True calypsos are witty and poetic. The Ukip attempt is just puerile

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/20/ukip-calypso-attempt-puerile-immigrants

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Make it stop! For the love of God, someone PLEASE make it stop. The Ukip Calypso is blasting at full volume and it just won’t stop taking the piss.

“When we take charge, And the new prime minister is Farage … ” the chorus goes. It’s too easy to dismiss this as the worst calypso ever. It’s certainly a contender. But it knows it is; it doesn’t pretend otherwise. Will it provide a laugh and a battle cry for the party’s supporters in a “cowboys and West Indians” sort of way at the coming count in Rochester and Strood? You don’t even have to be able to sing or stay sober – this is one calypso you can do the hokey-cokey to with a pint of bitter in your hand.

In these politically correct times some sensitive souls might suggest that it’s racist to have a former Radio 1 DJ, Mike Read, satirise a Caribbean accent in such a shockingly exaggerated stereotype. But let’s face it, he’s just following a tradition that’s as old as the Windrush, the banana boat that brought the first boatload of Caribbean immigrants to this country in 1948. Is Mike Read’s faux-Trinidadian any more embarrassing or insulting than the Beatles on Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da?

The real crime, of course, is that there isn’t a government health warning on this calypso. Because listening to it may seriously damage your intelligence. True calypsos are clever, witty and poetic. They are musical newspapers with a twist on current affairs. The Ukip attempt at the art form is none of these things. It is just puerile and reduces the real issues of politics to a parody that can’t wait to stick the boot into immigrants by the second verse. The irony of using an “immigrant” voice to do this is, of course, not lost.

Do the Ukip faithful do irony? Or is this an attempt at embracing the black vote? Is it possible that there is a double irony in this Ukip calypso in which Ukip takes the mickey out of postwar immigrants while managing to get the children of those immigrants to share the joke and have a laugh at their parents’ expense? You decide.