Vietnam Moratorium

Annotation

The calypso song "Vietnam Moratorium" (Hilary # LB-406) by Lord Brynne - born Kade Simon, in Erin, Trinidad and Tobago, in 1937 (1) This song dealt with the mass demonstration called the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam (15 October 1969 and 15 November 1969, which put much pressure on the Richard Nixon administration. This is also looked at in the song "Moratorium (Bring Our Brother Home)" by Buffy Sainte-Marie, and the track "In Our Time" by Andrea Marcovicci. The lyrics, narrated in the first person, of somebody at the demonstration, took an anti-war position, calling on Uncle Sam to end the "useless war in Vietnam" and to stop "the murders...killing in Vietnam".

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

About the artist

Lord Brynner (Kade Simon, born about 1937 in Erin, southern Trinidad; died 1985) was a Trinidadian calypsonian who took his sobriquet and shaved head from the actor Yul Brynner. He won the Trinidad and Tobago Independence Calypso Contest in August 1962 at the age of twenty-five, beating a field that included the Mighty Sparrow, and went on to score ska hits in Jamaica in the mid-1960s, recording some fifty seven-inch singles and thirteen LPs before dying young, destitute and in obscurity. "Vietnam Moratorium" appears among his recordings in the discography published by the Trinidad Guardian.…

Themes

Anti-War · VC · Demonstration

In collections

Latin & Central American, & Caribbean Music · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs