Let's face reality

January 25, 2004
by Dr Winford James

Cro Cro's calypso, 'Face Reality', has been drawing very angry reactions from certain quarters of our multiethnic society. Many of the wounded, especially those who are not of his unabashed PNM persuasion or, more accurately, who are pro-UNC, find the messages in the song illegal, morally reprehensible and anti-Indo, and some have been calling for it to be censored or banned. Cro Cro is being racist, they scream; he is breaking the law by inciting Afro bandits to kidnap Indo (and Syrian?) businesspeople. He should be stopped, and if the government is subsidising The Revue, it must explain why it has not taken any action against the abomination. Well, should the calypso be censored - banned even?

'Face Reality' is a political calypso, so negative political reactions are entirely predictable - as predictable as non-partisan objections to a Manning or Panday political speech, or to Panday's call for civil disobedience, or to any of Manning's ceaseless unforced faux pas. How do you sing a calypso with lines like the following and not stir up outrage in (the empire of) those who you are attacking?:

So all dem Carlos, dem who jefe sefe, dem who tief
Ah beggin mi bandit friend
Kidnap dem

All who have coke in water tank
Drug money in foreign bank
Doh mind how de plead and beg
Kidnap dem

All dem big big big store owner
Who does bring coke in store container
To fry brain ah we children
Kidnap dem

De children happy in London
We kids tunnin pusherman
Laventille children ketchin de nennen
Kidnap dem

Dey have we money in London and Miami
Kidnapping go build back we economy....

Cro Cro uses the old conversational trick, readily adopted by lyricists, of not identifying his targets by their legal names but rather by devices such as unspecific indicators of reference, exaggeration, and highly suggestive selections of events and states from our shared local world of experience. An expression such as 'All dem Carlos... all dem who tief' does not in itself point to anybody with legal identity who could unambiguously claim s/he was being libelled (how many Carloses? Carlos who and who?). But the mention of 'Carlos', the pluralisation of 'Carlos' ('dem Carlos'), and the association of 'Carlos' with thieves all combine to trigger a definition of the people Cro Cro is referring to in our shared world of experience. Similarly, in the line 'De children happy in London', Cro Cro uses the neutral identifier 'De' to describe his referents, knowing full well that the latter will be easily recognised, via the phrase 'children happy in London', in the memory of a shared social experience.

In a line such as 'Kidnapping go build back we economy', he is following eminent people like the French dramatist Molière and the Caribbean economist Lloyd Best in using exaggeration to drive a point home. And what's the point? None other than that (leading elements in) the UNC constituency should 1) be forcibly / violently made to return what they raped from the national treasury, and 2) be made to suffer for the damning effects on the nation (e.g., drug-pushing, damaged children in the Laventille constituency). The suffering he advocates is not merely kidnapping ('kidnap dem') but violent kidnapping (hear it in the echoic repetition of 'bam', 'boom', and 'bem' in the song?).

This is unquestionably political commentary in calypso, a call to political action - not unlike Panday's continuing call for civil disobedience since he lost the last elections or, in his perspective, was robbed of victory in them. The angry reactions should therefore not surprise in any way; they are what we should expect. But just as Panday has neither been censored nor banned for making his call, so should Cro Cro not be censored nor banned. One offers his politics in political speeches, the other offers his in calypsos. What's good for the goose must also be good for the gander. Both should be tolerated by a generous society that knows when to dismiss stupidness.

Indeed, Cro Cro has a history of consistent attack on UNC politics and (what he perceives as) unfair Indo advantage in our multiethnic polity, which we have tolerated, just as Panday has a history of consistent attack on those who have opposed him ('none shall escape unscathed'), which also we have put up with.

But some of the offended might counter that even if Cro Cro's song can be tolerated on political grounds, it cannot on legal grounds. The song explicitly calls on his 'bandit friend' to violently kidnap those he targets, they argue. Isn't it therefore in violation of the law? And, if so, shouldn't it be banned? I haven't researched the law on the question, but, as Panday would say, that is a matter for the police.

In the meantime, however, it must be instructive that no lawyer or legal body has commented on the legality of Cro Cro's kidnapping call. Could it be that the matter is not clear-cut in the law? If a policeman were to hear a person voice the view, in a public place such as a bus terminal, that 'dey should kidnap dem politicians who have bank account and children studying in England', could he on that basis make an arrest and prefer a charge? Ordinary people do make statements like that, don't they? Are they therefore at risk of being arrested, if the police are conscientious?

More to the point, do we really think that Cro Cro's call can incite people to go kidnapping? Didn't several spates of kidnapping precede Cro Cro's song? And when we have more, will it be because of Cro Cro's song? Really? Don't we have the experience of the failure of Panday's call for civil disobedience?

Cro Cro's 'Face Reality' is far from being vintage calypso. In true Cro Cro style, it is defiant and iconoclastic and, consequently, entertaining. It is aimed at jolting UNC sensitivities. There is much in it that carries the unexorcised anger of many in the population over the continuing lack of legal punishment of leading elements in the UNC for the vile corruption they wrought on the country. But, in expressing the defiance and anger, it abuses exaggeration and comes across as trivialising the sensitive issue of kidnapping, in particular of the grief of the latter's innocent victims.

That's no reason, however, for banning it.

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