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Reading Time 21 mins
October 30, 2020
“It is easy to remember the jocular nature of much of Sprangalang’s life on the stage. In fact, he might have wanted it that way. He was prepared to play second fiddle to his brother Anthony (Tony) who preceded by a mere five months, Sprangalang’s flight into the great beyond.”
Motley is the traditional costume of the court jester, fool, or the harlequin character in early theatre.
It took just sixty-two seconds of what must have been the finest exposition of extemporaneous witticism that a Skinner Park audience had ever witnessed, for Dennis Hall to etch his name, perhaps forever, upon the tombstone of Caribbean Comedy, in November 1998.
One hapless patron, in a foolhardy and impulsive lapse, yelled-out an untimely interruption which became the trigger for six minutes of relentless repartee.
The response was instantaneous and must have emphasized, for everyone who had ever doubted, what a weighty transgression it was, to dare to attempt to taunt a comedian as perspicacious as Mr. Hall was. The offender had clearly attempted to spar in a class that was several tiers above his own weight. The jabs were potent and powerful and, urged-on by the screams of satisfied approval from the merciless crowd, the entertainer displayed no compassion.
Perhaps the six most telling barbs came near the middle of the bout, were one generous enough to add any measure of parity to the exchange:
“You is not a twin?” Sprangalang’s rhetoric was one of unmistakable confusion.
“You should be ah twin,” he advised, “you alone cyah be so stupid….you ha’ to get help!”
Some members of the audience were, by this time, off their seats and on their feet. The enjoyment of these jibes could not be had from the discomfort of the plastic chairs that adorned the forecourt of the make-shift theatre;
Sprangalang bobbed and weaved and cornered his already helpless opponent, who was
reeling from the initial salvos, near the corner of the ring, “young boy…,”he offered.
He was almost paternal in his admonition, “yuh ha’ to question God when dey see allyuh so.
He cyah make dat in ’e own image and likeness. He did tired!”
The response of the audience was resoundingly loud and painfully appropriate. This is the Dennis Hall that theatre-goers in Trinidad & Tobago would remember: the patently disheveled stand-up humorist whose tongue could be both sweet and bitter at the same time. Audiences were known to sit up, ears tuned to the speaker boxes, listening in rapt attention. It would be unforgivable, they knew, if some trivial distraction prompted a phrase to be missed. The consequence would be the tragic, empty, jaw-dropping stare whilst their companions were screaming with delight. Mr. Hall’s tales and their telling, at home and surely in those festivals in New York, elsewhere in North America and the wider Caribbean, evoked these kinds of pertinent responses.
But he was dramatist too, of high and distinctive calibre and one whose services were therefore sought after by directors who wished to inject quality, especially of an humourous character into their productions. The national breakthrough must have come through the local television production house Gayelle which became popular in Trinidad & Tobago in the 1970s and 1980s for its presentation of a number of innovative programmes that had an indigenous focus. It was in one of their presentations that Hall transformed himself into the character Cultural Sprangalang who promised viewers that they would “lorn sumptin”(1) if they could not provide correct answers to his weekly questions. Should the correct answers be provided, the sender of the first selected envelope won “ah Gayelle Jossey.”(2)
His unique delivery of the lexicon during these ten-minute segments solidified Gayelle’s slot on national television and brought legitimacy to both the character “Cultural Sprangalang” and also the newest rendition of the Trinidadian dialect. Dennis Hall was to proceed over the next thirty-odd years to improve upon and eventually originate the delivery that finally came to characterize his use of the vernacular.
The turn of the century was to add another facet to his already impressive resume. The Vision TV series, “Lord Have Mercy” which was released in Canada in 2003 exposed another side of Hall’s creative ability. The sitcom which featured Leonie Forbes, Arnold Pinnock, and fellow Trinidadian actress Rachel Price had Hall cast as the mature, matter-of-fact Pastor Lloyd Cuthbert Stevens and a foil to the younger more dynamic Arnold Pinnock. It ran for only one season, but established Hall’s reputation as an international performer, especially after the rigors and the discipline of spending three cold months in that torturous Canadian weather. Sprang spoke bitterly about that experience regularly. The income earned apparently did little to temper his annoyance with being so far away from home.
Pauline Philip of the National Trust chats with Sprangalang during the Talk City Radio program Culture Talk.
There was more. Hall’s talents have been displayed most recently and regularly in a couple of television promotions that have brought popularity not only to the products that they promote but also to Sprangalang himself. The artiste’s unique delivery style soon became as distinctive as the products. His oral presentations became in fact more than just product promotion. Quips from these advertisements soon migrated into everyday speech patterns, so that even via his role as marketing strategist Mr. Hall was contributing to evolving patterns of common expression.
The advertisements were aired daily especially during prime time and Sprang’s demise must have concerned the businessmen. In the days immediately following his passing, ethical concerns began to emerge. Was it disrespectful, insensitive, or just callous for the owners of these business organizations to continue the promotions of their sales using images of this well-loved public figure? Should the ads be withdrawn? They are witty. They are clever. Sprangalang’s image dominates. The creations have assumed the permanency of folklore. Should they just be discarded? And for what? Respect?
While some proponents speak passionately of the ritual for the revered dead and the need to pause, reflect and worship only the memory; others point to the treasure of that wit, even in those entrepreneurial circumstances. We need to cherish; perhaps by forever re-playing the lines, digesting the tone, remembering the image, even if we stifle the laugh. Airing of these episodes cannot be against the law.
This latest controversy – not the only one since his passing – emphasizes the passion that his life evoked. It speaks as well to what ought to be done in preservation of the work of citizens like Sprangalang.
Once more the cries of Explainer, the calypsonian, in his piece entitled, “Heroes” comes to the fore;
“Oh, no, no,
He liked young people. Jonathan Simon (8 years) in conversation with Sprangalang in the Talk City studio. (July 22, 2017).
Oh, no, no
We shouldn’t treat our heroes so…”
It is easy to remember the jocular nature of much of Sprangalang’s life on the stage. In fact, he might have wanted it that way. He was prepared to play second fiddle to his brother Anthony (Tony) who preceded by a mere five months, Sprangalang’s flight into the great beyond. Dennis often told the tales of their lives at Naparima College, San Fernando, the place where he got his secondary education. His brother was “bright.” Tony eventually became an academic researcher and educator, working at universities at home and abroad.
The younger brother deliberately set out, not to “challenge” what he perceived to be the superior intellect. He took to the hedges and the tracks through the trees and thus avoided the main roads and highways. It was a considered role and one that he executed well; very well indeed. Clearly, he admired his elder brother and he spoke of how academic excellence propelled the senior Hall who was skipped; the usual reward for good progress at school in those days. It meant that a brother who was just a year younger could easily be in a class two years behind. This was Dennis’ fate and he welcomed it.
At one of the tributes to his passing, his wife spoke of his shyness and reticence; a difficult analysis to grasp if one ever witnessed any of his stage performances. It does appear however that his life was merely that….a series of stage appearances; roles that he played well. The real man however was, like in his days at Naparima College, backstage; in the shadow of his brother.
And it was backstage where Mr. Hall first met the author, perhaps thirty-five years ago, when one was the director for his school’s Drama Festival performance and the other was Stage Manager at the Naparima Bowl. It was not a pleasant encounter; for while the stage manager insisted upon the rigid adherence to the structural limitations of space and time; the young director saw the southern official as perhaps an impediment to the success of a college from the north. Such were the vagaries of the competition, thirty-five years ago.
Sprangalang was to continue-on to master the role of the stage manager, but also to become playwright, archivist, lights and sound engineer and emcee; roles at the back of, at the side of, briefly on-and-off, but rarely under the lights or at the center of the stage. His attempts at self-efficacy, however, were only short-lived and temporary. The stage beckoned as we have seen and Mr. Dennis Hall rose to become comedian, actor, dramatist, talk-show host, and singer.
The singing, like the episodes that we have previously related, were saturated with comedy and demonstrated once more his ability to infuse most of what he did on stage with improvisations and interpretations that were so ridiculous that the listener had fewer options besides paroxysms of laughter.
In “Bring Drinks,” he speaks as he sings:
“Don’t drink that boy
That is Chow Chow(3)
That is to put on the ham
When saying so
Who cook this thing, boy?
The sponge cake hard
The black cake soft
The sorrel ripe
The ginger beer green
What it is?
But is ah dog show!
Besides, leh we eh complain, eh
Bring anything
We drinking Flit(4) and all, yes
We just want something
To control the stomach,
’Til we reach home
Because this thing
Go make we large intestine
Look small….”
“Culture Talk” on Talk City 91.1 FM, (October 15, 2017). Sprangalang interviews Dr. Louis Regis about his new book, “Race, Ethnicity & Nationalism in the T&T Calypso.”
But Dennis Hall was not all about the laughter. If, on the stage, comedy was the façade, off the stage he was stripped bare, honest and fearless about the reality of his own existence…this was especially so in that latter years of his life And, this was when the writer got to know him best.
He came to Talk City 91.1 FM late in 2013 and functioned as co-host for a variety of programs. It was remarkable how he quietly slipped into place, like the piece from a jigsaw puzzle, wherever he was placed. He sat with the journalists, radio personalities, and politicians and made sensible and provocative commentary on a range of issues. Whether it was economics, sport, business, or the arts, Sprangalang was knowledgeable and could provide analysis and analogy. This was his strength.
He had not, despite the pretense, wasted his years. He spoke simply of how his days – rather his nights – were spent. He would leave the radio station on Maraval Road and journey home. He left his phone “downstairs” – one could never reach him directly – and went upstairs to his chores.
There, in the secluded comfort of the upper floor of his home, he would become himself again. He listened to the radio. He viewed documentaries. He organized his music. He read. He was completely occupied until it was time to emerge, descend and be driven into Port of Spain (or San Fernando; he did free-lance work at another radio station there, as well) for a show.
Sprangalang, Larry Lumsden, Khadijah Ameen (future senator), and Wendell Etienne, (comedian, dramatist, and radio host) in a photo (circa 2011) draped by the Power 102 FM banner. The three gentlemen worked at the station then. (AZP News, photo)
The measure of the man, for this writer, was Sprangalang’s interaction with the “youngsters.” Between the date of his assumption of duties at Talk City in September 2013 and his sudden departure when he first fell ill in mid-2019, Mr. Hall developed significantly endearing relationships with a few of the younger broadcasters..
First there was Larry Lumsden, journalist cum politician, whose weekend show consisted of random conversations on things in general. Lumsden whose credentials included penning speeches for the prime minister, provided weekly lunches for Sprangalang and encouraged him to sit and discuss the politics and social issues of the day. Sprang’s “spin” on things was blunt, exciting, and objective all at once and Lumsden loved it and encouraged Sprang’s participation in the weekly discussions, until changes in the political superstructure encouraged Lumsden to seek his fortunes elsewhere; not at Talk City.
Then there was Jude Campbell, the technician turned broadcaster who quickly amassed quite a following to his “afternoon drive” shows on Talk City. Campbell analyzed global and local issues daily and engaged the listeners in provocative debate on current topics. On Saturdays, however, after his three-hour sojourn with this presenter – the show was called “Culture Talk” — Sprangalang would never leave the studio, at least, not for a couple of hours. Campbell who took the succeeding shift beginning at 4:00 p.m. would encourage Sprangalang to remain. Sprang always protested – every Saturday – but remain he did, and encouraged by Campbell’s questions and the responses from listeners, mentor and mentee brightened the airwaves until News time at 7:00 p.m.
Jude Campbell – Afternoon Drive host on Talk City 91.1 FM. – one of Sprangalang’s ‘students.’
Campbell spoke glowingly of Dennis Hall…“…an interesting character…. that had a lot to offer. All you had to do was pry… and it wouldn’t take long to get him going. He was always willing…just give him the opportunity…just unlock the door and he would come bursting out with information and insight and knowledge…”
Those who – and there were many like that – only knew Sprangalang as the emcee or the comedian at Laugh Festivals were sometimes awe-struck by the profundity of his intellectual assessments. The man who, for whatever reason never followed the dream of being a schoolmaster like his father, somehow inherited that capacity for the didactic. Listeners tuned in because they knew that they would be stimulated and that they would “lorn somet’ing.” Sprangalang’s presence gave Talk City that edge on Saturday afternoons and it was lamentable that station management did not properly maximize the trump cards that it was holding in its hand.
Sprangalang continued to operate under the cloak of ignorance. He often made reference to this writer’s exchange with callers to the station; “I doh talk English like Short Pants, an’ dem,” he would say as if he had to legitimize his use of a particular brand of the vernacular. It was not, I think, an insincerity….nonchalance, perhaps! Maybe it would be closer to the truth if one argued that the veneer he had developed, since his school days, in deference to his brother, had become transforming and had thus deliberately morphed into the characteristics of other areas of his life. He pretended to be simple and ordinary.
He claimed the clown’s suit, the shoes, the nose et al, but it was all a façade. Any serious interaction with Dennis Hall, told the discerning listener who he really was. Had he the capacity to be more honest about these things, he would have candidly stated like Festus in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night; “I wear not motley in my brain.” That did not happen, so now one is, at this time, forced to wonder how much of this “posturing” had transferred itself into other aspects of his lifestyle and might have ultimately led to his undoing.
Asked once by Gayelle TV presenter, the late Marcia Henville, to explain his manner of dress – “disheveled,” is what she called it – Sprangalang’s quick retort was the “cost.” It was simply cheaper, he insisted to dress in the way that he did – slippers, trousers, tourist-shirt, and a bath-towel thrown carelessly over his shoulder. Occasionally, a cap would be used to complete the wardrobe.
One must reflect too upon the 2008 diagnosis by his doctors after his wife took him for a check-up. Did their conclusion prompt any change in his habits; an alteration in his craving for sweet things, for example? It is difficult – knowing what we know now, to conclude that it did. The subsequent final warning in June, 2019, when he had to be rushed into hospital must therefore have been a conflagration caused by a symbiotic unproductive disharmony of elements of mind and body over a period of, at least, a dozen years!
Some may have thought then that this was it, but Sprang – to the credit of the staff at the Eric Williams Medical Science Complex – bounced back! After four long days of troubling concern, he was sitting up and chatting with his brother who had dropped everything and flown-in to be at his sibling’s side.
Diabetes was only one of four challenges that he was discharged to face, but soon enough he was strong enough to revert to a kind of normalcy. There were the clinics and the medication yes, but Suzie set up his computer and its appendages downstairs and he began to continue the research and to make the occasional television appearance and to present on the southern radio station where he was listed as a member of the board.
Gerelle Forbes, the third of three youngsters who had sat at Sprangalang’s knee while he was at Talk City, was the second one to leave the station. Her love for Sprang was evident. She called him ‘Sprangy Poo’ while they shared the station’s microphones and when he had to leave, she was not far behind; in more ways than one. Her appreciation for the man was manifest in the deeds that she performed. She rallied when Suzie needed a rest. She would visit him at home to take him to his clinics to collect his medication and to chat.
Listeners had tuned-in keenly as the relationship bloomed on the airwaves and one had telephoned one afternoon to say that what she was hearing reminded her of RW Emerson’s poem, The Mountain and the Squirrel.
Sprangalang was the Sage and Gerelle was the eager student grasping at every weighty morsel. The author interviewed her via telephone on Culture Talk – the show that Sprangalang had previously co-hosted, on Saturday 03 October, twenty-fours after Dennis Hall had passed-on.
Gerelle’s impassioned words, in between the sobs, do a number of things. They begin as a tremendous outpouring of love and gratitude. They also serve to end this writer’s tribute to a colleague that he came to respect and admire. But in between the two memoirs to Dennis Hall – the Sprangalang; there is the widening chasm that Trinbagonians have yet to learn how to fix and fill.
Gerelle Forbes worked with Sprangalang at Talk City. (Elliot Francis Photography).
When you interacting with him, there’s no sense of celebrity about it…none..…none at all, when it comes to Sprang! None! Sprang is just a simple man who like what he like and da’iz it!(5)
And me having this opportunity now….we talking on air..…fine…but when we off-air is another conversation…. and eventually that change and it was just Sprang and I ….Monday to Friday….and den boom….dey gi’ we(6) Saturday too.….and nobody eh taking orn wha’ we doing…..and when we come off air, we talking still. When yuh go out in front….it had ah bench in front CNMG [Caribbean New Media Group], after our shift done….Sprang and I sit dong dey and people watching……and what was important for me about the whole thing…..is that I could ask Sprang anything, Mr Pants. It have nothing…. I could not ask Sprang. Sprang would answer me. Sprang would always answer me. To this day….I learn more about my culture. I learn more about…. so many people and so many things, Mr Pants….because of Dennis…..and I also watch quietly Mr Pants…..I listened…… I hear people in dem corridors say certain things about Spranger…..and ah sit dong and ah watch all dem t’ings…..ah sit dong and ah watch all dem t’ings…….and ah angry, Mr Pants…ah not sad dat he gone, because ah glad dat he get peace…but I am angry. I am pissed. I am upset….because nobody…….no….you cannot wait till now Mr Pants..…dey cannot do that …..wait till now Mr Pants for everybody to want to play dey want to celebrate him. And ah doh know why we as a society does do this…..When he was here people was not treating him right. They was not….. and he was monumental as a human..…his mind was exceptional……. and he was just ah simple man! It wasn’t for the money….it wasn’t for the money, Mr Pants….
Mr Pants, how could a man who in his childhood….his father warn him if he invest in the arts he go starve and he still decide commit to it. He is not ah normal person. Everything he do was from he heart. He was honest….honest, Mr Pants…and what does break meh is to think that he left not really understanding and knowing and feeling valued…..and dat have meh…….
What is so wrong Mr Pants, in telling people dat dey good….in celebrating people…..What is so wrong in dat? Mr Pants?”
[Gerelle breaks into uncontrollable sobbing.]
_ _ _ _ _ _
Notes.
1. Learn something
2. Appropriately branded T-shirt
3. A condiment popular at Christmas time
4. A brand of insecticide
5. …that is…
6. …give us…
Llewellyn MacIntosh who retired in 2008 as a secondary school principal in Trinidad & Tobago has also spent a great deal of his life writing and singing calypsoes. Since his retirement from the mainstream formal education system, he has been working with the MiLAT Programme – a military-led programme set up especially to assist at-risk young men in the transformation of their lives. On weekends, Short Pants (his stage name) becomes a free-lance broadcaster and hosts two popular shows on the state-owned radio station, Talk City 91.1 FM.