Look de ban comin! - An analysis
by Winford James
February 29, 2004
Posted: March 03, 2004
After energising fete-goers at the all-inclusives, and moving masqueraders in the streets and at the Savannah, Shurwayne Winchester's soca song Look de band coming has taken the 2004 Road March title. Congratulations are of course in order, but I am more interested in this column in analysing, not how the song brought pleasure to thousands, but how its title (which is also the first line of its chorus) is structured. Let me get to the task one-time.
I have deliberately written the title differently from the way it is normally written to more easily focus on some aspects of its pronunciation. Its normal spelling is 'Look de band coming', in which a 'd' is included in 'band' and a 'g' in 'coming' although they are not pronounced. They are included because the words they appear in are English words that are traditionally spelt that way. Spelt that way, they are capable of at least two pronunciations - the Standard one with the 'd' and 'g' sounds, and a non-Standard one without those sounds. The Standard pronunciation was doubtless produced by some fete-goers and masqueraders, especially some of those from United States and Britain, but the non-Standard one was far more popular, hence my spelling of the title.
We must note that the normal spelling does not disallow or hinder the non-Standard pronunciation. Literate people will see it and still produce that pronunciation. They will do so, not because they are either deliberately abandoning aspects of their literacy or experiencing a temporary unconscious lapse in literate production, but because they are expressing / reflecting a sociolinguistic habit, itself born of rules they have mentally computed from linguistic practice all around them. In Creole-speaking persons, there is a mental rule that says something like 'Do not cluster two voiced consonants at the end of a word'. Which would yield 'ban' rather than 'band', since the cluster 'nd' contains two voiced consonants. And there is another mental rule that says something like 'Do not use an 'ng' sound after the vowel 'i' in the last syllable of a word with more than one syllable'. Which would yield words like 'comin', 'mornin', and 'Mannin'.
The second rule would not apply to words like 'sing', 'wajang', or (the pseudonym) 'Sprangalang'. 'Sing' has only one syllable, so the 'ng' is pronounced. Indeed, the only way Creole speakers pronounce words like it (e.g., 'ring', 'king, 't(h)ing') is with 'ng'; the 'g' sound has to be there. 'Wajang' and 'Sprangalang are words with more than one syllable, but they do not lose their 'ng' sound, because the vowel is 'a', not 'i'. 'Sprangalang' is particularly interesting because it is a personal invention that (unconsciously?) reflects the rule in that it has to be pronounced with the 'ng'; neither Dennis Hall nor anyone else says 'Sprangalan'. In inventing the word, Dennis seemed to have 'known' that since he was using an 'a' rather than an 'i' in the last syllable, he could have his 'ng' sound!
There is clearly a system to what some people mistakenly call speech corruption!
More important than the constraints on voiced consonant clusters and 'ng' is the syntactic (or, if you prefer, the grammatical) structure of 'Look de ban comin'. As I hear the exclamation, there is little in it that is characteristically Standard. Yes, the word order is characteristically Standard; we have a silent, 'understood' subject in 'you', followed by a verb ('look'), followed by an object ('de ban'), followed by an extension ('comin'). Let's call that order the S(ubject) V(erb) O(bject) order. Standard English shares SVO with many other languages, including Creole. But, beyond the order, there is structure in the title not available in Standard English.
'Look' is an English verb, but it cannot be followed by an object in English in any type of sentence, while it can in Creole in a sentence type I will call 'exclamative imperative'. In English, one cannot say 'Look the band!', but in Creole, one can say 'Look de ban!'. And, implicationally, one cannot in English say 'Look the ban coming!' (that is, one cannot include an extension), while one can in Creole, as in our title 'Look de ban comin!'. Which means - My God! - that Shurwayne could not use English to produce the line that gave fete-goers and masqueraders so much pleasure and that won him Road March 2004! In English, one can express the same message, but one would have to say something like 'Look! The band is coming!'.
Compare the two ways of producing the message. The Creole way is seamless in its intonation - one unbroken contour of tones - while the English way has two contours, one in 'Look!', and the other in 'The band is coming!'. You have got to pause after 'Look!', and pick up your intonation (and your breath!) again with 'The band....' Not good for feting at all! There can be no doubt that the Creole intonation pattern is better suited for delivery and repetition of the message in a festive atmosphere!
This is a Creole innovation, ladies and gentlemen, which the soca artist has intuitively exploited to produce fete music. It is a part of him, part not only of his cultural self, but of his mental store of linguistic rules which he selects from for the artistic creation of message. Shurwayne probably could not manipulate English in that way; he would certainly have had to have an intuitive sense of, among other things, the capacity of English intonational structure for a seamless line like 'Look de ban comin!'.
The line is perhaps evidence for the view, held passionately by some, that the best calypso and soca lyrics are produced in Creole, not in English.
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