Lowering the bar - the Peter O'Connor column

How many of us are seriously concerned that we are even debating the issue that Machel Montano should now “give up” the Soca Monarch competition? 

The argument is that having won the title so many times he should step aside and give others a chance. Not having a degree in psychology, my opinion will of course be disputed by that growing mass of chronic victims of their own failings and failures, who believe that their advancement depends on removing the competition rather than overcoming it.

The notion that excellence must be punished by its removal is only discussed in Trinidad, not in Tobago, a society not quite as cursed as Trinidad’s, and therefore not as addicted to failure and the pathetic whining of victimhood. 

How, might I ask, will the removal of Machel, or indeed anyone good enough to be a consistent winner of anything, advance the art, the sport, or the character of the individual who will inherit a title by default? I see this as discarding the cream at the top and then stirring up the dregs to sell them instead.

But I am in the minority in this country, which so fears and envies excellence, even within ourselves, that we continually lower the bar to give the incompetents “a chance”. 

This thing began in Calypso several years ago when perennial Monarch Sparrow announced that he would not participate. He did return after a few years and reclaimed his title, that demonstrating that those who won in the intervening years were simply not in his class. So his departure lowered the standard, left the art form poorer and rewarded lesser, and certainly undeserving talents.

I also believe that Sparrow, and others like Kitchener, and later Stalin, Shadow and Rudder pulled out of Calypso Monarch because of the utterly incompetent judging to which this show has often been subjected. 

Over the years some of the “judges” winners were simply insulting to the true talent on display. But even if you want to accept that all of our best calypsonians have withdrawn from Dimanche Gras because they had “won it enough times and it was time to give the lesser artistes ‘a chance’”, look to where that has brought our Calypso. 

Calypso music used to be good enough to be selected as Panorama Pieces by our Steel Bands. When last has a Dimanche Gras selection been a tune played at Panorama? And why is this?

I believe that it is largely because we are dismissing our true talent in order to let mediocrity prevail. Why is it that a concert by any one of Shadow, Stalin or Rudder can attract an appreciative audience, and yet none of these can be heard at Dimanche Gras, Calypso’s grandest show? 

What we had this year was mostly tuneless dirges about how hard life was for the poor “disadvantaged” singer.

And this attitude, that talent must yield to mediocrity in order to “give them a chance”, is not confined to our arts alone, but pervades our society in everything we do—sport, business, job promotions, everything. It kills the competitive spirit that drives success around the world. 

We have the talent and the capability to excel in so many fields, yet we settle so often for less than our potential, and we always have a “good excuse” for why we did not win, or shine.

Many years ago, in the early 1970’s, government was building a series of secondary schools throughout the country. I was construction manager on the St. Augustine Senior Secondary School. 

At each school, contractors were required to present “samples” of the work they would produce. One sample was a panel of angle cut clay blocks which, by their nature, were not easily aligned. 

The consultants, including the foreign World Bank architects were impressed with our sample, and told us to proceed. A few weeks later they visited the site. Some panels on one of the buildings were not so straight, and they pointed this out. But I, Trini to the bone, was “ready for them”. 

I had visited a few other schools under construction by other contractors, and their blockwork was inferior to even our “poorer” panels. And I told the World Bank so! They told me “We are not holding you to their standard. You are better than them, you have already demonstrated that!” So, we broke out the panels which would have been accepted on any other school, and rebuilt them to our standard!

There is a song which begins- “The higher you build your barriers, the taller I become”, but it is not for most Trinis. The masons who worked at St. Augustine grew to the challenge thrown at them, and triumphed.

Can you leap the raised bar, or should I drop it for you?