Jamette Power: Lady Sheila (Professor Alison Mc Letchie)

Jamette Power: Lady Sheila

by Professor Alison Mc Letchie, SCSU

presented at Women on Calypso Symposium 2021

Abstract:

This paper examines the three-part calypso “Lady Shelia”. This trilogy is from the musical The Brand New Lucky Diamond Horseshoe Club, a play written by Anthony Hall and David Rudder. The play centers on a brothel, its customers, and employees. In the series of Lady Shelia songs, Saint and Sinner, Unity Song and Jammette Power, we hear from multiple voices and points of view. This paper argues that Shelia, as represented in the series of calypsos and particularly in third part of the song series, mirrors more closely the indigenous, Trinbagoian, concepts of sexuality and womanhood. The narrator and song writer rejects traditional Western feminists’ worldviews in addition to the respectability construct that so often informs social norms and expectations. At its core, this paper claims, that Rudder’s Shelia, in these three songs offers a Trinbagoian notion of feminism and womanhood that recognizes sex and sexuality as a fundamental aspect of any woman’s life and affirms the dignity of sex workers. The songwriter also demands that we think about the men who use the services of prostitutes.