The Calypso strum - is it in fact a Mento strum?

[redpaul1]

Let me be clear from the outset. I'm not interested in a semantic argument. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what rhythm 'd-d-u-u-d-u' actually replicates.

The reason I ask the question is I've recently learnt that, in the '50s and '60s, Jamaican mento music, Harry Belafonte in particular, was marketed in the US as 'Jamaican calypso'.

As an example, checking round the internet, I notice this introduction to the calypso strum illustrated by Harry Belafonte's 'Jamaica Farewell' http://artistworks.com/blog/how-to-play-ukulele-calypso-strum-lesson.

It seems, the more I look, that the so-called calypso strum is marketed (if that's the right term) as a generic 'island strum', when in reality, there is no such thing. Each Caribbean island's folk music developed its own unique rhythms.

When I listen to actual Trinidadian calypso (artists such as Lord Kitchener, or The Mighty Sparrow), I don't hear the d-d-u-u-d-u of the 'official' calypso strum. Instead I hear more of an u-d-u-d-d.

On the other hand, this self-declared mento treatment of 'Jamaica Farewell' seems to me to follow the d-d-u-u-d-u of the calypso strum quite clearly:

So, is the calypso strum in fact a 'Jamaican calypso' i.e., mento strum? Apologies in advance if the question's been asked before.

 

[Croaky Keith]

Post no9 in this thread may cast some light on this.
http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/showthread.php?68589-In-Search-of-Ernest-Ka-ai-1906-or-1910-Book
https://ukestuff.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/ukulele_kaai.pdf

 

[redpaul1]

Post no9 in this thread may cast some light on this.
http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/showthread.php?68589-In-Search-of-Ernest-Ka-ai-1906-or-1910-Book
https://ukestuff.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/ukulele_kaai.pdf

Thanks, that's really interesting. However, although Kaai describes strumming patterns on pp25-26 of his book, none of them are either described as, or match the d-d-u-u-d-u of the calypso strum.

But in any case, just to be sure, generally when people refer to the calypso strum as the 'island strum', isn't it the Caribbean islands they're referencing, not the Hawaiian?

 

[Croaky Keith]

Yes, I agree, to me, Calypso is Caribbean - at least, I first heard it on the Tonight show on BBC, played by Cy Grant.

 

[redpaul1]

Walk! The-fat dog!

Well, it's taken me nearly a month - there's nothing out there for guitarists or ukulele players - but I think I finally got to the bottom of this rabbit hole.

As best I understand it, actual Trinidadian calypso rhythm falls into a 3+3+2 pattern - meaning that if your time signature is 4/4 and you're counting in 8th notes (counting 1&2&3&4&), the beat would be grouped into 1&2, &3&, 4&.

There's usually an awful lot of percussive decoration in calypso, so there may be something going on on every beat, but nonetheless beats 1, &3 and 4 are accentuated: 1&2 &3& 4& (it is true that, conventionally, calypso is considered to be played in 2/4 time, but it's less complicated to render an explanation using 4/4).

If you're playing solo, how would that rhythm sound? Like the instructor in this djembe tutorial put it:

Walk! The-fat dog! Walk! The-fat dog! 
  1     &  3   4;    1     &  3   4
  D     U  D   D     D     U  D   D
Walk! The-fat dog! Trip-on! The-fat dog!
  1    &   3   4 ;   1  &   &   3   4;
  D    U   D   D     D  U   U   D   D

You can hear this 'walk the fat dog' rhythm very clearly in this calypso from King Selewa, a cover of the Lord Executor classic from 1937.

Hear it more orchestrated but still clearly present in Lord Beginner's "old-style minor calypso" General Election, & in the Mighty Terror's Calypso War.

Hear it buried away and twice as fast (2/4 time!) in the Roaring Lion's Mary-Ann:

All (the-fat dog) day (the-fat dog)
All (the-fat dog) night (the-fat dog)
Miss Mary (the-fat dog) Ann (the-fat dog)​

(If walking the fat dog doesn't appeal, try: OO ku-le le, OO ku-le le!)

As the Mighty Terror so rightly says: since I'm not a Trinidadian I can never be a true calypsonian, so I stand open to correction and clarification; but I do think that the case can now made that, prima facie at least, D-D U-UDU (the so-called 'calypso strum') does not give you a true, Trinidadian, calypso rhythm.

 

[Tootler]

Interesting, Paul.

I loved Mighty Terror's reference to the Jamaicans as "imposters"! The whole song was very witty.

As I remember it, the term "Calypso" was used as a generic term for West Indian rhythms in the 50s & early 60s here as in the USA. Harry Belafonte was the most influential West Indian artist here at that time so the Jamaican version is what people associate with "Calypso".

Thinking about those rhythms, the d du udu strum is a mirror image of the Trinidadian rhythm as it gives 2+3+3 pattern in the bar.

I'm always a bit wary of the the "strum pattern" business. It's useful for discussing ways of articulating rhythms and for getting people started but it has the danger of becoming mechanical and it doesn't necessarily capture the subtleties of the rhythms. You have to learn to "feel" the rhythm and then find a way of expressing it.

If you grow up with hearing a particular rhythm pattern, it becomes ingrained in you which, of course is what Mighty Terror was saying.

 

[redpaul1]

Interesting, Paul.
I loved Mighty Terror's reference to the Jamaicans as "imposters"! The whole song was very witty.

Glad you like it! Equally witty is Lord Kitchener's impersonation of a Jamaican accent in Jamaica Woman or a Bajan accent in Take Your Meat Out Me Rice.

[snip] Thinking about those rhythms, the d du udu strum is a mirror image of the Trinidadian rhythm as it gives 2+3+3 pattern in the bar.

Interesting Geoff! Though I did come across someone the other day talking about 'the delayed 3rd beat' being the "essence of syncopation' - don't ask me exactly where & I'm kicking myself for not taking a note - but that's kinda what's going on in the d du udu (what I'm calling 'Mento') strum, wouldn't you say?

Even so, you only have to move a beat slightly to get a very different sound. If you compare the son clave

​

with the rumba clave,

​

the only difference is that 3rd note in bar 1 being shifted over 1/16th of a beat (from 2& to 2a), but it makes all the difference in the world to the rhythm: 3/2 Son & Rumba Clave Comparison (1st 16 secs Son Clave; 2nd 16 secs Rumba Clave).

I'm always a bit wary of the the "strum pattern" business. It's useful for discussing ways of articulating rhythms and for getting people started but it has the danger of becoming mechanical and it doesn't necessarily capture the subtleties of the rhythms. You have to learn to "feel" the rhythm and then find a way of expressing it.

If you grow up with hearing a particular rhythm pattern, it becomes ingrained in you which, of course is what Mighty Terror was saying.

Oh, I quite agree. As you say it's a useful jumping-off point. What astonished me was that there was so little out there, and how much I had to piece together. The first description I found was of it being a 3+3+2 pattern. That was on a drum forum, and it left me completely perplexed, until finally I found in a Google 'book' search (since lost, but I'm convinced it was from Fred Noad's Playing The Guitar 3rd ed[SUP]n[/SUP] 1981, because the extract I read definitely contained) this sentence: "Calypso The most typical rhythm in Calypso style consists of eight equal eighth-note beats stressed thus: one-two- three, one-two-three, one-two."

For some reason, I can now only find that sentence if I perform a regular Google search for Noad calypso rhythm - the extract itself and the recommendations for strumming patterns to obtain that rhythm have disappeared from Google books preview - but nonetheless that extract (the only guitar - or ukulele - tutorial I ever did find) enabled me to make sense of the 3+3+2 characterisation I'd seen on the drum forum.

I tried for a while to practice and develop a D-u-d UD-u D-u strum, but I just wasn't getting it - until I went back to look again at the Djembe calypso tutorial I mentioned previously. I'd watched it (and many others!), several times previously, without figuring out a way it could help. But having now discovered from Noad how the count went, suddenly the "Walk The Fat Dog" tutorial now showed me how the count should sound - and then I started hearing it in pretty nearly every calypso (and in every other djembe calypso tutorial!) I listened to.

And that's how I came to put this post together. The section on the difference between mento and calypso was supposed to occupy just two lines in a handout on reggae strumming & playing, but it took at least 3 times as long to write those two lines as the rest of the handout put together!

It's fair to say I've become pretty much obsessed with calypso over the last month, & I think I've now managed to work out a count for the whole 3+3+2 beat: WALK-un-to THE-FAT-a DOG-a WALK-un-to THE-FAT-a DOG-a WALK-un-to THE-FAT-a DOG-a (try tapping out WALK THE-FAT DOG on one hand while tapping 'un-to', '-a', '-a', with the other); but I'm still astonished that there's no authoritative guide to playing solo calypso on guitar/ukulele around anywhere online*. If there are any Trinis lurking, do put in your 2¢ worth!

*though yesterday I received from Paris, kindly sent to me by Percy Copley, also acquainted with my obsession with calypso(!), a photocopy of some sheets from John Pearse's Ukulele Method from 1968, describing the 'Calypso Slap' (er-CHING er-DUMP), and the Calypso strum (CHING DUM CHING CHING DUM CHING CHING). If anyone knows where I could lay my hands on a copy...

 

[padlin]

Do you folks have inter library lending? I see copies in Chester, East Yorkshire, and Birmingham.

 

[ukatee]

There is one on ebay at the moment: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/The-John-...47-/182421521130?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368

 

[redpaul1]

There is one on ebay at the moment: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/The-John-...47-/182421521130?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368

Cheers! Bought it!!