Trinidad and Tobago Friday gave Dr. Slinger Francisco his final encore signifying the absolute conclusion of a performance that lasted more than seven decades and that took him to all corners of the globe.
Two prime ministers and a star-studded cast of local and regional artistes graced the stage at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) opposite the Queen’s Park Savannah, where the Grenadian born Francisco, affectionately known in the entertainment industry as the ‘Mighty Sparrow’ performed his calypsoes, winning eight Monarch titles and an equal amount of Road March crowns.
The casket bearing the body of the singer, Dr. Slinger Francisco on stage at the National Performing Arts Academy (NAPA) on Friday (CMC Photo)
In addition, Sparrow, who died in New York on September 27, this year, at the age of 91, won two Calypso King of Kings and in the words of his grand daughter, Ashley Hutchinson, ‘birds don’t die,’ adding ‘how do you silence a sparrow whose music is everywhere’.
Sparrow’s daughter Karen Francisco, paid tribute to her father with a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s classic, ‘My Way’ while Michele Francisco in the eulogy on behalf of the family, said that her father had a ‘gift for connecting’ with people and his greatest advice to her was that ‘you don’t have to let your circumstance determine your dreams’
She said that her father did not follow the public’s blueprint and that ‘daddy did it his way’ as calypsonians and performers from around the Caribbean region and beyond sang from his extensive repertoire of copyrighted songs and master recordings.
‘This is not a funeral, we are celebrating the life of the Mighty Sparrow,’ one of the artistes, said at the NAPA, where former heads of state, Anthony Carmona and Paula Mae-Weekes, were among the hundreds of mourners attending the three and half hour long celebration that began with a music truck leading the funeral procession from downtown Port of Spain mid-morning on Friday.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said that there is need to honour the idea that someone can emerge from these small islands, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, and produce work so powerful that geography cannot contain his work.
‘And there can be no more appropriate place to inscribe his name permanently than at the Queen’s Park, Savannah. For generations, the Grandstand has looked upon this great theatre of Trinidad and Tobago’s culture.
‘Today, we ensure that one of the greatest names in our culture will forever stand there at the Queen’s Park, Savannah. I am therefore deeply honoured to announce that the Grandstand at the Queen’s Park, Savannah will bear the name of Dr. Slinger Francisco, the Mighty Sparrow.’
She said that when Trinidad and Tobago gathers there to celebrate its culture, the name Sparrow will stand above all.
‘Sparrow has handed us his music It’s our responsibility to carry it forward and then to build something even greater. I say we will refurbish the Grandstand and we will name it in the honour of the Mighty Sparrow.
‘Today, the microphone is silent. The performer has left the stage. But listen very carefully. The music has not stopped. It is playing in our homes. It is playing in our hearts and it is playing across the Caribbean and the world. It is playing wherever Caribbean people meet, wherever they gather and remember home, the Caribbean.’
Persad-Bissessar said that while no death can erase that story, likewise no generation can remove what Sparrow has written into the cultural DNA of our people in the Caribbean.
‘So today, we do simply say not just goodbye. We say thank you. Thank you, Sparrow Thank you for the laughter. Thank you for the music. Thank you for giving generations of Trinidadians and Tobagonians a song track to all eyes, but also for all of the Caribbean people.
‘Thank you for carrying Trinidad and Tobago with you wherever you went. Thank you, Sparrow,’ she said, noting that the artiste had his idea as to where he would be going into the future when he added the word Mighty to the sobriquet, Sparrow.
‘In his own way, he declared that there was nothing quite like a Mighty Sparrow. Indeed, Sparrow, rest now. You have sung your songs. You have run your race. You have made your people proud. The king has left the stage, but the song goes on.
‘May Dr. Singer Francisco, our Mighty Sparrow, rest in eternal peace. May his music, his memory, and his mighty spirit live forever in the soul of Trinidad, Tobago, and the Caribbean,’ Persad-Bissessar added.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said that ‘we have a duty to ensure that one who walked among us and one who allowed our voice to rise loud and powerful gave us the core of what we as a post-colonial people must seek to do’ must not be forgotten.
She said Sparrow through ‘parody and fighting colonial education’ with his tunes or setting the standard of what education really is, had also set the stage for ‘affirming our identity’.
Mottley said she would urge her fellow Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders to ensure the Sparrow tune ‘Slave’ must be a core part of the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) curriculum ‘ so that every single child of this Caribbean understands both the pain but the mission that that song presented
‘I don’t think that there is a stronger theatrical performance of any song in the Caribbean from when we took control of our faith, or whether it was in those things that identified the discomfort in the moment of the time when Dr. Williams introduced income tax with pay as you earn, or whether years later when Trinidad came into its own bounty and he reminded us of capitalism and the nature to which it could go mad.
‘Whether it was speaking to the international community from the very, very early days with Russian satellite, or as he came later in life to reflect on how democracy was turning into all other kinds of political systems and he reminded us that sometimes they needed to be wanted dead or alive.
‘Whether it was in the parodying of local politics and I don’t need to remind you in Trinidad of how you like it so. My friends, the Americans would tell us of the greatness of jazz…and jazz allowed the black people of the United States of America to improvise and to teach the rest of the world improvisation.’
But she said Trinidad and Tobago taught the world about picong and that there was no greater expression of picong than through the Mighty Sparrow.
‘But more importantly, the Lord blessed him with the voice to make that melody song better than anyone else could ever sing it,’ Mottley said describing Sparrow as a ‘genius’ and pyig tribue also several Caribbean artistes and sports personalities like Emil Straker and Sir Garry Sobers of Barbados and the ‘great Jimmy Cliff’ of Jamaica.
‘We in the Caribbean are moving in to a period of post-independence that is beyond six decades and invariably, it means that those who helped create this great post-independence Caribbean civilisation will come to pass from this earth
‘We have a duty in every sphere in which they have expressed greatness, not just Caribbean greatness, but global greatness. We have a duty to those who must come to show them that when people say we punch above our weight, persons like the Mighty Sparrow redefined what was our weight.’
The Mighty Sparrow will be buried on Saturday.