Album: Maya Angelou

Miss Calypso, Rev-Ola

You'll find little mention in accounts of Maya Angelou's manifold achievements – the poetry, the professorships, the Pulitzer prizes and the presidential appointments – of this quirky little item from early in her career. In 1957, having found that she could make more money from singing than dancing, Angelou took advantage of the "tiki" craze for exotic music forms and reinvented herself as a calypso queen. She managed to sneak a mildly subversive agenda into her repertoire, creating several calypsos that dealt with sexual harassment and domestic abuse – most notably the classic "Stone Cold Dead in the Market", in which a battered wife hits back with a frying-pan.

Elsewhere, the tales of abandoned women in "Since Me Man Has Done Gone and Went" and "Flo and Joe" and vivid sketches of island life in "Run Joe" and "Peas and Rice" mingle with localised cultural exotica such as the Obeah ceremony celebrated in "Tamo" ("The chant was so compelling that he walked into the fire") and her own "Mambo in Africa", which characterises the mambo rhythm as a memory of African heritage. Her best-known composition is "Scandal in the Family" – later a hit for The Wailers' Peter Tosh – but the sharpest is probably "Neighbour, Neighbour", a rejection of sexual advances. The sparse backings of hand-drums and occasional frisky guitar provide a simple framework that lets Angelou's voice occupy the space unhindered.