Compositional Style
Since 1971 Ray has produced a string of beautiful calypsos, which are characterised use of five against four hemiola, and by long flowing melodic arcs, supported by complex harmonic progressions,suspended harmonies and extended chords, in contrast to the more standard 16-bar frameworks and simple chord schemes used by other composers. Panyard Vibrations (1977) for example, has three major sections (as opposed to the verse/chorus form often found in calypso), and his 2007 piece "We Just Can't Go On Like This" has a similar tripartite form, with a 32-bar verse, 59-bar chorus and 32-bar "tag". "Heroes Of The Nation" (2001) starts with the highly complex chord progression G#min7 flat5/C#7aug5/C#7/Dmaj7/E7sus4, a level of harmonic sophistication few other calypso composers have reached.
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“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
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