When Mr Owen Arthur, Prime Minister of Barbados and Patron of the Concert for Guyana-Barbados, delivered the opening address on Saturday, March 12, 2005, he invoked the spirit of the larger Caribbean family. He reaffirmed not only the good family value of coming to support family members during times of crisis and need, but he also spoke to the history of the family.
The bonds of the Caribbean family go back far. So far, that we sometimes forget the importance of those origins. There have been multiple criss-crossings in the creation of this Caribbean family. An exploration of Caribbean music can help to illuminate this family heritage.
The creation of the Caribbean family is a journey of struggle and celebration. It was not just taking the less travelled paths, it was about blazing new paths. Caribbean musicians played a major role in this. We need to know more about those people who used the muses to help us rise above discord and to make us feel the power of unity and dare to dream of other tomorrows.
The Guyanese impresario Phil Madison emerges as an important leader in this project.
The importance of Phil Madison in the construction of the Caribbean family is recognized in Calypso: A World Music, a current international project aimed at documenting and celebrating the history of calypso as world music. (For more information on this project, please visit: http://www.calypsoworld.org)
Phil Madison in 1950 (http://www.calypsoworld.org)
Madison is intimately associated with using vaudeville to promote the development of calypso in Trinidad and Tobago; according to the Roaring Lion, it was the Guyanese, Phil Madison, who started it. Madison came to Trinidad initially in 1908 to check out "whether or not vaudeville had any chance of succeeding in Trinidad." After that visit he concluded that it was not the appropriate time.
"I left and returned four years later (1912) and teamed up with two good showmen - Johnny Walker [a comedian] and Berkely - and in quick time we were the talk of the town. Vaudeville entertainers grew with passing years, and by 1920, I was able to get together sufficient artistes to carry two or three shows in different places at the same time, and even toured the islands of the Caribbean," Madison said in an interview with the Roaring Lion.
When Phil Madison started to work in Trinidad and Tobago, several changes were taking place in Caribbean entertainment. The silent cinema and the phonograph were emerging, and vaudeville had to compete. Vaudevillers needed to be versatile. This low-cost, working-class genre gave us the emcee, the comedian, song and dance routines, satirical songs and skits.
In his important book on the history of calypso, Gordon Rohlehr stated that by the second decade of the 20th century, vaudeville had become so popular in Trinidad and Tobago that calypsonians had to "function as both calypsonians and vaudeville entertainers, or had to compete with the extremely popular vaudeville shows, which were staged in cinemas."
According to the Roaring Lion, the packaging of the calypso in vaudeville shows, a concept developed by Phil Madison, helped to make calypso acceptable in Trinidad and Tobago in the early decades of the 20th century.
The growth and popularity of calypso in Trinidad and Tobago has had significant consequences for the Caribbean family in the region and in the diaspora. The calypso is, among other things, the people's newspaper, the social commentator, the small axe that cuts down big trees, and a chronicler of history.
Many of the early vaudeville performers became recording artists.
Between 1918 and 1923, Phil Madison recorded with the RCA Victor Company in New York and became an important performer of the first international calypso wave. "Very early in the 20th century, New York became a centre for putting calypso on record; in fact, calypso was recorded in New York two years before it was recorded in Trinidad," wrote Donald R. Hill, an important researcher of calypso.
Madison's 1923 Caroni Swamp is one of his celebrated recordings. It was re-released in Rounder Records' 1989 collection, Calypso Pioneers, 1912-1937. The other Guyanese recording in this collection is the 1934 recording of Bill Rogers' West Indian Weed Woman.
Madison was part of an important generation of Caribbean musicians who facilitated the circulation of musical ideas in the Caribbean and in the diaspora, especially in New York. Among his contemporaries were The Tipical Orchestra of Trinidad (Lovey's Band) and the pianist Lionel Belasco, who accompanied Madison on many of his recordings with Victor. Others contemporaries included Julian Whiterose, Sam Manning, Wilmoth Houdini, Gerald Clarke, and Bill Rogers.
Madison and his contemporaries were responsible for many of the songs that are today shared as national songs in many Caribbean counties. These include Caroni Swamp, Sly Mongoose, Caroline, Mango Vert, and West Indian Weed Woman.
The music these artists created revealed a synthesis among music styles from Jamaica, the Francophone Caribbean, the Anglophone Caribbean, and Venezuela. These musical creations were first recorded on piano rolls and later on records produced by companies such as RCA Victor and Decca.
At the turn of the 20th century, British Guiana was a stratified society. The entertainment of urban working people and rural folks was looked down upon and considered inferior by the ruling classes. In this repressive context, the performing arts became the vehicles of resistance. Vaudeville was appropriated and modified as a vehicle to tell alternate stories and offer alternative interpretations to public affairs.
In Guyana, the vaudeville tradition continued through the 1950s and gave us Sam Chase. It proved to be such an effective vehicle that it was used to promote nutrition.
Through the work of Phil Madison and other impresarios, Guyanese and Caribbean entertainers traversed the Caribbean and the world bringing music and nurturing the possibilities of the Caribbean family.
Should you have further information about or photographs of Phil Madison, please contact me at cambridg@ohio.edu
Sources
Rounder Records (1989) Calypso Pioneers, 1912-1937 (Rounder CD 1039).
Rounder Records (1993) Calypso Calaloo: Early Carnival Music in Trinidad (Rounder CD 1105)
Rounder Records (1999) The Creole Music of Lionel Belasco: Goodnight Ladies and Gents (Rounder CD 1138)
The Roaring Lion Calypso from France to Trinidad: 800 Years of History (p77)
Gordon Rohlehr Calypso ad Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad (Port of Spain, Trinidad, 1990. p101-102)