The Calypso
& Road March Contest is usually an all night affair, sprinkled with rain,
fueled by great music. This year with over 100 songs in competition, the organizing
committee booked three special pre-selection nights. Those were open to the public and the
radio stations were allowed to air the live, raw performances. Then Friday night the
finals, at Joe Laveist Sport Park in San Nicolas featured the finalists,
picked by a professional panel of judges. The winner, not surprisingly, was Aruba
Calypso & Road March King - he’s held those two titles almost
uninterruptedly since 1984, Claudius Philips.
We got to hear his Calypso, and his Road March early in the evening, which is an extraordinary
treat. Being the winner entitles him to sing last, thus for the last decade and a half
we’ve been listening to him at SEVEN a.m. with our eyes half shut, after a long night
of second-best songs. Last year the unthinkable happened. Rusty, a smooth
performer from San Nicolas who snatched the Calypso King crown away, for just once,
dethroned Claudy.
I usually listen to
Claudy’s compositions carefully as he cleverly manages in rhyme and music to tell
this island’s political/social
story, still remaining his irresistibly charming self. This year was no exception.
"Wait One Minute,” is his winning
offering. In the first couplet he recounts the national phone company’s slow-down and
the
manifestation that ensued on Thanksgiving Day. In the wake of that manifestation, a
high-ranking Police Officer was suspended, because while off-duty he sided with the
protestors. Claudy gleefully reports Setar’s protestations were in vain as the cell
and phone service on the island remains unchanged and eternally inadequate. In his second
couplet he deal the government’s plan for National Heath Care an ironic blow and
condemns its strategy of mortgaging public-held real-estate to raise funds. Even the
graveyards, he sings, are hypothecated! Then he continues to laugh at the new Police cars
whose lease hasn’t been paid and are therefore parked in the dealer’s garage. He
cynically points out that during the funeral of the late Minister of Justice the cortege
visited the Party-House yet left out the more-remote town of San Nicolas, where most of
his voters live. The third couplet pokes fun as the jewelers on the old Nassaustraat he
cheerfully renames Bombay street. He mocks Aruba as island of 1000 jewelry stores and
reprimand the Chinese community for hiring strictly family members and not marrying into
the community at large. His ire in the forth couplet is aimed at relationships and how
marriages are falling apart on the island. Women accuse men, men accuse women, yet Claudy
has his take on the sex game, and the triangles it produces, without being vulgar. His
fifth last minute addition points at the judges and the organizers of the Calypso contest
who usually scrutinize his performance to establish whether his song was too long, too
short, whatever. If you don’t want me to sing, say so, he hoots, don’t just look
for excuses to disqualify me.
His fans that love
his wit and his bite received the Calypso very well. The winning Road March
he composed, "Frega riba dje" (Rub
on It), is a catchy tune and if you stick around the island for a while you will surely
hear it played endlessly.
