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Chalkdust’s Carifesta winning calypso: Chain of Strength

RAY FUNK AND RAY ALLEN CARIFESTA is back! Following a six-year hiatus, the ten-day celebration of Caribbean arts and culture is currently scheduled for August 22-31 in Barbados. With participants from more than a dozen islands, this year’s gathering will headline our own David Rudder. But history reminds us that Rudder will not be the first Trini calypsonian to make a splash at Carifesta. Back in 1976, the Mighty Chalkdust won the second Carifesta song contest with a calypso titled Chain of Strength. Fresh off his first calypso monarch crown with No Smut for Me and Ah Put on Meh Guns Again, Chalkdust was chosen by the minister of culture to represent Trinidad at the 1976 Carifesta celebration held in Kingston, Jamaica. As he recalled in a recent interview, the festival presented an opportunity to show Jamaicans that the Trinidad calypso could address serious issues such as Caribbean unity. “I realised that I must sing something that the Jamaicans could understand. So I began to compose a song in Trinidad, and I finished it after I arrived in Jamaica for the festival.” He won the contest with a bomb calypso that he performed for the first time on the final night of the song competition. His new calypso, titled Chain of Strength, reflected a Carifesta wide perspective: “I based the song on is Jamaica’s national motto, ‘Out of many, one people.’ I wanted to show that all the Caribbean islands were a conglomeration of nations with African roots and a shared common history. I also wanted to stress our collective contributions that were on display at Carifesta. In music there was Trinidadian calypso and steel band (the Desperadoes Steel Orchestra performed in the opening ceremony), Jamaican reggae, Barbadian spooge, and Mexican rumba.” During the buildup to the finals, Chalkdust performed his 1972 calypso We is We, reworking the lyrics to go beyond a Trinidad nationalist perspective to assert “It is in the Caribbean you will find your identity.” Initially, the Trinidad government asked him to perform solo with his acoustic guitar. But Chalkdust refused, asserting that he needed a full band to showcase the sophisticated calypso style for his Jamaican audiences. The minister of culture eventually relented, sending over the Trinidad Police Band to accompany him with musical arrangements by Art DeCoteau. The other participants in the song contest final represented Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, and Surinam. Before a standing-room-only crowd, Chalkdust received rounds of applause for his calypso performance. Following the competition, the evening’s special guest, reggae star Jimmy Cliff, took the stage. Cliff had reached international stardom after appearing in the 1972 film The Harder They Come. Chalkdust won two gold medals that night – one for the best song, and one for and best overall presentation. The Jamaica Gleaner reporter for the evening was so impressed with his performance that after the results were announced he surmised “Probably the producers should have asked Chalkdust to do his song (again) once it was declared the winner so everyone could have joined in a non-partisan manner.” Chalkdust recalls, “Afterwards the Jamaican prime minister Michael Manley congratulated me and gave me an award. He was very pleased that our prime minister Eric Williams had sent such a large group to the festival. Evidently, he laughed when Williams had told him that if he wanted to cut down on violence in Jamaica he needed to bring in more calypso and pan! And when I got back to Trinidad, Eric Williams himself awarded me the Hummingbird Medal for my cultural contributions to the nation.” Chalkdust’s early success at Carifesta was not forgotten as he continued to perform and to lecture through the Caribbean and the world. In a 2021 interview, he stated that Carifesta victory was a high point in his life, “singing to 20,000 people in Jamaica alongside Jimmy Cliff and receiving a standing ovation in 1976.” Throughout his career he would continue to promote national and regional unity and to celebrate the strengths of shared Caribbean culture, most notably in his 2004 calypso, One Caribbean. Chain of Strength was never issued on any of Chalkdust’s dozens of commercial recordings and seemed lost. But recently the Associated Press Archives posted a short online video featuring footage from the 1976 Carifesta under the innocuous title “CARIFESTA ‘76 (REEL 2 ONLY)”: Twelve minutes into video parade floats appear and suddenly you can hear and then see Chalkdust perform on that competition stage nearly 50 years ago. Thanks to the AP video and the lyrics printed below, the Jamaican reporter’s wish for a Chain of Strength reprise has finally been granted. With Chalkdust’s calypso as inspiration, we can look forward to Carifesta ’25 in Barbados continuing to signal Caribbean unity and Caribbean strength. The post Chalkdust’s Carifesta winning calypso: Chain of Strength appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.