FEDERATION • HANGMAN'SCEMETERY • SMART BAJAN • ROBBERY WrTH V• B. G. WAR • RENEGADES TAKE YOUR BUNDLE AND GO • NO. 69 • WAHBEEN AND GROG • SPARROW COME BACK HOME LPB 3006 SPARROW COME BACK HOME Carmel Buckley and Mark Harris Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts Wilmington, Delaware March 1, 2014–June 8, 2014 A Theoretical Archive As Exhibition by Maiza Hixson Sparrow Come Back Home: Calypso and Mighty Sparrow’s Calypsos by Mark Harris Copyright © 2014 by Carmel Buckley and Mark Harris All rights reserved. DCCA-ISBN# 0-9785927-6-X Thanks to to Guy Michael Davis and Katie Parker for their invaluable help with production of the work for the exhibition. Thanks to Chris Harvey for image editing. Thanks to Ann Bremner for proofreading. Thanks to Michaela Birner, Leipold International GmbH, for decal production. Catalogue design by Jim Chapa. This exhibition was supported by Goldsmiths College of Art, University of London. This publication was supported by a grant from the the College of Art & Humanities, The Ohio State University. A THEORETICAL ARCHIVE For their three-month exhibition entitled Sparrow Come Back Home, Carmel Buckley and Mark Harris install a temporary monument AS EXHIBITION to the living Trinidadian legend and Calypso singer Mighty Sparrow, born Slinger Francisco. Suggestive of a record Maiza Hixson store with 272 ceramic reproductions of Sparrow’s albums on shelves, the memorial also stands as a conceptual gesture—toward the commemoration of vintage vinyl and rapidly obsolescent record store. Each standard album-sized ceramic tile sits in chronological order and is emblazoned with a reproduced album cover design appropriated from the front and back of each of Sparrow’s LPs made between 1958 and the present. The covers are decals that are vitrified to the ceramic tile, forming a unique fossilized record of silence. In planning for this theoretical archive as exhibition, which the artists described as “non-cochlear,” curatorial discussions at the DCCA centered around how to translate the power of Sparrow’s verse without playing any of his actual songs in the gallery. Would this omission create a barrier for visitors to be able to appreciate his music and the impact of Buckley and Harris’s art? Furthermore, what is the ultimate significance of presenting a silent inventory of a singer’s life’s work? As Buckley and Harris write in a statement about the exhibition, part of the context for the silent monument is the ironic indifference felt towards Mighty Sparrow’s voice in the U.S. and in Britain compared to other world music. Growing up in England and raised by a Trinidadian mother, Harris only knew of the singer by virtue of the fact that his mother played Sparrow’s albums around the house. Despite Mighty Sparrow’s repertoire and influence in the Caribbean and limited exposure in North America and Britain, the American Harry Belafonte’s popularized version in the U.S. eclipsed Sparrow’s authentic calypso. It is not difficult to surmise that the Mighty Sparrow was censored from 1960s radio play, given the politically subversive nature of his musical protest against racial and class discrimination and the sexually charged nature of his lyrics. With the literal silencing of Sparrow’s Trinidadian slang and colorful English, it is fitting that Harris and Buckley would in turn stage a silent critique of the indifference shown Sparrow’s voice in the West. As visitors to Sparrow Come Back Home, we may also interpret Carmel Buckley and Mark Harris’s monumental exhibition as the visualization of a vast void in our own awareness of marginalized cultures—specifically, Calypso music and history. The conspicuous absence of information about Mighty Sparrow in dominant Western culture ultimately becomes the impetus to seek out his and other obscured voices upon exiting the gallery. opposite page: Maiza Hixson is the Gretchen Hupfel Curator of Contemporary Bang Bang Lulu in New York, digital Art, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts decals on ceramic tiles, 2014 Mighty Sparrow with Sparrow’s Troubadours, Hilary Records vinyl LP cover, recorded Port of Spain, Trinidad, 1969 Crown Heights Justice, digital decals on ceramic tiles, 2014 Mighty Sparrow, Charlie’s Records, Brooklyn, vinyl LP cover, recorded Brooklyn, 1991 next page, left: Calypso Carnival with The Mighty Sparrow, digital decals on ceramic tiles, 2014 Mighty Sparrow, Melodisc Records Ltd., London, vinyl LP cover, recorded Port of Spain, Trinidad, 1968 Carnival Jam, digital decals on ceramic tiles, 2014 Mighty Sparrow, BLS Records, U.S. Virgin Islands, vinyl LP cover, recorded Brooklyn, 1995 next page, right: Digital ceramic decals. 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