When it came to calypso music in Antigua, one man reigned supreme through the 60s, 70s and 80s. McLean Emanuel aka King Short Shirt, was the only performer - at least at the time that this article was written - to have won Antigua’s national calypso competition three times in a row, on three separate occasions. Doing well in the competition opened up opportunities to record music, and Tyranny is taken from his fourth album, Illusion, released in 1977 by A & B Records.
In this frantic calypso - I hope that whoever was playing the cowbell was able to have a nice lie down after the session - King Short Shirt ponders the ongoing chain of unfairness that sees Africans move from slavery to living in countries run as dictatorships and totalitarian states. He namechecks apartheid
South Africa, Uganda (at that time still ruled by the despotic, Idi Amin), Rhodesia (like South Africa operating under white minority rule) and Chile (which was ruled by Augusto Pinochet). He notes too that the Caribbean has also known similar tyranny, such as that practised by the Duvaliers in Haiti, Fulgencio Batista in Cuba and Rafael Calderón in Costa Rica.*.
King Short Shirt believed that change could come in each of those countries if the people rose up, which is always easier said than done of course, though he was proven right in the end. Amin fled Uganda in 1979 after his attempt to invade Tanzania backfired. The same year, white minority rule ended in Rhodesia and the country was renamed Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, this also meant the world was lumbered with Robert Mugabe for 37 years. Chile and South Africa took a little longer, but in 1988 Pinochet held a referendum to see whether the country wanted him to continue as president, and stepped down after losing it so as to pave the way for democratic elections. Meanwhile, in South Africa, F.W. de Klerk released Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990, dismantled the apartheid system and was succeeded as president by Mandela in 1994.
The beauty of the sentiments expressed in Tyranny is that they are applicable to any country labouring under a dictatorship. And as White Afrikaners arrive in the United States under a refugee programme enthusiastically set up by the current president of the United States, we can only wonder how long it will take for Americans to follow King Short Shirt’s advice and cast their tyrant into the sea - preferably just off Mar-a-Lago.
*Not strictly speaking a dictator in the same mould as the others, but his refusal to accept the results of the 1948 General Election led to a civil war.
Video courtesy of Akla Tha First.
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