When Garfield Blackman, the sharp-dressing “saga boy” calypso star also
known as Lord Shorty, metamorphosed into a barefoot prophet in simple white
robes, packed up his life and took his family to live in the forest, people
said he was crazy.
Matriarch Claudette Blackman
Photography by Mark Lyndersay
That a man who had been charged with indecency for his on-stage antics during a performance of a song called The Art of Making Love, a man allegedly as versed at fathering illegitimate children as at lyric-making, should suddenly start talking about God, was unthinkable. But Garfield Blackman was a complex man. Blessed with intelligence and charisma, he possessed both a taste for carnal pleasures and the spirit of a social reformer. He could turn a salacious phrase better than most, but he could also write serious social commentaries. He was serious about music as well.
“He was the only one who would stay back and really get his music together,” says Claudette Blackman, Shorty’s widow, of the days when the two of them were part of a musical revue that toured southern Trinidad back in the 1960s. “Everybody else would run through quickly and say, ‘Alright that’s good, that’s good’.” Shorty’s application impressed Claudette enough for her to forget his initially awkward advances and take him seriously as a partner — they married in 1964.
By that time Lord Shorty had already made a name for himself in south Trinidad. He won the South Calypso King title in 1962, and reached the finals of the National Calypso Monarch competition in 1968. In 1973 he attracted attention with two controversial songs, Indrani, a chronicle of African/Indian romance which telegraphed the nation’s racial anxieties, and the aforementioned Art of Making Love.
Eldon and Nehilet Blackman
Photography by Mark Lyndersay
As the 60s ran into the 70s and calypso seemed to be ceding its regional dominance to a fledgling sound emanating from Jamaica, musicians and performers started to talk, in the way only Trinidadians can, about calypso having run its course. To Shorty, however, this was a sign that the music needed not abandoning, but revamping. “He was so perturbed, and really angry about that,” says Claudette. “He’d say, ‘How they could just leave the music to play some kind of Yankee boogaloo?’”
Thus began the series of experimentations that would result in the development of soca. Shorty had grown up in Lengua, a predominantly East Indian village, and felt that a new national music should, or could, incorporate Indian rhythms, a notion which didn’t prove as acceptable to the wider — and predominantly African-heritage — community of calypsonians and musicians. He tested some of these ideas on his 1974 album The Love Man.. . .
Matriarch Claudette Blackman
Photography by Mark Lyndersay
That a man who had been charged with indecency for his on-stage antics during a performance of a song called The Art of Making Love, a man allegedly as versed at fathering illegitimate children as at lyric-making, should suddenly start talking about God, was unthinkable. But Garfield Blackman was a complex man. Blessed with intelligence and charisma, he possessed both a taste for carnal pleasures and the spirit of a social reformer. He could turn a salacious phrase better than most, but he could also write serious social commentaries. He was serious about music as well.
“He was the only one who would stay back and really get his music together,” says Claudette Blackman, Shorty’s widow, of the days when the two of them were part of a musical revue that toured southern Trinidad back in the 1960s. “Everybody else would run through quickly and say, ‘Alright that’s good, that’s good’.” Shorty’s application impressed Claudette enough for her to forget his initially awkward advances and take him seriously as a partner — they married in 1964.
By that time Lord Shorty had already made a name for himself in south Trinidad. He won the South Calypso King title in 1962, and reached the finals of the National Calypso Monarch competition in 1968. In 1973 he attracted attention with two controversial songs, Indrani, a chronicle of African/Indian romance which telegraphed the nation’s racial anxieties, and the aforementioned Art of Making Love.
Eldon and Nehilet Blackman
Photography by Mark Lyndersay
As the 60s ran into the 70s and calypso seemed to be ceding its regional dominance to a fledgling sound emanating from Jamaica, musicians and performers started to talk, in the way only Trinidadians can, about calypso having run its course. To Shorty, however, this was a sign that the music needed not abandoning, but revamping. “He was so perturbed, and really angry about that,” says Claudette. “He’d say, ‘How they could just leave the music to play some kind of Yankee boogaloo?’”
Thus began the series of experimentations that would result in the development of soca. Shorty had grown up in Lengua, a predominantly East Indian village, and felt that a new national music should, or could, incorporate Indian rhythms, a notion which didn’t prove as acceptable to the wider — and predominantly African-heritage — community of calypsonians and musicians. He tested some of these ideas on his 1974 album The Love Man.. . .
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