UNIVERSITY OF CALYPSO | Transcriptions and song notes by Michael Oliver-Goodwin

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Bottle and Spoon

Back in the 1930s, before Trinis figured out how to tune an oil drum to play musical notes, a steelband was a bunch of people beating out rhythm on paint cans, garbage can covers, brake drums, and...bottle and spoon. Even today, when steelbands play in the street they are often accompanied by a crowd of enthusiastic amateurs whanging metal spoons on their bottles of beer. Or rum. Whenever a bunch of bottle-and-spoon players converge, complicated polyrhythms are automatic. Relator wrote this one in 1981.

Footnotes

1 - Here, "parang" means "to play enthusiastically." Literally, parang refers to Latin-influenced music popular in Trinidad at Christmas time.

2 - goh = going to = will

3 - filled halfway up

4 - An iron man beats on a steel brake drum in a steelband's rhythm section—setting an exciting groove

Is music time
In any gang
When you'll see
Man start to parang'[1]
All the instruments
Does be in tune
But dey don't leave out
De bottle and spoon

(CHORUS)
See wi' bottle and spoon
Man does be ringin' out real tune
The drum and bass
Goh'[2] fall in place
Your bottle half'[3] with water
Bacchanal and manslaughter
Sweet music in de place

I heard it from
A steelband man
He name Bradshaw
He's a iron man'[4]
Yes he told me plain
Dat very soon
Panmen goin' back
To bottle and spoon

(CHORUS)

Whiskey bottle
Or rum bottle
Does sound real nice,
When ah man rattle
So de Carnival
Dis year go' be hell
Is a bacchanal
Plenty spoon go' sell

(CHORUS)

If yuh bottle small
You mus' realize
Dat de spoon to use
Is a medium size
But if yuh spoon too large
Well den is manslaughter
Yuh bottle going to break
And throw way de water

(CHORUS)