Page 161 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

146 Francio Guadeloupe

“They fool we again” is being sung by so many enthusiastic voices and
its accompaniment by such an intoxicating beat induce my lips to sing
along and my hips to gyrate even before I am aware that I am doing so.
The lyrical content is Manichaean—us against the politicians—while the
rhythms are nonopinionated; festive. Even the politicians can participate
and sing about their wrongdoings. Like public Christianity and capital-
ism, text and music in Caribbean music forms are agonistic opposites that
commune.
And like capital nowadays, the music too seems to be winning out. Not
only in me but also in most if not all the people I am surrounded by. I look
to my right and my eyes and ears zoom into my companion, an old school
friend who now resides in the United States. With a roasted chicken leg in
one hand and a daiquiri in the other, she is brazing “that’s right, the boy
right; you give them hell, Addie [Addie is the Shadow’s Christian name].”
But there is a telling difference between her bodily movement and her
words encouraging DJ Shadow to criticize the political establishment. As
she moves her hips to “They Fool We Again,” there is not a trace of anger
or urgency on her face. Her mouth is saying one thing, the rest of her body
another. It is a mix that I can only describe as socially critical with a heavy
dose of hedonism and a party mood.
She reminds me of my conversations with DJ Fernando Clarke, the
other popular sonic architect and pop star on the island. Clarke held the
position of a bank manager at the Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago
(RBBTT), but his hobbies were disc jockeying and stand up comedy.
During one of the many conversations we had, Clarke had told me that
through Calypso and other forms of Caribbean music many West Indians
learn from an early age to be critical of societal injustices without losing
themselves to a quixotic form of social activism. In other words music
educates them in recognizing the ambivalence of life.

Life Is Neither Black Nor White

Like DJ Shadow, Clarke too had a recurring message. His was that the
two vitamins C toward successful living and a sound society were
Calypso and Christianity. Calypso stood for the art of artifice and
Christianity for the techniques of virtue. For an island like SXM to run
smoothly one needed more Calypso, with Christianity acting as a cor-
rective of the excesses generated by the money tie system: the indige-
nous ideology that all SXMers were connected because of their common
desires for more money and power. All the islanders were equal, and all