Performing the history: contesting historical narratives in Trinidad and Tobago.

Trotman, David V.

Resume. Cet article examine la popularisation des idees historiques et la promotion de la conscience et de l'imagination historiques dans le Trinidad post-independant. Il focalise sur la maniere avec laquelle une vision particuliere du passe--celle du recit nationaliste creole--fut construite et popularisee par le mouvement nationaliste. Il examine ensuite l'emergence, la dissemination et la popularisation d'un recit afro-centrique contestataire dans la periode d'independance. L'accent est mis moins sur le contenu du recit que sur la methode de sa dissemination. L'argument developpe est que ces recits furent fondes uniquement sur l'ecrit pour leur transmission et ne pouvaient concurrencer ceux vehicules par l'oral. L'article focalise par consequent sur l'utilisation de la tradition du calypso local dans la popularisation du recit historique.

Abstract. This article examines the popularization of historical ideas and the cultivation of an historical consciousness and imagination in post-independence Trinidad. It focuses on the way in which a particular version of the past--the Creole nationalist narrative--was constructed and popularized by a nationalist movement. It then examines the emergence, dissemination, and popularization of a contesting Afro-centric narrative in the post-independence period. The emphasis is less on the content of the narrative than on the method of dissemination. It argues that those narratives that were dependent only on the scribal method for transmission could not compete with those that utilized the oral mode. The article therefore focuses on the use of the local calypso tradition in the popularizing of historical narratives.

In the contemporary Caribbean, the writing of the national historical script is an area of intense contestation. History in the region seems to act as both midwife and abortionist. The majority of the region's populations, composed largely of displaced or dislocated ethnic groups cut off from ancestral roots, often feel themselves--or are made to feel--history less orphans denied a past (Price 1985). This is so particularly for the descendants of enslaved Africans and, in the case of Trinidad and Tobago, those whose forebears came as indentured workers from India. Their presence in recorded national scripts invariably begins with their involuntary or voluntary arrival in the region. This aborts their connection to older civilizations, excludes them from connections to the indigenous, and negates their role as major participants in the momentous birth of the modern world. The contemporary contestations over national history in the twin island state have often derived from the desire to stitch extra-regional histories into the fabric of the emerging national narratives of that heterogeneous society.

The historian Bridget Brereton has argued that in Trinidad and Tobago a number of narratives are competing for primacy as the national historical narrative. First, there is the old colonialist tradition with two branches. On the one hand there is a British imperial story of the usual British exploits and aggrandizement with an emphasis on its civilizing mission. The other branch is the French Creole narrative that speaks of hard-working French settlers who rescued a moribund Spanish colony from neglect and created a benevolent and prosperous slave-based society and who, despite marginalization and persecution by succeeding Anglo administrations, made sterling civilizing contributions to the creation of the nation. These foundational colonialist narratives were later challenged by the emergence of other narratives (Brereton 2007). The nationalist movement that brought political independence in 1962 also offered a script, a Creole nationalist narrative, penned by Eric Williams, its historian leader, which justified its right to rule and offered a vision of the society it sought to create.

This article examines the popularization of historical ideas and the cultivation of an historical consciousness and imagination in post-independence Trinidad. It focuses on the way in which a particular version of the past, the Creole nationalist narrative, was constructed and popularized by a nationalist movement. It then examines the emergence, dissemination, and popularization of a contesting Afro-centric narrative in the post-independence period. The emphasis is less on the content of the narrative than on the method of dissemination, arguing that those narratives dependent on only the scribal for transmission could not compete with those that utilized the oral mode. The article therefore focuses on the use of the local calypso tradition in the popularizing of historical narratives.

Establishing the Creole Nationalist Narrative

During the colonial period the historical consciousness and imagination in Trinidad and Tobago was influenced by the system of formal education, by the general informal public education provided by all forms of media including the cinema, political propagandizing, and the calypso. Colonial censorship of the cinema and the proliferation and popularity of particular comic books and comic strip characters and storylines provided a kind of "informal education" that celebrated colonialism and popularized notions of dependency, subservience, and inferiority. The content (and the pedagogy) of formal education was no different. The historical vision presented in the key school texts of the colonial era was characterized by its celebration of imperial grandeur at the expense of the colonized and the colonials (Campbell 1996, 1997). Even officials in the Colonial Office in the 1940s had begun taking note of local reaction to textbook content "which offend the natural sensitiveness of colonial populations" (National Archives 1942-43). The impact of this education perplexed the novelist V. S. Naipaul, who found a strange sense of historical time in Trinidad. He was also intriguingly insightful enough to comment that only in the calypso does the Trinidadian touch reality (Naipaul 1962, 29, 43).

The descriptions and autobiographical insights provided by C.L.R. James in Beyond the Boundary (1963) and by Eric Williams in Inward Hunger (1969) attest to this orientation and to their struggles to develop an anti-colonial vision in response to the dominant pro-imperial thrust of their education. There were some pre-independence attempts to change this orientation in school texts, but not without some opposition that continued in the early years of a nationalist government in power and of independence. (1) The calypsonians who received their formal schooling in the pre-independence period would have had their understanding of poetic styles as well as their historical visions informed by this school system, and many of the calypsos of the colonial period reflect the impact of this education (Rohlehr 1975).

Many voices articulated positions counter to the dominant colonialist narratives of either the Anglo or the French Creole versions. One only has to read, for example, the pages of The Beacon, The People, or any of the numerous publications and broadsheets circulating especially during the tumultuous 1930s to get a sense of the way in which anti-colonial agitation was being informed by a sense of history. But Eric Williams, and to a lesser extent C. L. R. James, dominated the public discourses of the post World War II period. The public education campaigns of James and Williams responded to the need for an anti-colonial and anti-imperial historical vision, and all of their well-attended public talks were firmly grounded in and informed by their particular brands of historical analysis and directed to their particular political projects. Although stemming from a similar anti-colonial passion their differing orientations were also quite obvious: James the self-avowed Marxist with a tendency to argue for a popular participatory democracy (as evidenced by the title of his popular lecture series and pamphlet, Every Cook Can Govern), and the liberal Williams with a tendency in both theory and practice to weigh in on the side of a democracy guided by a philosopher-king.

C. L. R. James preceded Eric Williams into the public arena, and his major contribution to Caribbean historiography, namely his study of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins (1963 [1938]), was published before Capitalism and Slavery (1966 [1944]), the magnum opus by Eric Williams. But in Trinidad it never received the kind of popular acclaim nor his ideas the kind of popular circulation accorded to Capitalism and Slavery. James left Trinidad in 1932 and lived abroad for 25 years. On his return in 1958 his association with the People's National Movement (PNM), the ruling party founded by Williams, and his editorship of the party's newspaper gave him some credibility and a platform with access to a large cross-section of the populace that lasted until his expulsion from the PNM in 1960 (James 1962; Williams 1969, 267).

Only after his break with the ruling party did James's ideas become the mantra of a select group of intellectuals and activists usually associated with left-wing politics. James himself was forced to leave Trinidad for residence in England and the United States to continue what Williams, with the acid derision of the political victor, had described as "the absurdities of world revolution." After his entry into oppositional politics, which came with government efforts to stigmatize him as a communist rabble-rouser, James's name and ideas became far more popular, especially among those who were critiquing the neo-colonial misdirection of the post-independence state. His house arrest in 1965 and his mention in the Mbanefo Report made him into a martyr in some circles and increased his revolutionary mystique (Mbanefo 1965, 9). The title and idea of his masterpiece, The Black Jacobins, if not its substantive content, became more commonplace and part of the intellectual iconography of the turbulent 1970s. The book may not have been widely circulated and therefore hardly likely widely read, but the idea and imagery of a successful slave revolt fired the imagination of a generation in search of revolutionary heroes and concerned with the rewriting of history.

The struggle in Haiti had less resonance for the Anglo-biased colonial population than the themes that dominate Williams's written work and public utterances. They include but are not restricted to some of the central arguments of Capitalism and Slavery (1966 [1944]): namely that the role played by the trade in enslaved Africans and the exploitation of their labour in the Americas was instrumental in the development of capitalism, and that the emancipation of Africans from enslavement in the Caribbean stemmed not from solely humanitarian impulses but from the working out of changing economic and political fortunes of a rising class in the metropole. The notion of a colony discarded after contributing to the wealth of an ungrateful metropole becomes an important plank in the Creole nationalist argument for independence (Palmer 2006). The agency of the enslaved in their emancipation, save in Haiti, is seen to be contributory, but only in a secondary way, and could have been a decisive factor if it had not been superseded by legislated emancipation from above (Boodhoo 2002, 161; Williams 1970). (2) Race is downplayed and a colour-blind colonialism emphasized in this vision of history.

Even as an active head of state Williams continued to write historical texts and to lecture from the public podium on historical topics. He clearly brought his understanding of the past to his analysis of the society and his prescriptions for change. It could not have been otherwise. He had spent all of his formal education and formative years as an active historian and may have had a productive academic career but for the confluence of circumstances. He was quite clear that "historians neither make nor guide history. Their share in such is usually so small as to be almost negligible. But if they do not learn something from history, their activities would then be cultural decoration, or a pleasant pastime, equally useless in these troubled times" (Williams 1966 [1944], 212). And what he learned as historian he sought to apply as politician. Despite the intense pressures as political head of state he continued to pursue his intellectual interests not only to "conquer the inward hunger" and "in silent protest against the bastardization of so-called West Indian intellectualism" but because there were also some tasks that he claimed only he could have done. Writing a history of Trinidad and Tobago for independence in 1962 was one such task (Williams 1969, 327). In Williams's words, "Impending Independence posed a challenge--should I allow the country to achieve its Independence without a history of its own? If there was to be one, and one quickly, I alone could write it."

History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago (1962) must then be considered as Williams's statement of his understanding of the historical development of the society that he wanted them to have as their gift for independence. It is presented with numerous caveats to pre-empt criticisms, and he declared that its aim "was not literary perfection or conformity with scholastic canons." He abdicated scholarly responsibility for analysis by claiming to allow "the documents to speak for themselves." Although he claimed to have drawn extensively on his knowledge of Caribbean history as a whole in order to put the history of Trinidad in an international perspective, he declared that the book "is not conceived as a work of scholarship." The inveterate scholar whose life had been committed to scholarship curiously claimed that the aim of this "manifesto of a subjugated people" was to provide the people of Trinidad with a national history to accompany the other iconic symbols of nationhood--an anthem, a coat of arms, a flag, national flower and bird. The exigencies of political life had made scholarship become cultural decoration and sacrificed to the needs of political sentiment.

My concern here is not a methodological critique of the political manifesto masquerading as national history (Laurence 1963; Maingot 1963; Brereton and Marshall 1999). In his defense it can be said that the book was written too hurriedly and by an active head of state with limitations of time. But some of its flaws appear to be deliberate omissions that reflect limitations of perspective rather than limitations of time. His discussion of slavery in Trinidad is a top-down description of the running of the slave colony in which the enslaved are notoriously silent, without agency, and reduced to a parade of numbers. Trinidad never had the reputation of most of the other colonies for intense slave resistance and revolts, but not even the few attempts in Trinidad or the existence of persistent marronage caught his attention enough to be reported in his "declaration of independence" (Williams 1962, 284). (3) This flaw--the negation of subaltern agency--is a crucial characteristic of the Creole nationalist narrative.

The book's strength is in its reporting of the political and constitutional history of Trinidad. It is at its best when it describes the workings of a colonial political system and in particular the failings of the Crown Colony system. This is Williams at his most persuasive when he talks about what was done to the colonized and provides a catalogue of sins occasioned by the enemy he identified as colonialism. But not much attention is paid to the responses of the colonized during slavery and its aftermath as they made their own history. This, of course, is understandable only from a historian who could claim that history was in the past made for the passive people of Trinidad and Tobago but that with Independence for the first time they would become active and make their own history. His account of the struggle for self-government and the movement for social and political change suggests a scenario in which the colony and its citizens awaited the day of their deliverance in the coming of Eric Williams and the formation of the PNM. It is superb political advocacy and polemic but faulty scholarship excusable only in a book "not conceived as a work of scholarship."

The text is important not only because of what it presented to the public but also because of the historical vision and political attitude it sought to inculcate and encourage. It was popular and attained almost biblical, if not iconic, status in some circles. It would slowly find its way into the school curriculum whether as official text or brought there by zealous teachers. Political manifesto or not, it was presented with the authority of a world-renowned historian. Perhaps for the first time the growing reading public was presented with a historical text that was intellectually and economically accessible and which provided the "black and white" for those ideas that had been uttered on public platforms by Williams since 1944. It was released to a public that had historically hungered for education and book knowledge--an attitude that the PNM had benefited from and, to their eternal credit, at least rhetorically encouraged, notwithstanding the deficiencies of a system that focused on form rather than function. Williams's speech to schoolchildren at Independence is still remembered fondly as a formative moment by the generation who attended the rally as well as by their parents (Williams and Sutton 1981, 328). (4) History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago was an integral part of that program of public education and preparation for independence and must be read as the iconic text of the Creole nationalist narrative.

In writing this seminal text, the politician used his credentials as a historian to give credibility to an imagined made-to-order past in order to call his new nation into being. It was history in support of the futuristic project of nation building. In such a vision, past internal enemies were minimized and internal class conflict and confrontation took second place to a focus on a presumed common external enemy. Any internal conflict was seen retroactively as a blow against colonialism and not a response to internal contradictions. Any event or person who disrupted this template was omitted from consideration in this history. Colonialism made no distinction in its grinding subjugation of all colonials: "[A]ll have messed out of the same pot, all are victims of the same subordination, all have been tarred with the same brush of political inferiority" (Williams 1962, 280). For Williams, a common past of colonial subjugation was the justification for a common project of building a nation founded on equality.

Williams's public utterances always emphasized a homogenizing creolization created by colonialism despite whatever private racial demons and stereotypes plagued him personally, as have been alluded to by later commentators. His appeal to "Hold up your heads high, all of you, the disinherited and disposed, brought here in the lowest stages of degradation to work on a sugar plantation or a cocoa estate for massa" and his clarifying acknowledgement that "not all Massas were white, nor were all whites Massas. Massa is the symbol of a bygone age" were aimed at making room for all on the nationalist bandwagon. He aimed to speak to all and for all, but he was speaking to a society already deeply divided and the different sections of the colonial society received him differently. For those of African origin his speeches had comforting resonance as coming from the liberator of the race; his presence, his controlled anger, his language, his style of delivery said that he was of them and spoke to and for them. For whites there was considerable concern and fear, but once he was in power his cautious economic and social policies calmed their anxieties until the radical outbursts of the February uprising. For East Indians, the other majority group in the society, Williams's historical lessons and their contemporary implications were received with ambivalence and apprehension. His numerous references to the commonalizing juggernaut of colonialism and the parallels between slavery and indentureship were never effective enough to dismantle or undermine the feelings of distinctiveness created by history and socio-cultural institutions. Nor could they destroy the walls of separation (the obvious breach by the expanding "dougla" (5) population notwithstanding) that community leaders created, maintained, and manipulated for a variety of reasons.

Williams as an academic spoke of the common Creoles created by history, but this concept was received negatively by the vast majority of East Indians who did not see themselves as Creoles but in fact reserved the word "creole" for peoples of African origin (Ryan 1999, 26; Munasinghe 2001a; Puri 2004). Like Naipaul's character in The Mimic Men, they understood that "The descendant of the slave owner could soothe the descendant of the slave with a private patois. I was the late intruder, the picturesque Asiatic, linked to neither" and feared that in the transfer of power from the colonial era "it was the intruders, those who stood between the mutual and complete comprehension of master and slave, who were to suffer" (Naipaul 1969, 78, 214).

Williams maintained this lofty, idealistic appeal to multi-racial and multi-ethnic nationalism in his public utterances. Except for one notable occasion when, in response to his electoral defeat in the West Indian federal elections of 1958, he delivered the infamous post-election speech that has been interpreted as degenerating to the racial paranoia that is the subtext of all political discourse in Trinidad. He labelled as "recalcitrant minorities" all those who had rejected him electorally and accused them of rejecting the high road of national development. This opened up the way for his remarks to be interpreted as a call to the "tribe." The speech infected race relations and its repercussions were felt at the tension-filled general elections of 1961 when the society tethered on the brink of racial strife (Ryan 1972, 190).

Those calypsonians still resolutely loyal to their "tribe" and in particular Williams's mouthpiece, the Mighty Sparrow, could not resist the opportunity to defend "the doctor" and in the process to depict the Creole nationalist movement as an Afro-creole movement. Typical of this was Sparrow's injunction in 1959 to those who opposed Williams "to leave the damn doctor" and in which the calypsonian states unequivocally that "soon in the West Indies /is please Mister Nigger please." It is small wonder then that the Indo-Trinidadian is virtually written out of, marginalized in, or at best silenced in the calypso narratives celebrating nationalism in the early years of the independence era (Trotman 1989). Creole nationalism was rendered as Afro-creole nationalism by some calypsonians. Williams's famous Massa Day Done speech of 1961 could be read in part as an attempt to prevent the Creole nationalist train from being hijacked by the "recalcitrant minorities" among the Afro-creoles on the eve of independence (Williams and Sutton 1981). (6)

But Williams remained committed to his ideal of a Creole society created by immigrants. Moreover, in the society built on immigration, whether forced or voluntary, the future lay in foregoing links to the immigrant antecedents, however obvious the evidence of their influence on the society, as he would later acknowledge (Williams 1965, 116). (7) Therefore there had to be a history in which some aspects of the past were denied in order for the future to be born. For the new society to be born and survive the midwife historian had to decisively cut its umbilical cord(s). Williams feared that ancestral nations would attempt to interfere in local politics on behalf of their respective diasporas. Hence his insistence, in that oft-quoted aphorism, that there could be no other Mother but Mother Trinidad. Perhaps it was a good political prescription but it would prove to be bad child psychology as the children of Mother Trinidad saw themselves as adoptees and sought their ethno-biological parents in the 1970s and 1980s. For while that may have satisfied his inward hunger and palliated some segments of the population, especially those looking for historical absolution, it did not satisfy the hunger and thirst of "the generation of the seventies." They shouted the angry cries of their own hunger, and their calypsos articulated a different understanding of their history.

Williams's stewardship of the infrastructure for encouraging and facilitating historical research and writing in the society may have also contributed to his domination of the discourse. There is no doubt that the nationalist movement, with Williams as its chief architect, expanded the educational franchise during its tenure. It engaged, at various times and with some measure of success, in expansive and expensive school-building programs. In some instances there were attempts to provide libraries in some schools, although their staffing and book allocations left much to be desired. In the community-centre building program there was also an effort to allocate a dedicated space for a library and sometimes books. Williams donated books to the George Street Community Centre in his parliamentary constituency of Port-of-Spain South. There is no indication that he used his considerable moral authority with his parliamentary colleagues to encourage them to follow his example or that they were moved to do so on their own. More importantly, there was no specific program for the development of a community based and oriented library service linked to the community centres, although a report on adult education in community centres in 1967 at least raised the issue (see Government of Trinidad and Tobago 1967, 21, 32). Moreover, the general library services (both the public and the privately donated Carnegie Library) went into a spiral of deterioration throughout the first tenure of the PNM administration.

But perhaps even more significant was the treatment of the National Archives. It was originally housed in a room in the basement of the Prime Minister's Office at Whitehall and supervised by the extremely knowledgeable but inadequately provisioned archivist, Enos Sewlaal. But it was a regional disgrace and an indictment on an historian who had previously complained about colonial contempt for history and historical documents and boasted of his contribution to building colonial nationalism on the back of, and despite, imperialist vandalism (Williams 1969, 95). It was a most curious situation that led to all kinds of rumours and negative speculations about the motivations or causes of what could only be charitably described as contempt. The fact that it was in the basement of his office, and that apart from him it was seemingly only accessible by foreign scholars, led some local researchers to believe that the archives were his private domain and Sewlaal his personal researcher. Even C. L. R. James subscribed to the view that Williams was "letting the Trinidad archives rot away in order that his own interpretation of West Indian history and politics should prevail" (Munro and Sander 1972, 37).

The pressures of office and the competing and urgent financial demands of a developing nation may well be used to excuse this painful neglect. He employed a similar argument to justify not building a new airport. But this neglect and parsimony encouraged a cavalier attitude to the nation's archival patrimony that continued long after the archives had been placed in a new location and Williams had left the stage (Green 2002). Furthermore, it facilitated and encouraged the belief that the "father of the nation," as he would later be called, had written the last word on the nation's past. Moreover, it restricted and made difficult, but not impossible, the emergence of a multiplicity of voices offering differing interpretations based on the locally available "official" documentary sources to challenge the orthodoxy of the Williams-authored Creole nationalist vision.

The Challenge to the Creole Nationalist Narrative

The challenge to the Creole nationalist narrative came to the fore with the challenge to the Williams-led PNM administration in the late 1960s and early 1970s and with the movement for social change labelled the Black Power movement, spearheaded by the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC). (8) The popular historical imagination in this post-independence period was influenced by the historical vision articulated and disseminated in the public education campaigns associated with this attack on the PNM as managers of a neo-colonial nation. The movement of the Seventies, to give a more encompassing label for the times, raised not only serious questions about the nature of the independent state and the process of decolonization but also fundamental questions about the historical construction of the society and its impact on values, attitudes, and institutions. It emphasized in particular the neglect of Africa in the consciousness of the Afro-Trinidadian population. These critiques were drawn from a combination of influences including the University of the West Indies-based New World Group and its intensely Caribbean-focused theories, C. L. R. James and his Marxist and pan-Africanist visions, the concurrent renaissance in Black American studies, and the new currents in African studies.

This eclectic mix of ideas is reflected in the books, monographs, and pamphlets that were popular at the time, some of which received almost biblical status. Works by Franz Fanon, the Martinique-born psychiatrist and a major theorist associated with the Algerian Revolution, received cult status together with a variety of interpretations of Marx, Lenin, and Mao. The writings of the U.S. Black Panther Party, the publications of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee led by the Trinidad-born Stokely Carmichael, and other writings drawing on the Black American experience also shaped the discourses of activists in Trinidad. In addition the writings of the Guyanese-born academic, Walter Rodney (in particular his pamphlet, Groundings with My Brothers), provided popularized interpretations of African history and its links with the Caribbean.

These sources were used to critique the Creole nationalist narrative and became part of the public debate over issues of the meaning of independence and decolonization. They appeared in mainstream newspaper editorials, articles, and letters to the editors, sermons from various pulpits, in the columns of the numerous anti-establishment newspapers, pamphlets, and other publications, and increasingly common currency in street corner debates. The popularity and influence of these writings perturbed the administration. Trinidad experienced the ironical situation of an administration headed by an internationally renowned scholar accused of banning the importation of some books on the spurious grounds of their being subversive literature. Moreover, the protestors accused the police of seizing and destroying legitimate social science literature. Whether Williams himself instigated this book censorship is not clear, but certainly he did not actively discourage or show disapproval of the practice and his silence was interpreted as consent (Ryan 1972, 445; Mbanefo 1965, 17).

Most disturbing for the administration and its supporters was that these ideas were debated at Woodford Square, a local equivalent of London's Hyde Park. The PNM had dubbed it the University of Woodford Square, and it was the venue for their public education campaign. The authorities curtailed popular debate by its closure of Woodford Square and other restrictions on public assembly. The restrictions on public assembly were part of the security measures in response to the riots and mutiny associated with 1970. The irony of the situation and its echoes of the censorship of the colonial era were not lost on the general public or on calypsonians. It was the climate created by the rumours of censorship and its impact on Williams's reputation that is important.

A significant rise in the public activity of the Trinidad-based St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) contributed to the gradual diminution of Williams in the popular esteem as the sole authority on the history of the society and its only public intellectual. Although the regional university had been operating at the Mona campus since 1945, the teaching of history at St. Augustine had started only in 1963. The bulk of the debate over Williams's scholarship had occurred in the 1950s, and many of the university-based comments had come from the Mona campus in Jamaica. Up to that point the Faculty of Arts on the university campus at St. Augustine had produced few outstanding public intellectuals, and their impact on public discourse could charitably be assessed as minimal. Williams himself had delivered a stinging attack on the reputation of the university, an institution whose structure he had criticized from its very inception (Williams 1963, 1968). Few historians at St. Augustine emerged publicly to challenge Williams's dominant position as the sole source of historical enlightenment; very rarely did any of them appear on the pages of the newspapers either to challenge Williams or to offer insights into other aspects of the historical development of the society that stirred the public imagination. Between his famous debate with Dom Basil Matthews in 1954 about Aristotle and slavery until the late 1960s, Williams's position as premier popular historian remained virtually unchallenged (Boodhoo 2002, 106).

When the challenge to Williams came, it was not from the historians attacking his historical method or his vision (save Elsa Goveia's trenchant review [1964] of his British Historians and the West Indies) but other social scientists concerned more with his prescriptions for social change and decolonization and his handling of the contemporary society (Goveia 1964, 48). Since many of these critics had more or less accepted large portions of the Williams view of history (with one striking and significant exception being Gordon Rohlehr), Williams's domination of the historical imagination remained fairly intact (Rohlehr 1974). But these critics and their increasing public exposure and commentaries were crucial in undermining the reputation of Williams, subverting his jealously guarded position of philosopher-king, and providing alternative understandings and policies for the public debate.

The collaboration of the historian James Millette and the economist Lloyd Best in articulating the ideas of the UWI New World group made a crucial intervention in public debate (Rohlehr 1995). Yet Millette's historical treatise on Crown Colony government never got wide public circulation or Millette public recognition as an historian (Millette 1970). Best later resigned from the university and committed himself to the life of a political activist, although without any electoral success. The Tapia House Movement that he directed exposed the Trinidad public to a range of new ideas articulated by some of the best young minds in the society. His continued writings as a public intellectual, although often criticized as being accessible only to a minority, remain an important contribution to public debate and the world of ideas in Trinidad and Tobago.

Academics at the St. Augustine campus of the regional university also began making their contributions to the public debates. Some of the younger historians became a little more active, and their voices appeared a little more often in the press and in some cases on the platforms of the activists. Some academics came under scrutiny from the state security apparatus and received threats from overzealous supporters of the regime. More importantly, some of the leaders and major spokespersons of the Black Power Movement were students and/or graduates of UWI and had been taught by a generation of UWI-based scholars, some of whom had also been graduates of UWI (Ryan and Stewart 1995). Moreover, its graduates had begun holding influential positions in the civil service, the teaching profession, and importantly in the local media houses.

Williams and the other professional academic historians were not the only ones who contributed to the body of historical knowledge. Trinidad has also benefited from a number of non-professional historians--Carlton Ottley, Michael Anthony, Bukka Rennie, Anthony De Verteuil, and Gerard Besson. These historians were not based at any tertiary educational institution and they did not earn their primary living from their historical writing (except perhaps Michael Anthony), but their contributions expanded the body of knowledge of the society and also popularized the understanding of that development. Their contributions were published locally and were easily affordable, at least to the literate middle class and to some of the reading working class. To the extent that they were not written in the esoteric and exclusionary language of the traditional academic, they had some appeal. The works of Carlton Ottley and Anthony De Verteuil on the 19th century, Michael Anthony's descriptions of early 20th-century developments, Bukka Rennie's analysis of mid 20th-century social and political transformations, and Gerard Besson's exquisite productions from the Paria Publishing House are important at the very least for their concern with reaching a popular audience.

Some of them are also associated with counter-narratives to the hegemonic Creole espoused by the Williams-influenced nationalist movement. Carlton Ottley was associated with a Tobago narrative that emphasized Tobago's distinctiveness. Anthony De Verteuil and Gerard Besson have been associated with a revitalization of the old French Creole narrative, which now complained about the marginalization of all whites in the post-independence era. Bukka Rennie, as one of the scribes for the New Beginning Movement, articulated quite forcefully the importance of class and in particular working-class organization and struggle in the making of the modern state. But the success of all these efforts in contesting the popular view was limited by the size of the reading population and the continued attitude to reading.

The same held for the impact of creative fiction writers on the formation of the popular historical imagination. There is a long and respectable tradition of creative writing in Trinidad and Tobago (Sander 1978; Rampersad 2002; Cudjoe 2003). Despite a respect for book learning, the society of the time did not have a public who read much beyond the dailies and weeklies. Eric Williams, as leader of the PNM, tried to encourage the habit of reading among members of his party since he found that party members "lacked the money to buy books, or the time and inclination to read them." He claimed therefore that he "did their reading for them and reported back to them" via the 45 books he reviewed in The Nation, the party organ, between August 1964 and December 1965 (Williams 1969, 330; Williams and Sutton 1981). (9) The choice of books to be reviewed was determined more by Williams's interest at the time in external affairs than by any concern for exposing his readership to history other than that written or approved by him or to any creative fiction. To his credit, the enigmatic Williams saw the need to encourage a number of West Indian writers then resident in the United Kingdom to return on familiarization tours. He encouraged the return visit of V. S. Naipaul, whose historical vision is revealed in the acerbic travelogue, The Middle Passage, and later The Loss of El Dorado, and whose peculiar historical imagination finds exposure in most of his fictional works, especially The Mimic Men and his celebrated A House for Mr. Biswas.

The reading circle for creative writing and literary criticism was, and still is, quite small despite numerous attempts to widen the circle and nurture the habit. The dailies, weeklies, and house organs of the various political parties and trade unions occasionally published some creative writing and columns of book reviews. But by and large these were not sustained efforts nor did they generate any noticeable public debate over the contributions of the creative writers to the historical thinking of the society. Even Naipaul's controversial comments were known more by reputation and rumour and by the leaked "exposes" of the academic gatekeepers than by any discernible access to and acquaintance with them by the general reading public.

Despite the presence of other voices, Williams was able to impose himself and his vision on the popular historical consciousness almost as if there was no countervailing narrative to the colonial vision prior to his arrival. His absence of references to any other local intellectual voices opposed to the colonial or imperial narrative created a vacuum that he himself proceeded to fill. He established himself as the first and lone local David against the colonial Goliath. He had as his advantage what were considered to be impeccable university credentials. The fact that these credentials were granted by the metropole lent authenticity and aura to his persona as story teller and consequently to his-story. Other intellectuals, however equally credentialed they were or how well their particular versions were received by their peers, could not compete with Williams in the arena of popular acclaim. Not the least of their handicaps was that after 1956 they did not have the weight of authority given by political office and the resources that office could give to the circulation of the ideas of the office-holder. Any challenge to the popularity of the Creole nationalist narrative came not from the scribal historians but from the oral historians, or more precisely the oral artists--the calypsonians--who popularized alternative historical visions in song. But it was Williams's oral style that borrowed heavily from the local calypso tradition that also facilitated his capture of the popular imagination for his Creole nationalist narrative.

Williams as Oral Performer

Williams's campaign of popular education, which precedes his entry into electoral politics, is focused first on publications before it shifts to public lectures. As President of the Historical Society of Trinidad and Tobago he attempted an ambitious program of publication including the establishment of a Caribbean Historical Review. His twin goals were to foster a view of history that was regional rather than particularistic and "to combat the danger of the society becoming an ivory tower organization divorced from the West Indian people, viewing West Indian history as antiquarianism or a cultural pastime." But he claimed "the fundamental realities of Trinidad and Tobago," which to him included an unwillingness to financially support his publication objectives and a reluctance to entertain discussion of the touchy subjects of slavery and indentureship, forced him to focus on other forms for his campaign of popular education (Williams 1969, 108). He continued writing and published 40 articles in the Trinidad Guardian in 1950 but focused on a program of public lectures.

In an intensive campaign of public appearances he gave a series of 24 public lectures between September 1954 and May 1955. Together with these public lectures Williams also spoke to a variety of voluntary associations, social and cultural groups, trade unions, and teachers' groups sponsored by the Peoples' Education Movement and its forerunner, the Teachers Economic and Cultural Association (Williams 1969, 108; Cudjoe 1993, 398). This link with the more active and progressive members of the teaching profession would be crucial for the way in which his ideas and attitudes would be transmitted to a generation of young Trinidad nationalists. Quite apart from their direct role and influence in the classroom, many of these pedagogues were known to be ghostwriters and advisors to calypsonians. For example, the school principal Pete Simon, who was an unapologetic supporter of the PNM, was a known confidant of calypsonians and often a ghostwriter; later, as a civil servant working as Chief Youth Officer in the Division of Community Development, Pete Simon would openly compose for calypsonian Prince Valiant, and Simon himself sang calypsos as Jaguar. (10)

The lectures by Williams covered a variety of topics with an emphasis on the historical perspective as the key to understanding the contemporary problems of the colonial society. His early lectures of 1944 were initially attended by, if not aimed at, the small intelligentsia drawn from the lower and upper middle classes. They were by his estimation well-researched lectures of university audience standard and eminently publishable. In his 1944 lecture at the public library, chaired by the Acting Governor, he saw himself in the role of enlightener and claimed that:

 Now I, their former classmate, was their teacher, I who had shared
 their sufferings was explaining their sufferings, I who had been
 with them passive objects of British imperial history was telling
 them of their history, I who had suffered with them the
 tribulations of colonialism had come back as, so one called me,
 "the philosopher of West Indian nationalism." (Williams 1969,
 93-94)

The tone and delivery were professorial, and according to him the audience lapped it up, roared "their sardonic appreciation" at the appropriate points and reacted in such a way that he knew then that "the nationalist historian, unlike the prophet, had his greatest honour among his own people" (Williams 1969, 93). The audience was a restricted audience, perhaps "listening to the intellectual expression of their own basic convictions" as he claimed but comprised predominantly of those individuals who saw themselves as the local intelligentsia and social elite. This phalanx would act as the transmitters of Williams's ideas via their interpretations in the local media and the education system.

By 1954 the public lectures were obviously aimed at a wider and more popular audience as Williams's plans for more direct political action were taking form. The audience had become less restricted and more popular as Williams cast a wider net for his populist mobilization and the launching of the PNM as the vehicle for his political career. If the lectures were, in his words, "university dishes served with political sauce," the political sauce had become more piquant and pronounced since the success of the lecturer and his program of study was to be evaluated by the bellwether of the electoral poll. Williams claimed that he "made it a point not to talk down to the people" and that his lectures were "straight university stuff, in content and in form as well as in manner." But if that was his honest intention, his delivery and the circumstances surrounding their delivery made them less the "straight university stuff" that he claimed.

His perorations, as he himself termed them, did not admit of counter-argument or alternative points of view. This was not the presumed dispassionate objectivity of the classroom. One commentator argues that from a study of his speeches Williams "emerges as the impetuous judge of history, mercilessly condemnatory" (McLeod 1976). History had become for him not merely the instrument of deliverance from colonial bondage but the weapon of subversion. In the past the colonized were the objects of history and things were done to them. In his new dispensation they would be the makers of their own history (Williams 1962, 284). There was also a notion that history or, more precisely, historical knowledge was a weapon to be used for liberation from colonial rule and that there was something called the irreducible historical truth that was always on the side of the oppressed and that the designated oppressors always hid from the oppressed. But he had access to that truth and his was the truth that would set the bonded free.

In his delivery he adopted mixed styles: the hectoring of the schoolmaster, the Mt. Olympian arrogance of the savant, and the battling stance of the stick fighter. All of this was dished up with dashes of piquant "picong," that Trinidadian-finessed oral rapier for deflating egos through humour. His delivery was also seasoned with occasional biblical and popular cultural references in the local vernacular.

Gordon Lewis saw Williams as creating a marriage between the Creole intellectual and the colonial crowd and in unabashed admiration described a Williams performance thusly:

 To watch the Political leader, the "Doctor," undertake that task in
 his mass lectures at the "University of Woodford Square" is to
 appreciate how, first, he managed to invest the dullest of facts
 and figures with a life of their own, italicized by the measured
 metronome of his dry, deliberate delivery and, second, how he
 forged between himself and the popular audience a bond of deep
 feeling and mutual respect which no hostile force, always readily
 present in a colonial society where everybody, traditionally, was
 ever ready to tear down any one of their number who had any sort of
 success, could pollute. (Lewis 1968, 213)

George Lamming, in an earlier phase of admiration for Williams as one of the obvious leaders of the movement for West Indian nationalism, could not resist the honest observation that:

 He turned history, the history of the Caribbean, into gossip, so
 that a story of a peoples' predicament seemed no longer the
 infinite, barren track of documents, dates and texts. Everything
 became news: slavery, colonization, the forgivable deception of
 metropolitan rule, the sad and inevitable unawareness of the native
 production. His lectures retained always the character of a whisper
 which everyone was allowed to hear, a rumour which experience had
 established as the truth. (In Williams 1969, 157)

There is no doubt that Williams was a master orator and had comfortably secured an unchallenged position in a long line of accomplished exponents of the art. Even his detractors and political opponents had to grudgingly acknowledge his superior oratorical skills despite their odious and derogatory references to Hitlerian rabble-rousing. Such was his impact that his style and mannerisms were parodied and emulated, though none of his would-be clones among senior civil servants, party officials, or other politicians could ever successfully replicate the essence of the style with any real fidelity to the original. In part because it was essentially personal (11) (the low monotonous baritone is attributed to his impaired hearing, and the dark shades, another essential of the Williams public presentation of self, to his reaction to sunlight), and it was also partly socio-historical (Cudjoe 1993, 54). Much has been written, and accurately so, about what Williams represented to the colonial population, especially the Afro-Trinidadian segment, as the returned colonial who had mastered the colonialists not only at their own game but in their own den. He, like the calypsonians of the 1930s and 1940s, had gone to the metropolitan societies and had tamed if not conquered their putative overlords; he in scholarly endeavours and they, at least in their imaginative forays, in the sexual arena.

Williams was the calypsonian writ large. Not only the popularizing of history but the way in which that history was popularized were calypsoesque. Williams as the winner of the coveted island scholarship had broken tradition and opted to read history rather than the more common choices of law and medicine with their almost guaranteed paths to individual social and economic success. The fact that he was now putting this knowledge at the disposal of the society further enhanced his mystique and reputation. It also ensured his membership in the community of calypsonians; for, after all, as assumed inheritors of the griot tradition, history was their forte.

The calypsonians in their songs exposed the foibles and peccadilloes of the rich and powerful and made public the tales of their moral indiscretions and their hypocrisies. This information they had learned particularly from the maids who served the homes of the elite and from some of their middle-class patrons. In calypso they made public what was supposed to be private. Now "the doctor" exposed the secrets of colonialism and the people who had historically controlled their lives--secrets he had been privy to from his research into the archives of the colonialists. He spelled out the historical stories for the society in ways that calypsonians and their audiences appreciated--with spellbinding use of the language, impressionable oratorical flashes, a dazzling egotism based on a presumed absolute command of the subject material, the stance of the batonnier, the wit of the master picong artist, the conspiratorial tone of the holder of public secrets, and, not the last nor least of these qualities, the seductiveness of the accomplished Don Juan. He gave respectability to their profession and its style and they became willing tutorial assistants for the professor spreading his historical message and vision to a receptive society of students.

Largely because of the career of Williams, the public attached importance to the profession of historian and it rose in their esteem. The calypsonian Lord Superior in admonishing those youths who had taken up arms in opposition to the regime in a tragically doomed attempt at guerrilla warfare in the 1970s had advised them (12) that rather than guerilla activity they should

 Try to be doctors and scientists
 Lawyers and economists
 Engineers and Agriculturalists
 Most important is some good historians
 And if every man work with dedication
 You will be prepared to rule this nation

Williams himself understood the power potential, imagined or real, of the calypso. He probably appreciated the laudatory calypso paeans to his intellectual prowess and abilities. He and some of his party members and senior advisers were known patrons of the calypso tents. His administration benefited from the free advertisement and support for the programs of the early years of rule, as some calypsos smoothed the honeymoon years of the nationalist movement. On more than one occasion he indicated that he was quite aware of what the calypsonians were saying about him and his regime. He even deigned to quote some on occasion (Neaves 2006). More importantly, the censorship of anti-government calypsos on state-owned radio stations was testimony to the perceived power of the calypso (Regis 1999, 123).

He embraced some calypsonians and was even known to be personally financially generous to others. It was widely believed/understood that the Mighty Sparrow was a favourite of the regime and was considered the poet laureate of the nationalist movement. There was an attempt to quash or de-legitimize the rising voice of a critical Chalkdust by sneeringly comparing it to the braying of a jackass. Lord Shorty was threatened with legal action because of what was considered morally objectionable content in a public performance before Williams and a foreign guest. Lord Kitchener reportedly received the chilly acknowledgement of a greeting from a half-opened window of the Prime Minister's car to indicate that "de doctor" was listening (Regis 1999, 121).

The calypsos of the Mighty Sparrow best reflect this impact of the ideas of Williams and his brand of Creole nationalism. Sparrow's rise to calypso prominence coincides with the political ascendancy of Williams, and he was loyal to Williams until his disaffection and eventual public self-expulsion from the PNM after the death of Williams in 1981. He lent his remarkable talents and skill as an oral performer to advocate for the PNM, especially in the early years and was popularly accepted as the movement's calypsonian.

The calypso "Slave" (1963) is perhaps Sparrow's earliest direct treatment of an historical topic. It has been recorded many times, with each recording seeming to surpass the previous for its captivating rendition and soulful dramatization of this cry of an enslaved African " from a land so far" who was "caught and brought here from Africa." His live performances of the song are even more compelling, as Sparrow, indisputably one of the finest exponents of the calypso art, uses his formidable oral skills and his envied vocal range to drag his audience into the heart of the story. But, in a rendering reminiscent of Williams's reluctance to include slave resistance as a factor in his exploration of slave emancipation, it is the story of a victim whose attempts at resistance are futile, one who cowers and is helpless against the might of white owners. He credits the experience of slavery as the crucible of calypso and then, like Williams, argues for an agentless emancipation that produced the deracinated and Euro-assimilated Creole who was naked, hungry, restless, cultureless, and without roots: (13)

 And then times changed
 In so many many ways
 Till one day somebody said free the bloody slaves
 I was then
 Put out on the street
 I have no clothes, ah have no food
 Ah have no place to sleep
 I had no education
 No particular ambition
 This I cannot conceal
 Forgot my native culture, live like a vulture
 From the white man I had to steal

The Creole nationalist stamp is also present in Sparrow's "A Model Nation," which he sang for the first independence calypso competition in 1963. Although it came second in that competition, it has since outstripped the winning composition in popularity and has emerged as one of the iconic nationalistic tunes. The calypso is a praise song to the leaders who, according to the calypsonian, took a multi-racial, multi-cultural, and wealthy society living in harmony and relative equality to nationhood. In the verse commenting on how independence was achieved without a bloody struggle three leaders are singled out for mention--Butler, the Afro-West Indian who led the labour struggle that precipitated constitutional change; the French Creole Cipriani, another labour leader who led an earlier movement for constitutional change; and the Doctor (Williams). This tendency to negate subaltern agency and promote the leadership role of selected individuals is a characteristic of the Creole nationalist narrative. But soon Williams, the veteran anti-colonial historian with a reputation for the fierce defense of black people, would be given a lesson in blackness by his former students.

Singing the New Narrative

The marriage between the nationalist movement and the calypsonians was not long in duration. Although the rhetoric of the party in power had elevated the art form to national iconic status and by implication speaking for all of the multi-ethnic community, most calypsonians only imagined that community in their own ethnic image. The association with the nationalist movement had not eliminated what they considered to be their responsibility to their defined community. So that even before the euphoria and bonhomie over independence had worn off, some calypsonians had reverted to their traditional stance of criticism of the status quo. From the late 1960s a number of calypsonians increased their criticism of local conditions and the performance of the PNM administration. This critique, inspired in part by the growing external winds of change, was increasingly accompanied by the adoption of a more radical black stance than that of the Creole nationalist narrative. As the calypsonians started questioning the status of the Afro-Trinidadian, in the words of Louis Regis, it "was just one short step.... to challenge the credentials of the black intellectuals then in power" (Regis 1999).

Many of these calypsonians were born in the 1940s and therefore experienced colonialism and the rise of the PNM as the anti-colonial movement as children. Their parents had experienced the full brunt of the colonial regime with its economic marginalization, political disenfranchisement, cultural delegitimization, and racist overtones. They had been exposed to their parents' anger over the limitations of life under colonial rule as well as their parents' hopes and expectations for a new era of Creole rule. They were certainly not satisfied as their parents were with the psychological racial vindication that came with inheriting the political kingdom. Since 1956 they had experienced the gradual transition to local black Creole rule, and they now took that for granted. But they were dissatisfied with the economic crumbs of continued economic dependency and impatient with the rate of change. They saw the lingering evidence of the local brand of racism as roadblocks in the path of their personal development and affronts to their racial dignity. Acutely attuned to international developments, as the premier historian/politician had always emphasized in all of his public speeches, they were informed by the international struggles against racism. They turned their attention to the deficiencies of the local neo-colonial state and in song provided an Afro-centric narrative to counter the dominant Creole nationalism.

Most calypsonians are not the generators of original ideas. But as purveyors of ideas their ability to capture the historical meaning of a moment and to succinctly express and popularize that idea is what gives them the edge over the scribal practitioners. Those academics of the Afro-centric persuasion who were in sync with the moment had their ideas translated into popular idiom by the calypsonians and were able to challenge the dominant Creole nationalist narrative.

The resurgence of black pride with its focus on Africa provided an opportunity for calypsonians to reassert themselves as griots in the sense that they understood the role of the African griot to be--that is, not merely as storyteller or validator of the ruling elite but as the people's historians. In so doing they claimed the right "to review the facts of historical experience in the context of contemporary realities" (Okpewho 2003). This review and re-presentation struck at one of the planks of the Creole nationalist narrative: its suppression of the public acknowledgement of the connection to Africa. Some calypsonians became the vocal advocates of an Afro-centric narrative that saw the formal Creole narrative as Afro-saxon and not African enough, since its homogenizing colonialism in the name of nationalism did not give the African contribution sufficient credit, foreground, or primacy. The Afro-centric narrative therefore reclaimed historical Africa as the source of human civilization, revalued upward the calculations of pain and suffering experienced by peoples of African origin and their descendants in the diaspora, re-established continuing cultural connections with a contemporary Mother Africa, and re-appropriated the cultural icons of the nation as African in origin rather than Creole creations.

A phalanx of calypsonians used their compositional skills and their considerable stage presence to drum out this Afro-centric message and to undermine the popularity of the Creole Nationalist vision with its de-emphasis of Africa. The Mighty Duke's "Black is Beautiful" of 1969 would emerge as the virtual anthem of the 1970s. Even his appearance and performance seemed symptomatic of the change: over six feet in height, sartorially elegant, his clarity in articulation commanding attention, his moniker of Duke belying the kingly way in which he bestrode the stage, all seemed to speak of new times. The Creole nationalist call may have served to ignite racial pride in the pre-independence period but was revealed as too tame in action. The Afro-centric message was a clarion call to racial pride that resonated with Afro-Trinidadians of the 1970s, touching them in visceral ways that the nationalist movement had awakened but not satisfied. In the face of the failure of the nationalist government to appreciably change the material conditions of their lives, their oral historians provided the balm to soothe their troubled souls.

If the premier Creole nationalist historian had advocated no Mother Africa, the Afro-centric oral historians sang the need to re-suture with Africa. In "The African" in 1979, Composer would argue that just as "a cat born in an oven is not bread," so too regardless of place of birth an African is an African. The premier historian was found wanting and was advised in song to teach the real history. Duke, for example, trained his guns on the teaching of history, arguing in "Teach the Children" in 1973 for a curriculum that emphasized for the children of Trinidad this glorious African past as theirs by inheritance. In these praise songs of Africa there was no room for consideration of Indo-Trinidadians, not even negative comments. It was a straight confrontation with Europe.

But the allure of the Creole nationalist vision was not easy to escape, and some calypsonians remained fully committed to it while others were ambivalent. The need to identify with Trinidad as a creator of a new civilization without rejecting Africa was for many not easily negotiated. Even Chalkdust, who later emerged as one of the most strident critics of the regime and an ardent voice for the Afro-centric position, was at first ambivalent. In "We is We" (1979), the calypsonian found those who had begun searching for ancestral roots "colour crazy" and advised them to "stop this damn race searching." He gave priority to culture rather than race and proceeded to point out all of the various ways in which the Trinidadian was culturally different. He claimed he was "not condemning Africa/our ancestral roots lie there," but the nationalist in him could not resist hinting at the backwardness of the ancestral lands and pointed out:

 Look how they killing each other
 In Africa and India
 We have no tribal wars down here
 We don't know about tom-tom and spear

The seductiveness of the Creole nationalist historical imagination, so carefully implanted in the popular historical consciousness since the advent of Eric Williams, was so enduring that in a reprise of the tune as late as 1985, Chalkdust was still trying to walk this tightrope between local nationalism and universal ethnic pride. He had not escaped the impact of the ethnic renaissance in the intervening years and now commended those who looked to ancestral roots for their thinking, although he still recommended that they look to the Caribbean as the source of their identity. He argued in a 1985 reprise of "We is We" that

 Out of slavery and indenture
 We have created a Caribbean culture
 Our forefathers in victory
 Left Shango and Hosay for we
 They borrowed from their English peers
 Stamped it with their blood sweat and tears
 So when you searching for your knowledge
 Let us try to build our own image

Chalkdust, who had completed a first degree in History at UWI during the 1970s (and would later go on to receive a doctorate in history), was not only impacted by the ferment of the times but in fact would form part of a number of calypsonians who would be the leading singers of the new historical sensibilities. He has to his credit some of the finest satirical pieces of the art form, and together with Valentino and Black Stalin relentlessly brought to the Trinidad public an awareness of the liberation struggles of Southern Africa and the anti-apartheid movement and the implications for de-colonization in Trinidad.

Black Stalin, who together with Valentino would be dubbed "the People's Calypsonians," grounded his nationalism and his Caribbean identity in an unapologetic pan-Africanism. His formal education ended at primary school at San Fernando Boys R.C. School, but he had a practical education forged on the streets of San Fernando and a calypso apprenticeship under Lord Kitchener. He emerged in the calypso cohort of the 1960s as an oral artist who exhibited in his compositions "the artistic characteristics of accurate observation, vivid imagination and ingenious expression," to use Okpewho's (1992) classic definition of oral literature.

In 1977, clearly annoyed over the persistence of the automatic connection between slavery and peoples of African origin, Black Stalin responded with his scathing "Man is Man," in which he emphasized that slavery was not peculiar to blacks. Moreover, he expressed his frustration over the way in which the discourse over slavery seemed to want to imprison him in the past:

 So much years slavery over
 Gone are the wicked slave master
 Why some people still haunting me with slavery
 Me own brother and sister
 And some wicked slave master
 Want it engrave
 I am the son of a slave
 But you see this black man
 Is a dread black man
 For I know
 Nothing t'all go so

Black Stalin claimed saturation with the constant apologetic references to the slave past made by all, including presumably Williams, the historian Prime Minister. He rejected a narrative that blamed all of the present on the past and argued rather for the freedom to carve his own present and future. It was a song of triumph over the imposed burden of history and one that advocated liberation through action. This emphasis on agency would continue to be his major contribution to the historical imagination: that history is about action--not merely action done to, as the Creole nationalist narrative emphasized, or action done for them by their leaders, as in the Afro-creole narrative, but action done by the people in their own interests. This emphasis on subaltern agency would distinguish his calypso compositions.

His 1979 rendition, "Caribbean Unity" (more popularly known as "Caribbean Man"), became a classic and, in the context of the contestation over historical narratives, an important milestone. It is important not only for what it says but because of the way it was received and the responses to it. Black Stalin, committed pan-Africanist and pan-Caribbeanist that he is, opened his calypso by accusing those politicians "who went to big institution" of incompetence as evidenced by the collapse of the West Indian Federation. He doubted their ability to promote West Indian unity and had little faith in their subsequent efforts at Caribbean integration. Black Stalin accused those who sought Caribbean unity of having an inadequate historical sense ("If we don't know from where we coming/Then we can't plan where we going" and "Look a man who don't know his history--can't form no unity/How could a man who don't know his roots--form his own ideology").

For Black Stalin, the route to Caribbean unity had to begin with an understanding of common identity and common identity, was dependent on a reading of the historical record that emphasized common origins. Hence his message was

 Is one race--The Caribbean Man
 From the same place
 That make the same trip
 On the same ship
 So we must push one common intention--is for a better
 life in the region
 For we woman and we children
 That must be the ambition of the Caribbean Man
 The Caribbean Man, the Caribbean Man

It was a stinging indictment of the "validating elites," to use a term later popularized by Lloyd Best. He rubbed more salt in their wounds by drawing on his own spiritual orientation to claim that the spread of the Rastafarian movement was an indication that "is something them Rastas on that them politicians don't know." The song was simply delivered but powerful in its impact. It raised the ire of elements of the East Indian community who saw themselves as painted out of this Caribbean portrait, academic purists who objected to the inaccuracy of the "same place/same ship/same trip" statement and denied the calypsonian poetic license, and feminists who took offence at what they saw as the sexist orientation of the calypso. But Black Stalin was adamant that he was singing to his own pan-Caribbean community, beyond the local, where the East Indian was a minority and never known to be interested in Caribbean unity.

But the crowning moment came when the Prime Minister, the senior Caribbean historian and veteran advocate of Caribbean unity, in his capacity as political leader of the ruling party, entered the debate generated by the calypso. In his address to the 1979 annual convention of his party, Williams the academic historian responded to Black Stalin the people's historian. In a far-ranging, two-and-a-half-hour address before the 1,300 delegates, Williams used all of his expertise as an academic historian to counter the arguments of Black Stalin's treatise of four eight-line verses and one eight-line chorus.

It is the symbolism of the moment that is important, not so much who won the debate. That Black Stalin's calypso would have greater longevity than Williams's words, even among the party faithful at what turned out to be his last convention, is of course testimony to the power of the medium rather than the academic "truth" of the message. In an earlier time Williams would have bedazzled the nation with his command and use of verifiable historical data. Now he was reduced to preaching to the converted, the party faithful, in defense of his Creole nationalistic vision that had been disrupted by a rising Afro-centric sensibility. It was no longer the calypsonian spreading the word of the academic historian but the calypsonian's words being seriously debated by the academic. If previously Williams had studiously avoided, often with studied contempt, the words of other academics, he knew he could not choose to ignore the oral artist. He who had used the sung word and the style of these artists for spreading his Creole nationalist message knew they could not be ignored.

Conclusion

The Creole nationalist narrative was successfully challenged throughout the 1960s and 1970s by those oral artists articulating an Afro-centric perspective. In the 1980s other challenges to the hegemonic Creole nationalist argument emerged, including a revitalized French Creole narrative (which now spoke for all whites, even those without French ancestry), a Tobago narrative that emphasizes Tobago distinctiveness, and an Indo-centric narrative that parallels the Afro-centric in its emphases and appeal to racial pride. The re-articulation of these narratives was facilitated by significant developments in the political landscape. In 1985 the Creole nationalist movement suffered its first political defeat after the 1981 death of Eric Williams. It was defeated by a coalition of opposition forces called the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), led by Tobago-born A. N. R. Robinson. This coalition quickly disintegrated after a split essentially along racial lines, and, following a Muslim-led insurrection in 1990, the NAR lost power to the PNM in 1991. This PNM resurgence was short-lived as the party again lost power to the United National Congress (UNC). Despite claims of being a party of national unity, the UNC was popularly seen as the political face of the Indo-Trinidadian community. The election of the first prime minister of East Indian origin, Basdeo Panday, was a significant socio-political development and heightened the contestation over historical narratives. The PNM returned to power again in 2001 and currently holds office.

None of these scribed counter-narratives have access to the voice of the calypsonian for the dissemination and popularizing of their visions, as did the Creole nationalist or the Afro-centric. It is still not clear how well the Indo-centric narrative fares in the emerging pichakaree, the Hindi equivalent of the calypso. (14) But given the use of Hindi, the sung message is restricted to the Hindi-speaking community. Meanwhile the increase in the number of licensed radio stations has opened up an opportunity for talk show hosts and their guests to engage in often virulent discussions of these counter-narratives. The use of film and video may well become the other new media for the popularization of contesting narratives. But that sector of the media is still in its infant stages in Trinidad and Tobago. In the meantime there has emerged in the calypso what can be described as a Dougla narrative. It gives primacy to a combined and equal African and Indian contribution to the making of modern Trinidad. It has its detractors in both song and print. How well it will survive and with what popularity is yet to be determined. (15)

Works Cited

Bernard, Eustace. 1991. The freedom fighters. Trinidad: Imprint Caribbean Limited.

Boodhoo, Ken. 2002. The elusive Eric Williams. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers.

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--, and Woodville Marshall. 1999. Historiography of Barbados, the Windward islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana: Part C, in General history of the Caribbean, vol. 6, edited by B. W. Higman, 580-590. London: UNESCO Publishing/ Macmillan Education Limited.

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Notes

(1) Eric Williams reports: "Yet one recalls the local opposition, that carries over into contemporary calypso, to the first attempt in Trinidad and Tobago to develop textbooks suited to the local environment though the history textbooks were particularly scandalous" in Eric Williams, "Speech at PNM Convention," Express, 30 November 1970. Williams was referring to the Sparrow calypso, "Dan is the Man," which was a response to the attempts at textbook reform by Capt. J. O. Cutteridge.

(2) Chapter 12 of Capitalism and Slavery, which deals with the role of slaves in the struggle for emancipation, was included as an afterthought and apparently on the insistence of C. L. R. James. Williams pays much more attention to slave resistance and rebellion his later work, From Columbus to Castro (1970).

(3) Interestingly, Williams mentions resistance only in a curious context: "The slave could idle when he was working for his master, and the indentured worker could feign sickness and go to hospital. This was passive resistance, the retribution exacted by the weak majority from the strong minority." But he cautions against this in the age of Independence (Williams 1962, 284).

(4) Sparrow's calypso, "Education" (1967), is still sung, at least by that generation, not only because of the beauty of its melody but because almost like an anthem it articulates their deeply held convictions about the role of education in personal emancipation and social mobility.

(5) This is a local term used to denote the offspring of African and Indian unions.

(6) For commentary on the speech, see Palmer (2006, 22).

(7) According to Williams, "In actual fact this society has been influenced by African origins, Indian elements, far more than you imagine."

(8) Much has been published on the 1970 uprising. I strongly recommend the collection edited by Selwyn D. Ryan and Taimoon Stewart (1995). It is particularly useful for its insights on the writing and rewriting of events by participants and observers of contemporary history.

(9) But Williams's performance in the area of the provision of access to and the upkeep of library facilities was dismal and pitiful. For an even-handed assessment see Campbell (1997, 198).

(10) Though admittedly without much success for himself or his calypso "voice." See Lord Pretender's amusing critique in "Pete Accused of Trying to Make Right Wrong," Sunday Guardian, 10 June 1973.

(11) Although one of his early political intimates says that Williams may have been imitating James in speech and mannerisms. See Winston Mahabir's book on Williams (1978, 70).

(12) "Mr. Gorilla" (sic) by Lord Superior, 1973. On guerrilla activity in Trinidad and Tobago see Millette (1995) and Bernard (1991).

(13) For Williams's statements on the deracinated, cultureless, and assimilated Creole see "West Africa and the West Indies" (1964), an address delivered at the University of Dakar in Senegal (Williams and Sutton 1981, 228).

(14) On the Indo-centric narrative see Munasinghe (2001b). On pichakaree see Raviji, "Pichakaaree: An intimate community voice," Trinidad Guardian, 6 April 2005.

(15) On the possible Dougla narrative see Puri (1999, 2004).

DAVID V. TROTMAN

York University