Found at: http://www.anguillaguide.com/article/articleprint/3562/-1/140/
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Dr. Liverpool "Chalkdust" Favours Calypso In Schools
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If Dr. Hollis Liverpool had his way, the calypso art form and its rich attendant cultural heritage would be taught in schools in the Caribbean region.
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“Chalkdust” makes a point
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Dr. Liverpool, an Associate Professor of History at the University of the Virgin Islands, has just completed a three-day workshop for Anguillian calypsonians along similar lines to workshops he conducted in a number of neighbouring islands. He is originally from Trinidad and Tobago and is a noted calypsonian (with the stage name “Chalkdust”), having recorded over 300 songs and won several competitions.
He has been in St. Vincent, Grenada, St. Kitts, Tortola, St. Croix and St. Thomas conducting calypso seminars. He will be going to Trinidad to run a workshop there for three months.
He was invited to Anguilla by Je Le Cour Productions, an entertainment company formed by Jerry “Dice” Richardson, Leroy Richardson and Courtney Morton, which is responsible for organising the senior calypso competition on behalf of the Carnival and Summer Festival. The Youth and Cultural Division of the Ministry of Social Development joined Je Le Cour Productions in facilitating the Calypso Development Workshop.
Dr. Liverpool, who has been singing calypsos since 1967, was educated at the University of the West Indies and the University of Michigan. “I sing calypsos and have realised that in my life as we sing calypsos and take part in the culture, that we have learnt the art form through apprenticeship learning as it were...
“Probably if I had the training in the art form years ago, I would have been a better calypsonian. So what I have been doing for the past ten years is organising seminars in different islands for calypsonians hoping that when we bring a certain amount of training to them, that they will understand the art form better and make better calpsonians.
According to Dr. Liverpool, a problem affecting calypso in the region is that many of the singers are not educated to at least secondary education. “It you don’t have a certain level of education, you can’t make a calypso,” he declared. “It takes a certain amount of knowledge to be a good calypsonian; and so lack of education and training causes this big gap, abyss, as it were. When people look at the art form long ago and today, they see a big gap.”
He said calypso was an art form involving the use of metaphors, similes, alliteration and all other figures of speech to cover intentions and to get across messages of social commentary at its best.
Asked whether, because of its historical and cultural heritage, he would recommend the teaching of the calypso art form in schools, Dr. Liverpool replied: “That’s my task in the Caribbean. I am trying to change the Caribbean…Our teachers do not use culture to teach our students. One of the things in which we have failed in the Caribbean, is to bring the culture into the education process… Teachers can’t see culture as a tool for education, a tool to read and to write. For historical days, there is a calypso; for every value there is a calypso. Whether it is biology, other science or social studies, there are calypsos for everything, but we don’t carry them in the classroom because the teachers don’t teach them.
“What we need to do, is to bring the calypso in the classroom not just singing, composing and teaching music; but to teach lessons of history and lessons of sociology; the calypso has not reached our children yet because there are no teachers.”