I’ve never met him. I’ve seen him only a few times, but I enjoy his music every day. His is the loudest, clearest and most persistent voice in the district. He is part of a symphony orchestra found in any village across Barbados. He is the connection between the changing village and the evolving metropolises that include the reviled “parks” and “heights” and “terraces”.
This stentorian voice is shared by the Cave Hill residents of Well Gap No. 4, Rock Dundo Heights and Rock Dundo Park.
He’s an ordinary Bajan fowl cock I’ve named “Beethoven’s cock” because of the similarity of the four notes of his repetitive refrain and the first four notes – dah, dah, dah, daaah: three short “gs” and a long “e-flat” – of Ludwig van Beethoven’s immortal Fifth Symphony.
As the development of Barbados continues – where to, only God knows – this resident unfortunately cannot live in the latter two “upscale” districts – villages, too, in my estimation. Certain covenants restrict him. He lives in Well Gap but shares his music with all of us.
Beethoven’s cock never tires. I listen for his four notes from as early as four every morning, although sometimes he begins as early as midnight. People of other climes north of Barbados would refer to him as a “rooster”. His voice is the strongest every morning.
After a while he is joined by other early-risers: black birds, sparrows and doves, and what I thought are “pee-whitlers”, until historian and ornithologist Dr Karl Watson put me right. He explained that the bird that joins the symphony as early as 3 a.m. is not the “pee-whitler”; it’s the rain bird, also known as the grey king bird from the Caribbean Elaenia species, a member of the tyrant fly catchers.
I look forward to this daily rhapsody. Indeed, it’s that that says to me that God has granted me one more day on His earth.
Then, all too soon, the great musical composition is augmented by the other intrusions which are part of our “progress” – the buses, trucks and cars, as Barbados comes to life yet another day.
The early morning soundscape becomes polluted by the haunting wolf-like howling from a kennel of Akitas, the bassey boom-box cranking out Beenie Man and Bounty Killa, and the frequent roar up the Well Gap hill of urban terrorists on their menacing motorcycles whose only raison d’être seems to be to make noise.
Meanwhile, someone cranks up a lawn-mower to be followed by its leaf-blower, and LIAT’s early morning departures for St Vincent and Grenada take to the sky. All too soon, the ice cream van arrives. My heart goes out to the poor driver enduring that Kansas state song Home On The Range all day long. BICO, please change it sometimes?
All the while, like the solitary oboe in the orchestra, Beethoven’s cock soldiers on among the cacophony with his four notes. The other morning I heard him holding his own against a rowdy party of parrots in a mahogany tree. He answered them note for note; then they seemed to give up and flew away from his domain.
In his new book The First Four Notes: Beethoven’s Fifth And The Human Imagination, a fascinating tour de force of musical detective work, music critic Matthew Guerrieri uncovers a number of possible sources for the famous opening notes of perhaps the best-known symphony that remains fresh after 200 years.
He traces The Fifth’s influence in China, Russia and the United States and shows how the masterpiece was used by the Allies (Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill copied it to shore up the Allies against Hitler and the Nazis) in World War II.
Guerrieri also identifies possible sources for the famous opening motif in the rhythms of ancient Greek poetry and certain French revolutionary songs and symphonies.
Who knows, it might’ve been none of them; maybe, it was a simple paling cock – like my friend from Well Gap – that provided Beethoven with those first four notes of his enduring symphony.
His melody would make an excellent ringtone on someone’s smartphone.
• Carl Moore was the first Editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator.
