Call and Answer (1958)

They called him Boy for as long as he could remember. Not Anselmus, his first name. Not Theodoor, his second. Just Boy. And that was just fine with him. He liked the way “Boy” bounced through the air—light and quick, like a drumbeat.

He could hear it in a crowd, over the buzz of voices. Over the laughter. Even over the music.

And there was always a call to music in Curacao. At sunrise, the call came from the roosters. By midday, it came from the fishermen, singing as they untangled their nets. And by nightfall, it came from Boy’s own fingers—on the piano, the drum, the maraca, or sometimes just the kitchen table.

Boy would practice his saxophone barefoot on the roof of his family’s house in the Otrobanda neighborhood of Willemstad. Neighbors used to joke that “the moon was his first audience.”

As far back as he could remember he had sung in the church choir of Pietermaai and this is where our story begins.

In those days, the church choirs sang with precision and harmony. The structure was formal and fixed. Like a choir in The Hague. Beautiful—yes—but for every call, there was no answer. No echo. No balance.

Boy would stand tall in his starched white robe, hands clasped, eyes flicking between the hymnbook and the high, arched windows. The choir was proper. Polished. Perfect.

But something gnawed at him.

He would hum little riffs under his breath—soft, playful notes between the lines. The choirmaster would raise an eyebrow and tap his baton. “Stick to the melody, Boy.” But the melody didn’t feel complete to him. It needed something more. It needed a reply.

He didn’t yet have the words for it, but deep down he felt it: A choir that only sings in one direction is a story half-told.

One Sunday, after service, it was Boy’s turn to clean the pews. The smell of incense still lingered faintly in the air—warm, spicy, familiar. He found himself next to the battered upright piano beside the vestry door. Its varnish was cracked, one of the ivory keys chipped like a missing tooth. Boy slid onto the wooden bench, the squeak echoing in the quiet sanctuary.

He started with slow chords—gentle, deliberate. A hymn he half-remembered. Then, without thinking, his right hand began to wander. The lines blurred. The melody loosened. Gospel turned to blues. Blues bent into jazz. Then into something older—something nameless and raw that moved like memory but wasn’t in any book.

And then behind him, a quiet tapping joined in—steady, syncopated. He turned to see Papa Sylvius, the church’s janitor, sweeping in the corner, broomstick paused mid-sway. Without missing a beat, Sylvius shifted the broom upright and gently tapped it against the floor in rhythm.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Call. And answer.

Boy grinned.

He played bolder now, testing the space between notes, throwing a riff out into the rafters as if to see if the church itself would sing back. Sylvius obliged—nod, tap, tap, tap. A soft chuckle escaped his lips, more breath than sound. Then, with a voice like worn velvet, he murmured:

“Now that’s music, Boy. That’s got truth in it.”

Boy played softer for a moment, as if the words themselves were a harmony. Then louder again, laughing now. The church, silent all week save for Sunday sermons, had become something else—something alive. Holy in a different way.

The old man leaned on his broom and watched with a knowing smile. “You got roots under those fingers,” he said. “Don’t let anyone prune 'em too neat.”

Boy nodded.

By the time Boy was a teenager, the choir robes were too tight, and his saxophone too loud for Sunday service. He joined small bands, played hotel gigs, serenaded dancers in the plazas of Otrobanda. The music was changing. He was changing. But still, most songs felt like monologues—no room for interruption, no room for conversation.

“We are a musical people,” he would say. “When we stop playing, we stop remembering who we are. I think we’ve forgotten how to play.”

Then one day in a dusty bandstand outside the small town of Barber, under the blazing sun—that Boy had his awakening.

They were halfway through a tumba set—fast, rhythmic, polished. The audience clapped along, but something felt flat. Too neat. Too clean. Too distant.

That’s when he did it. He put down the sax. Picked up the mic. And called out—bold, raw, unrehearsed:

“¿Mi ta bai?”
And from the crowd came the answer, like thunder:
“Bo ta bai!”

He called again, and they answered louder. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t written. But something ancient had returned.

It was called “pregon”—the call and response of the ancestors of West Africa. Of tambú drums and work songs. Of ceremony. Of resistance. And Boy had brought it back—into tumba.

That moment cracked something open.

The old folks wept.
The young ones danced wild.
And the drummers? The drummers knew.
Tumba was coming home.

From then on, Boy refused to let the music forget where it came from. He played tumba with teeth—rough edges, sweat, spirit. He invited grandmothers and street kids to shout back his lyrics. He let the rhythm section lead. He told young musicians:

“Don’t polish away the soul. That beat in your chest—that’s Africa. That’s home.”

And when people asked him, years later, what he was most proud of, Boy Dap didn’t talk about the radio, the tours, or the gold records.

He just smiled and said: “I gave the music its voice back. And the people— they answered.”