Calypso music has long occupied an integral place in the cultural framework of Trinidad and Tobago, and in the 20th century became a major cultural export. This project explores the rise in popularity and the commodification of the traditional Calypso song style, and its musical evolution to Soca, the more contemporary and more globally-popular form. The history of Calypso is long and murky, with its true origins lost to the chaos of colonialism and the African slave trade, and a deep dive is beyond the purview of this project. My aim is to outline a brief history of Calypso and its role as a social tool, and then to explore the expanding international commodification of Calypso and Soca through of the concept of diffusion.
There is a deep well of scholarship regarding the geography of music. Using Nash and Carney's (1996) "The Seven Themes of Music Geography" as a framework, I was inspired by the question under investigation from the 1970s onward: "What is 'mappable' concerning music?" I am also branching off from music geography mapping projects, such as "Marvin Gaye Live," a project led by musicologist Andrew Flory, whereby an attempt was made to accurately map much of Gaye's live performing career. I also touch on ideas of commercialization and deterritorialization of music as presented by Connell and Gibson (2004). There is a rich and growing body of work related to mapping music and the diffusion of musical ideas, and I was motivated to explore these ideas through the lens of Trinidadian music. Calypso and soca music can be used to illustrate how a song can branch and evolve over different temporal durations, and how these paths of change can successfully be mapped, creating an observable path of the geographical diffusion of a musical idea.
Some points of note: I am selecting a very small sample of representative songs from the mid-twentieth century to early twenty-first century. These songs are representative of the dominant musical forms, but in no way represent the breadth of music and musical pathways pouring from Trinidad specifically and the Caribbean more broadly; they are meant to display a cross-section of the evolving trends in production, content, and popularity. For brevity, I will frequently refer to Trinidad and Tobago as Trinidad.
The origin of the word calypso is up for debate, but there is a compelling argument made that the word derives from a Hausa (West African) language written alternately as kaito or kaico, and pronounced kaitso or kaicho, which has become in common parlance "kaiso." Kaiso is understood to mean "you will get no sympathy, it deserves you right," and this expression of kaiso has persisted in a style of calypso battles and song styles named "Sans Humanite," which can be read as a direct French/Creole interpretation of the word kaiso. Over time, kaiso became calypso, and was first found in written records in 1900 (Hill 1967).
Calypso is also understood to be a tradition in a direct lineage to west African griot traditions, "whereby court singers either lambasted or praised their chiefs and reminded them of society's ideals at official ceremonies and state functions (Liverpool 1994)." Calypso then evolved out of work songs and this griot tradition, and served several purposes: to communicate news, gossip, current events, entertainment, and protest against the slavers. After slavery ended, the role of the Calypsonian continued in this new context. "He disseminated gossip, recirculated rumors, spread the news, and resisted the colonials in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Liverpool 1994)." It is impossible to overstate the importance of the Calypsonian as a major catalyst and bellwether in Trinidadian culture, and more broadly Caribbean culture, as Calypso spread throughout the region (see Calypso Rose's opening monologue in Rum and Coca Cola, featured on this map).
The content of Calypso music was and is quite varied. The music is carnival music, and is at its root a music of celebration, but the lyrical content can encompass anything, running the gamut from socio-political protest music to frivolous novelty songs. However, it is important to understand that the Calypsonian continues to occupy this "griot" role in Trinidadian society; the Calypsonian is reflecting back the values of the culture.
Which brings us to Soca music. Soca is largely understood to have been created in the 1970s by Lord Shorty (later Ras Shorty I) by infusing Calypso music with Indian rhythms and percussion (Dudley 1996). Though well outside the scope of this project, the South Asian immigrant population is a major participant in the culture of Trinidad, and some of these musical pathways are indebted and have unique pathways to and from India. Lord Shorty and Soca music were immediately the source of criticism from more traditional Calypsonians, primarily for focusing on partying and lewdness to the exclusion of more pressing social themes. This branching of Calypso and Soca would continue, and this broad categorization of Calypso as the vanguard of old traditions and Soca as the more frivolous party music continues in the 20th Century (Leu 2000).
This project aims to chart the diffusion of musical ideas from Trinidad to a global market. Initially my goal was to explore any correlation between the global rise in popularity of Soca and the shift away from the socially-oriented Calypso, but my research showed that the global popularity of Calypso hinged more on the frivolous party songs and that the socially relevant songs continued but remained popular only regionally (Leu 2000). I have chosen five songs representing a historic cross-section of the Calypso/Soca tradition, and have traced their iterations and permutations, both within the Caribbean and globally, to try to better understand the mechanisms behind how this hyper-local musical tradition has evolved and branched out to a global audience, and how these songs were reimagined in different cultural contexts. Both time and distance, especially in a pre-internet music industry, played a major factor. It inevitably took some time for many of these songs to travel and evolve, and many of them continue to be reimagined. However, the barriers to diffusion are surprisingly permeable; as we will see, very little time elapsed for many of these songs to be co-opted and reimagined, sometimes on the other side of the planet. Musical ideas can stow away in one person's brain and reappear on a different continent, and that seems to be precisely what happened here again and again.
The songs represented on this map are organized iteratively. The first known recording or mention of a song is numbered 01, and the successive versions are numbered and mapped according to their place of publication. I hope to display at a glance the dense web that is created using only a handful of songs, and to show the explosion in global popularity from the post-war era to the present. Links to nearly every song are provided so that the viewer can hear the evolution of each song. The idea of diffusion mobility as it pertains to music is complicated, as we can only follow the bread-crumb trail of recorded versions. Market forces largely dictated when and how often a song was repackaged, but this is not always the case. Each of these songs took its own winding path to global audiences. In more than one case, it appears that the original Caribbean artists were given no credit for the song creation, which comes as no surprise. Publishing information was obtained via discogs.com and allmusic.com.
Rum and Coca Cola
Rum and Coca Cola had a fascinating and meteoric rise in popular culture. The song, created by Lord Invader, first appears in 1943, and was a hit of the carnival season in Trinidad. As there was no formal calypso competition in the war years, Invader’s version was never recorded. The next iteration of this song was released in 1944, recorded by The Andrews Sisters in the US, and no writing credit is given to Invader. The Andrews Sisters had a smash hit with the song, selling millions of units (Liverpool 1994:189), and the song would go on to be re-recorded and interpreted dozens of times, continuing to the present. This is a clear and early example of the American music market taking advantage of a Caribbean artist’s intellectual property and would continue the wave of the “calypso boom,” initiated by artists such as Lion, Atilla and Growler. (Liverpool 1994:188). The lyrical interpretation of this song is relevant as well. The colonial overtones in the song are thick, and the implication of prostitution in the lyric “Both mother and daughter / working for the Yankee dollar” is a reasonable interpretation. That this song would be a runaway smash hit and be recorded over and over again is an example of the hyper-local oral history Calypsonian storytelling style having broad market appeal (Patton 1994).
Jump In The Line
Jump In The Line began life as a calypso song recorded by Lord Kitchener in 1946. This map traces the permutations that led to the immensely popular version recorded by Harry Belafonte in 1961. The calypso craze in America was well underway by this point, and Woody Herman, an American big band leader would record a version in 1952. From here the song traveled back to the Caribbean, where Lord Invader recorded a version with a similar chorus, and Jamaican mento artist Lord Flea recorded a version released in California. At nearly the same time, Folkways Records recorded Joseph Spence doing a version in The Bahamas using only an acoustic guitar. The song would land again on US shores with Belafonte recording his version, followed by a pop-market version recorded by Gary “US” Bonds in 1962. This cross section of interpretations is a clear example of hierarchal diffusion of ideas, where the song leap-frogs from mind to mind and reaches both massive audiences (Belafonte) and the most niche consumer (Spence).
Om Shanti
This song’s path to a global audience is considerably more brief than the others but demonstrates the fluidity of the diffusion of musical ideas. The song was created by Lord Shorty during the mid-1970s period of calypso’s transition to soca. Lord Shorty is credited with creating the soca sound by infusing Indian percussion with traditional calypso structures (Dudley 1996) (though well beyond the scope of this article, it is necessary to mention the large south Asian population in Trinidad, another product of British colonialism). This song appears on Lord Shorty’s 1978 album "Soca Explosion". The song verses are in English, but the chorus is an interpretation of a Hindi prayer. Incredibly, the song "Om Shanti Om", credited to Kishore Kumar, appears two years later on the soundtrack to the Bollywood film "Karz." The song, sung entirely in Hindi, bears remarkable similarities to Shorty’s. The song would become a huge hit in India (Rohlerhr 1998: 92). This simple two-song story represents a wild labyrinth of musical diffusion: an Indian prayer, brought to Trinidad via the British over centuries of occupation; a person of African descent, also existing in Trinidad due to colonialism; a unique confluence of Trinidadian and Indian song structures combining to create something novel; an Indian person, presumably, hearing the song in Trinidad and carrying it back to India; the re-re-interpretation of the lyrics and instrumentation to create a new Indian song. It is an incredible snake-eating-its-tail moment for a single song, and shows how even the the most simple song idea can be diffused throughout time and space in the most surprising ways.
Hot Hot Hot
Hot Hot Hot is the first song from this selection not to originate in Trinidad. Alphonsus “Arrow” Cassell was born in Montserrat and was inspired by calypso and soca music of Trinidad (New York Times: “Arrow, soca Musician, Dies at 60”). He recorded Hot Hot Hot in 1982, which was re-recorded in 1984 by another Bajan band The Merrymen. In 1987 David Johansen, under the nom de guerre Buster Poindexter, had a massive US hit with his version. Johansen’s Hot Hot Hot was likely most Americans’ introduction to soca music. His performance directly imitates the calypsonian performance style, and sprinkles in some Latin American/salsero vocal tropes for good measure. The song continues to have a long life, most recently being reimagined by the Dutch Vengaboys as a club anthem.
Who Let the Dogs Out
Who Let The Dogs Out takes another path to achieve its most widely consumed form. Documentary filmmaker Ben Sisto traced the recorded origins of the song at least back to 1992, where a duo of teenagers in Jacksonville were attempting to create a Miami Bass song. The chorus hook then appears in songs in Chicago, Brooklyn, and The United Kingdom before becoming a global phenomenon recorded by The Baha Men. This is an example of a hook of a song finding its way through various dance genres before finally becoming a soca anthem. Sisto would trace versions of the changed chorus back to midwestern high school football pep rallies in the mid-1980s. Regarding the idea of authorship and the diffusion of an idea, Sisto said “…I actually think people have been pretty forthcoming and open to the notion that you can hear something and it’s just in there subconsciously until it’s ready to come out. I think one of the big myths we tell ourselves about art is that it’s like made by individuals (99% Invisible Podcast - “Whomst Amongst Us Let The Dogs Out”)." This is a perfect example of the complexities of the diffusion of song, and within the context of this study, a fascinating sort of inversion of the former paths. The original kernel of the song likely begins somewhere in predominantly-white middle-America and has a long path to ultimately becoming a worldwide smash hit from a Caribbean recording group, who somehow heard the song in Europe.
Conclusions
Discerning the origin of a song under any circumstance is nearly impossible, and doubly so songs coming from such a rich music culture as Trinidad and Tobago. Calypso songs have undoubtedly had near-infinite permutations within the Caribbean. Recorded music and a global industry that is starving for content creates the possibility to trace at least some linear paths of inspiration, and illustrates clearly the diffusion of musical ideas across the globe.
References
Berube, Chris. “Whomst Among Us Let The Dogs Out - 99% Invisible.” 99% Invisible. Accessed April 17, 2021. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/whomst-among-us-let-the-dogs-out/.
Connell, John, and Chris Gibson. “World Music: Deterritorializing Place and Identity.” Progress in Human Geography 28, no. 3 (2004): 342–61.
Discogs. “Discogs.Com,” n.d. https://www.discogs.com/.
Dudley, Shannon. “Judging ‘By the Beat’: Calypso versus Soca.” Ethnomusicology 40, no. 2 (1996): 269–98.
Flory, Andrew. “Marvin Gaye Live.” Marvin Gaye Live, n.d. https://carleton.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=62cf27ea3f4048698976ccb9ec55743e.
Hill, Errol. “On the Origin of the Term Calypso.” Ethnomusicology 11, no. 3 (1967): 359–67.
Leu, Lorraine. “‘Raise Yuh Hand, Jump up and Get on Bad!’: New Developments in Soca Music in Trinidad.” Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana 21, no. 1 (2000): 45–58.
Liverpool, Hollis Urban. “Researching Steelband and Calypso Music in the British Caribbean and the U. S. Virgin Islands.” Black Music Research Journal 14, no. 2 (1994): 179–201.
Nash, Peter H., and George O. Carney. “The Seven Themes of Music Geography.” The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien 40, no. 1 (1996): 69–74.
Patton, John H. “Calypso as Rhetorical Performance: Trinidad Carnival 1993.” Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana 15, no. 1 (1994): 55–74.
Press, The Associated. “Arrow, Soca Musician, Dies at 6o.” The New York Times, September 16, 2010, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/arts/music/16cassell.html.
Rohlehr, Gordon. “‘We Getting the Kaiso That We Deserve’: Calypso and the World Music Market.” TDR/The Drama Review 42, no. 3 (1998): 82–95.
Comments
Post a Comment