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Sixty-nine year old Calypso Rose is the queen of Calypso music. She was born in Tobago and her legacy looms large throughout the Caribbean. Earlier this year, anchor Marco Werman had the chance to meet her in her adopted home of Jamaica, New York.
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MARCO WERMAN: All across the United States there are celebrities. Not the kind of people who regularly grace Hollywood gossip shows or people magazine. These are people who are celebrities in their home companies. But move to relative amenity and the hope of a better life here in America. For today’s Global Hit I would like to introduce you to such a person. She lives in New York City and is a musical legend in her native Trinidad and Tobago. Along with Harry Belafonte she introduced Calypso to listeners far beyond the Caribbean. I have the chance to meet McArtha Sandy Lewis earlier this year. I know not exactly a household name but her stage name should ring a bell.
CALYPSO ROSE: I am McArtha Linda Sandy Lewis otherwise known as Calypso Rose.
WERMAN: And McArtha, I understand was a name that was given to you because somebody in your family must have admired Douglas Macarthur the famous American general.
CALYPSO: My mother.
WERMAN: What did she like about him?
ROSE: In the late 30′s and early 40′s, I was born in 1940. When the war was going on it appears that General Macarthur they used to be dropping leaflets in Tobago. I was born in Tobago. About what was going on in the war. And at night the planes would come and drop the leaflets and drop food and rice and all different things so she loved that. So she says this baby I’m carrying if it’s a boy I’m going to call him Macarthur. And if it’s a girl I’m going to call her McArtha. M-C-A-R-T-H-A. And there I came. So that’s how come I got the name McArtha. [LAUGH]
WERMAN: So Americans were dropping rice and food and leaflets during Trinidad and Tobago during the war. Was that to win the hearts and minds of the Trinidadians?
ROSE: Of the Caribbean people [LAUGH] yes.
WERMAN: So tell me where the name Calypso Rose came from.
ROSE: It was given to me by a tent manager. When I see a tent manager in Trinidad and Tobago they have what you call the Calypso tent. The Calypso tent where I put kind of a season, a lot of Calyposians go and do their new compositions. And the two tent managers they say, “Now we gonna change your name. And we go call you from today Calypso Rose.” Calypso is identifying the island of Trinidad and Tobago and Rose is the mother of all flowers.
WERMAN: A lot of entertainers think long and hard about picking a stage name. You were given a stage name were you happy with it?
ROSE: Oh yes, I was happy, indeed I was happy.
WERMAN: I think a lot of Americans think about Calypso and they think steel pan and they think parties. But Calypso has a very strong social, kind of observational tradition.
ROSE: It has been. Years ago before I start singing “you can buy news people” so the Calypsonians they used to create and write Calypso so we could hear. And say, “Oh, like the envision [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Pharaoh when the world was greener and all this thing with this be writing Calypso and then we used to know what was going on in the other world. But now that things have changed immensely that the [SOUNDS LIKE] media for the public.
WERMAN: Why not? What changed?
ROSE: They are not writing anything more to make the public aware consciously of what is happening. In politically, economically, or Calypso to make you laugh like that. Look, I have written a lot and lot of calypso’s and one of the calypso’s I’ve been questioned lately, “A Man Is a Man”. Why did you write that calypso “A Man Is a Man”? 2 girls in an argument, an argument on the pavement, 2 little girls were in an argument, the argument on the pavement. They been arguing about a man. Whatever will it be like when they become a woman. So I join the conversation, they asked me to give them my opinion, so I tell them look, a man is a man. The man is [SOUNDS LIKE] faced like a frying pan. Oh be a man oh man a cool man. Any man, could give you satisfaction.” Now this is something that I have created and by bringing it to reality people are saying, “Oh you know that is true.” Women are speaking true of man, so why must you pick and choose a man, when a man is a man? So I said there’s no distinction. Whether the man be one foot or one hand he could still make you happy. [LAUGH]
WERMAN: That’s a very modern feminist statement.
ROSE: Thank you very much. Today Calypso tend to have lost all of those flavors. The people still want Calypso and that is what I intend to give them ’till I die. Give them Calypso. “[FOREIGN LYRICS IN CALYPSO SONG]”
WERMAN: That is Caribbean legend Calypso Rose, I spoke with her in her apartment in Jamaica, New York where she’s lived for the past 26 years.
ROSE: “When Calypso’s rose was small, mommy, mommy used to make me [INAUDIBLE] says before you get my ring she will choose the man for me. Take the women out because every man in the hospital she said, she can’t [INAUDIBLE] where I tell she a man is a man…”
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