SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
A calypso legend has died.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DAN IS THE MAN (IN THE VAN)")
MIGHTY SPARROW: (Singing) According to the education you get...
PFEIFFER: The Mighty Sparrow, whose given name was Slinger Francisco, was born in Grenada in 1935. He moved to Trinidad when he was just a baby.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
His music was vibrant and sunny and meant for dancing, but Sparrow also delivered sharp social commentary...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JEAN AND DINAH")
SPARROW: (Singing) No more Yankees in Trinidad. They going to close down the base for good. Them girls have to make out how they could.
SUMMERS: ...Like his first major hit in 1956, "Jean And Dinah," about the fallout sex workers faced when American troops withdrew from Trinidad.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JEAN AND DINAH")
SPARROW: (Singing) Jean and Dinah, Rosita and Clementina...
PFEIFFER: Throughout his career, Sparrow's wordplay came to define his music. He had a lot of double entendres, and he had a sharp political tongue. In 1991, conflict erupted in Brooklyn, when a Guyanese American child was accidentally killed by a Jewish driver. In just days, Sparrow says he wrote the song, "Crown Heights Justice."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CROWN HEIGHTS JUSTICE")
SPARROW: (Singing) I can't take the confusion with the Crown Heights man. We all have to live in peace.
PFEIFFER: He explained his motivations to the NPR program Horizons.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
SPARROW: This was going on. What do you tell people, how to jump and shake and whine? And in my mind, that, you know, something had to be said about what is happening.
SUMMERS: But Sparrow could be playful, too. Here he is on Morning Edition back in 2002, demonstrating his ability to improvise calypso lyrics on the fly.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
SPARROW: You're trying to put Sparrow on the spot, but no kind of spot could be ever so hot. You sit on the radio, want me to talk. Well, believe I'm here in New York. But I'll tell you candidly, you can't get away down there in D.C.
PFEIFFER: Sparrow wrote more than 500 songs and recorded more than 70 albums, and he performed well into his old age. The writer Joshua Jelly-Schapiro saw Sparrow perform in Harlem just six years ago.
JOSHUA JELLY-SCHAPIRO: He sounded wonderful. He sang gorgeously. And for many West Indian people, beyond Trinidad but also around the world, was really iconic of the last half century of life for Caribbean people everywhere.
SUMMERS: Mighty Sparrow, the calypso great, has died. He was 91 years old.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DAN IS THE MAN (IN THE VAN)")
SPARROW: (Singing) You will grow up with true ambition and respect from one and all. But in my days in school, they teach me like a fool. The things they teach me, I should be a block-headed mule. And what they teach you. They tell me Pussy has finished his work long ago, and now he resting and thing. Soloman Gundy was born on a Monday. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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