past the poor house and turn left into a yard, the entrance marked with a hand-painted wooden sign: La Cour Harpe. All this time Bean quiet, he just watching the yard; the Baptist flags in the far corner; the lush long zigar bush grown from the moist land near the latrines; the mud-walled bungalows; the sandy, snot-nosed children pitching marbles in the communal centre – kax, pax, patax – against their knuckles to punish; the young men knocking iron to music in the shade of a gru-gru bef tree; the laden belly of washing lines strung from shack to shack; the hot tin roofs and the rustling of leaves; the grief water stagnant and pungent in cesspools; the women sitting on front steps scandalising, with their dresses drawn down between the valley of their thighs; the fisherman returning from the sea with a bottle of English gin; a cacophony of whores; rats in the attic and the soldier van passing; panty wash running in the ravine; moss like phlegm on the ravine bed like strands of something blown by water. In the far right corner of the yard, just before the abandoned land and the dry river running under the silver bridge, by the palm tree in a tenement garden, a brown pot-hound barks and rolls in the rugged dirt to scratch mange from its back, and a big-headed...