Within the history of black Britain, the 1948 Pathé newsreel of calypsonian Lord Kitchener about to disembark in Tilbury from the Windrush is emblematic of the excitement and optimism of the postwar generation of West Indian migrants to Britain. He shyly serenades the reporter with a calypso he composed during the voyage, “London is the Place for Me.” The clip is now famous. And while Kitchener's appearance now stands as a symbol of New Commonwealth migration, it also announced calypso's relevance in the culture of postwar London. Like the West Indian settlers who settled into the moods and patterns of London life, the calypso creatively adapted itself to new surroundings without sacrificing its essence or social function.

This chapter evaluates those calypsos that were originally recorded and performed in Britain by Lord Beginner, Lord Kitchener, Lord Invader, and others. It argues that these artists used their craft to articulate a generous late-imperial vision of national belonging in the 1950s. This vision encompassed their new English audience as well as recent settlers from the West Indies who represented both the New Commonwealth and a newly self-conscious multiracial Britain. Their calypsos, written and performed in an urban English context, were light-hearted and upbeat, but collectively they presented an imperially conscious perspective on British society and identity. Their lyrics referred sympathetically to the cultural and historical ties between Britain and the West Indies—public virtues like loyalty to the Crown, fair play, and adherence to British social rules and codes; the empire as a natural component of greater Britain; and the idiosyncratic experience of living in London, which native Britons and West Indian settlers had in common. These components made up a flexible but sturdy conception of what it meant to be British in the 1950s, a conception that, significantly, depended neither on race, ethnicity, nor birth in the British Isles. From the musical repertoire emerges a vision of Britain that is multicultural, cosmopolitan, and honestly in touch with its own history. Most strikingly, these calypsos posit, sometimes even assume, the existence of a British community that is optimistic and proactive about facing contemporary social changes—including, but not limited to, the influx of Britons from the Commonwealth.