Andrew R. Martin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812407
- eISBN:
- 9781496812445
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812407.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
“Maybe you won't like steel band. It's possible. But it's been said that the Pied Piper had a steel band helping him on his famous visit to Hamelin.” When the US Navy distributed this press release, ...
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“Maybe you won't like steel band. It's possible. But it's been said that the Pied Piper had a steel band helping him on his famous visit to Hamelin.” When the US Navy distributed this press release, anxieties and tensions of the impending Cold War felt palpable. As President Eisenhower cast his gaze toward Russia, the American people cast their ears to the Atlantic South, infatuated with the international currents of Caribbean music. Today, steel bands have become a global phenomenon; yet, in 1957 the exotic sound and the unique image of the US Navy Steel Band was one-of-a-kind. From 1957 until their disbandment in 1999, the US Navy Steel Band performed over 20,000 concerts worldwide. In 1973, the band officially moved headquarters from Puerto Rico to New Orleans and found the city and annual Mardi Gras tradition an apt musical and cultural fit. The band brought a significant piece of Caribbean artistic capital—calypso and steelband music—to the American mainstream. Its impact on the growth and development of steelpan music in America is enormous. This book uncovers the lost history of the US Navy Steel Band and provides an in-depth study of its role in the development of the US military's public relations, its promotion of goodwill, its recruitment efforts after the Korean and Vietnam wars, its musical and technological innovations, and its percussive propulsion of the American fascination with Latin and Caribbean music over the past century.Less
“Maybe you won't like steel band. It's possible. But it's been said that the Pied Piper had a steel band helping him on his famous visit to Hamelin.” When the US Navy distributed this press release, anxieties and tensions of the impending Cold War felt palpable. As President Eisenhower cast his gaze toward Russia, the American people cast their ears to the Atlantic South, infatuated with the international currents of Caribbean music. Today, steel bands have become a global phenomenon; yet, in 1957 the exotic sound and the unique image of the US Navy Steel Band was one-of-a-kind. From 1957 until their disbandment in 1999, the US Navy Steel Band performed over 20,000 concerts worldwide. In 1973, the band officially moved headquarters from Puerto Rico to New Orleans and found the city and annual Mardi Gras tradition an apt musical and cultural fit. The band brought a significant piece of Caribbean artistic capital—calypso and steelband music—to the American mainstream. Its impact on the growth and development of steelpan music in America is enormous. This book uncovers the lost history of the US Navy Steel Band and provides an in-depth study of its role in the development of the US military's public relations, its promotion of goodwill, its recruitment efforts after the Korean and Vietnam wars, its musical and technological innovations, and its percussive propulsion of the American fascination with Latin and Caribbean music over the past century.
Hope Munro
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496807533
- eISBN:
- 9781496807571
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496807533.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
In the 1990s, expressive culture in the Caribbean was becoming noticeably more feminine. At the annual Carnival of Trinidad and Tobago, thousands of female masqueraders dominated the street festival ...
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In the 1990s, expressive culture in the Caribbean was becoming noticeably more feminine. At the annual Carnival of Trinidad and Tobago, thousands of female masqueraders dominated the street festival on Carnival Monday and Tuesday. Women had become significant contributors to the performance of calypso and soca, as well as the musical development of the steel pan art form. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in Trinidad and Tobago, this book demonstrates how the increased access and agency of women through folk and popular musical expressions has improved inter-gender relations and representation of gender in this nation. This is the first study to integrate all of the popular music expressions associated with Carnival—calypso, soca, and steelband music—within a single volume. The popular music of the Caribbean contains elaborate forms of social commentary that allows singers to address various sociopolitical problems, including those that directly affect the lives of women. In general, the cultural environment of Trinidad and Tobago has made women more visible and audible than any previous time in its history. This book examines how these circumstances came to be and what it means for the future development of music in the region.Less
In the 1990s, expressive culture in the Caribbean was becoming noticeably more feminine. At the annual Carnival of Trinidad and Tobago, thousands of female masqueraders dominated the street festival on Carnival Monday and Tuesday. Women had become significant contributors to the performance of calypso and soca, as well as the musical development of the steel pan art form. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in Trinidad and Tobago, this book demonstrates how the increased access and agency of women through folk and popular musical expressions has improved inter-gender relations and representation of gender in this nation. This is the first study to integrate all of the popular music expressions associated with Carnival—calypso, soca, and steelband music—within a single volume. The popular music of the Caribbean contains elaborate forms of social commentary that allows singers to address various sociopolitical problems, including those that directly affect the lives of women. In general, the cultural environment of Trinidad and Tobago has made women more visible and audible than any previous time in its history. This book examines how these circumstances came to be and what it means for the future development of music in the region.
Benjamin Sammons
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195375688
- eISBN:
- 9780199871599
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195375688.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter examines the two places where Homeric speakers string together several paradigmatic tales or exempla in the format of a catalogue (Iliad 5.382–405, Odyssey 5.118–36). It is argued that ...
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This chapter examines the two places where Homeric speakers string together several paradigmatic tales or exempla in the format of a catalogue (Iliad 5.382–405, Odyssey 5.118–36). It is argued that the striking similarities between the two examples are not coincidental, e.g. that a goddess (Dione or Calypso) speaks to another god about a situation pertaining to a major hero (Diomedes or Odysseus). The choice of divine speakers reinforces the authoritative tone of the catalogue form and suggests its ability to communicate a privileged perspective on history and historical patterns. Yet in each case the speaker’s rhetorical aims, and the catenulate or fragmented structure of the catalogue form itself, distort the overall picture. While speakers may attempt, through paradigmatic catalogues, to impose a pattern or interpretation on the events of the narrative, Homer in each case preserves crucial differences between the catalogue and his own story.Less
This chapter examines the two places where Homeric speakers string together several paradigmatic tales or exempla in the format of a catalogue (Iliad 5.382–405, Odyssey 5.118–36). It is argued that the striking similarities between the two examples are not coincidental, e.g. that a goddess (Dione or Calypso) speaks to another god about a situation pertaining to a major hero (Diomedes or Odysseus). The choice of divine speakers reinforces the authoritative tone of the catalogue form and suggests its ability to communicate a privileged perspective on history and historical patterns. Yet in each case the speaker’s rhetorical aims, and the catenulate or fragmented structure of the catalogue form itself, distort the overall picture. While speakers may attempt, through paradigmatic catalogues, to impose a pattern or interpretation on the events of the narrative, Homer in each case preserves crucial differences between the catalogue and his own story.
Corinne Ondine Pache
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195339369
- eISBN:
- 9780199867134
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195339369.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Ancient Religions
It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is ...
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It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is consistently expressed in terms of erotic love. Chapter 4 focuses on the motif of the goddess in love in the Odyssey, a poem structured around a series of encounters between Odysseus and several goddesses. The poem offers three Odyssean versions of the goddess-in-love motif. Odysseus’s rejection of Calypso’s love and offer of immortality is unique: Odysseus is the only Greek hero who rejects a goddess’s advances and survives the experience, a choice and outcome that are central to his status of epic hero. The hero’s relationship with Athene includes nympholeptic aspects and comes close to the ideal marriage described by Odysseus to Nausicaa in Odyssey 6. Finally, the Ithacan sanctuary of the nymphs inspires reminiscences of the cultic and folklore versions of nympholepsy. Each Odyssean version thus highlights different features of the nympholeptic pattern, which in turn help define Odysseus’s distinct form of heroism.Less
It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is consistently expressed in terms of erotic love. Chapter 4 focuses on the motif of the goddess in love in the Odyssey, a poem structured around a series of encounters between Odysseus and several goddesses. The poem offers three Odyssean versions of the goddess-in-love motif. Odysseus’s rejection of Calypso’s love and offer of immortality is unique: Odysseus is the only Greek hero who rejects a goddess’s advances and survives the experience, a choice and outcome that are central to his status of epic hero. The hero’s relationship with Athene includes nympholeptic aspects and comes close to the ideal marriage described by Odysseus to Nausicaa in Odyssey 6. Finally, the Ithacan sanctuary of the nymphs inspires reminiscences of the cultic and folklore versions of nympholepsy. Each Odyssean version thus highlights different features of the nympholeptic pattern, which in turn help define Odysseus’s distinct form of heroism.
Shane Vogel and Shane Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226568300
- eISBN:
- 9780226568584
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226568584.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
In 1956 Harry Belafonte’s Calypso became the first LP to sell more than a million copies. For a few fleeting months, calypso music was the top-selling genre in the US—it even threatened to supplant ...
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In 1956 Harry Belafonte’s Calypso became the first LP to sell more than a million copies. For a few fleeting months, calypso music was the top-selling genre in the US—it even threatened to supplant rock and roll. Stolen Time provides a vivid cultural history of this moment and outlines a new framework—black fad performance—for understanding race, performance, and mass culture in the twentieth century United States. Vogel situates the calypso craze within a cycle of cultural appropriation, including the ragtime craze of 1890s and the Negro vogue of the 1920s, that encapsulates the culture of the Jim Crow era. He follows the fad as it moves defiantly away from any attempt at authenticity and shamelessly embraces calypso kitsch. Although white calypso performers were indeed complicit in a kind of imperialist theft of Trinidadian music and dance, Vogel argues, black calypso craze performers enacted a different, and subtly subversive, kind of theft. They appropriated not Caribbean culture itself, but the US version of it—and in so doing, they mocked American notions of racial authenticity. From musical recordings, nightclub acts, and television broadcasts to Broadway musicals, film, and modern dance, he shows how performers seized the ephemeral opportunities of the fad to comment on black cultural history and even question the meaning of race itself.Less
In 1956 Harry Belafonte’s Calypso became the first LP to sell more than a million copies. For a few fleeting months, calypso music was the top-selling genre in the US—it even threatened to supplant rock and roll. Stolen Time provides a vivid cultural history of this moment and outlines a new framework—black fad performance—for understanding race, performance, and mass culture in the twentieth century United States. Vogel situates the calypso craze within a cycle of cultural appropriation, including the ragtime craze of 1890s and the Negro vogue of the 1920s, that encapsulates the culture of the Jim Crow era. He follows the fad as it moves defiantly away from any attempt at authenticity and shamelessly embraces calypso kitsch. Although white calypso performers were indeed complicit in a kind of imperialist theft of Trinidadian music and dance, Vogel argues, black calypso craze performers enacted a different, and subtly subversive, kind of theft. They appropriated not Caribbean culture itself, but the US version of it—and in so doing, they mocked American notions of racial authenticity. From musical recordings, nightclub acts, and television broadcasts to Broadway musicals, film, and modern dance, he shows how performers seized the ephemeral opportunities of the fad to comment on black cultural history and even question the meaning of race itself.
Jan Brokken
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628461855
- eISBN:
- 9781626740914
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461855.003.0028
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
A chapter that discusses the similarities between Trinidad and Curacao and an Interview with calypsonian Mighty Bomber. It compares the music and social history.
A chapter that discusses the similarities between Trinidad and Curacao and an Interview with calypsonian Mighty Bomber. It compares the music and social history.
Hope Munro
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496807533
- eISBN:
- 9781496807571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496807533.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter focuses on the careers and performance strategies of the three most successful female calypsonians in contemporary Trinidad: Calypso Rose, Singing Sandra, and Denyse Plummer. Each woman ...
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This chapter focuses on the careers and performance strategies of the three most successful female calypsonians in contemporary Trinidad: Calypso Rose, Singing Sandra, and Denyse Plummer. Each woman has had to overcome the sexism inherent in the Caribbean music scene, as well as the critiques of the media and audiences, in their pursuit of a musical career. They have come to serve as role models for their contemporaries and as cultural ambassadors for the women of Trinidad and Tobago. The chapter examines the career trajectories of Calypso Rose, Singing Sandra, and Denyse Plummer as well as their participation in musical competitions in Trinidad and Tobago, particularly the Calypso Monarch and the Calypso Queen competitions. It also considers the various competitions for calypsonians of all ages in contemporary Trinidad, designed to find the next generation of calypsonians.Less
This chapter focuses on the careers and performance strategies of the three most successful female calypsonians in contemporary Trinidad: Calypso Rose, Singing Sandra, and Denyse Plummer. Each woman has had to overcome the sexism inherent in the Caribbean music scene, as well as the critiques of the media and audiences, in their pursuit of a musical career. They have come to serve as role models for their contemporaries and as cultural ambassadors for the women of Trinidad and Tobago. The chapter examines the career trajectories of Calypso Rose, Singing Sandra, and Denyse Plummer as well as their participation in musical competitions in Trinidad and Tobago, particularly the Calypso Monarch and the Calypso Queen competitions. It also considers the various competitions for calypsonians of all ages in contemporary Trinidad, designed to find the next generation of calypsonians.
Shane Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226568300
- eISBN:
- 9780226568584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226568584.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
What does it mean to be a fad? This chapter outlines a historically specific ontology that unfolds within the political economy of race and entertainment between the 1890s and the 1960s. Vogel argues ...
More
What does it mean to be a fad? This chapter outlines a historically specific ontology that unfolds within the political economy of race and entertainment between the 1890s and the 1960s. Vogel argues that the special temporality of fad culture creates perilous conditions for black fad performers that corroborate black social and political life under Jim Crow. Within this horizon of (im)possibility, the repetition of fad cycles over time are a kind of eternal return of the same that trapped performers in cycles of racialized consumption. But they also allowed some fad performances to co-opt this co-opted time. The argument of this chapter advances in three stages: first historically, then politico-economically, and finally ontologically. It begins with an account of the three major black fad cycles of the long Jim Crow era: the ragtime craze, the Negro vogue, and the calypso craze. It then considers the political economy of the fad. If finally turns to the performances of gravel-voiced calypso chanteuse Josephine Premice who, at the height of the calypso craze, allegorized the ontology of black fad performance by explicitly thematizing the opportunities to pilfer the time of the fad for oneself.Less
What does it mean to be a fad? This chapter outlines a historically specific ontology that unfolds within the political economy of race and entertainment between the 1890s and the 1960s. Vogel argues that the special temporality of fad culture creates perilous conditions for black fad performers that corroborate black social and political life under Jim Crow. Within this horizon of (im)possibility, the repetition of fad cycles over time are a kind of eternal return of the same that trapped performers in cycles of racialized consumption. But they also allowed some fad performances to co-opt this co-opted time. The argument of this chapter advances in three stages: first historically, then politico-economically, and finally ontologically. It begins with an account of the three major black fad cycles of the long Jim Crow era: the ragtime craze, the Negro vogue, and the calypso craze. It then considers the political economy of the fad. If finally turns to the performances of gravel-voiced calypso chanteuse Josephine Premice who, at the height of the calypso craze, allegorized the ontology of black fad performance by explicitly thematizing the opportunities to pilfer the time of the fad for oneself.
Tania Isaac (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813034676
- eISBN:
- 9780813046303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034676.003.0017
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Tania Isaac suggests, in her writing here as in her choreography and performance pieces, an intense, complex experience of knowing her native island, St. Lucia, through its dance and its ways of ...
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Tania Isaac suggests, in her writing here as in her choreography and performance pieces, an intense, complex experience of knowing her native island, St. Lucia, through its dance and its ways of looking at the body. To do this she finds four names for St. Lucia which suggest metaphoric characterizations of the multiple selves of her island. She uses these selves to explore the movement of St. Lucian kwadril (quadrille), masquerade, calypso, and soca, of Carnival of the bands playing mas and the more individualistic Carnival of Ol' Mas. Isaac uses description and metaphor to suggest a density and variety of cultural information, a layering that can contain all contradictions.Less
Tania Isaac suggests, in her writing here as in her choreography and performance pieces, an intense, complex experience of knowing her native island, St. Lucia, through its dance and its ways of looking at the body. To do this she finds four names for St. Lucia which suggest metaphoric characterizations of the multiple selves of her island. She uses these selves to explore the movement of St. Lucian kwadril (quadrille), masquerade, calypso, and soca, of Carnival of the bands playing mas and the more individualistic Carnival of Ol' Mas. Isaac uses description and metaphor to suggest a density and variety of cultural information, a layering that can contain all contradictions.
Susan Harewood and John Hunte (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813034676
- eISBN:
- 9780813046303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034676.003.0018
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Susan Harewood and John Hunte reveal a wealth of information and insight about how the range of Barbados dance and policy on that island helps form identities, from the historical dances, to efforts ...
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Susan Harewood and John Hunte reveal a wealth of information and insight about how the range of Barbados dance and policy on that island helps form identities, from the historical dances, to efforts after independence to use dance to promote nation building, to developing the government-funded Barbados Dance Theatre Company, to that uniquely Barbadian organization, the Landship. Issues of class, of who gets government subsidy, of emphasis on the African-derived or European-derived come to the fore within their framing question of decency and indecency. The wukking up to soca and calypso at Crop Over, Barbados' carnival season, is contrasted with a resurgence of ballroom dancing, liturgical dance, and new dance companies.Less
Susan Harewood and John Hunte reveal a wealth of information and insight about how the range of Barbados dance and policy on that island helps form identities, from the historical dances, to efforts after independence to use dance to promote nation building, to developing the government-funded Barbados Dance Theatre Company, to that uniquely Barbadian organization, the Landship. Issues of class, of who gets government subsidy, of emphasis on the African-derived or European-derived come to the fore within their framing question of decency and indecency. The wukking up to soca and calypso at Crop Over, Barbados' carnival season, is contrasted with a resurgence of ballroom dancing, liturgical dance, and new dance companies.
Cynthia Oliver (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813034676
- eISBN:
- 9780813046303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034676.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Cynthia Oliver connects the Anglophone islands of the West Indies by calypso and its offshoot soca and the dancing done to this infectious music. She celebrates its early dispersion by radio, her ...
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Cynthia Oliver connects the Anglophone islands of the West Indies by calypso and its offshoot soca and the dancing done to this infectious music. She celebrates its early dispersion by radio, her relatives on St. Croix in the Virgin Islands diverse ways of dancing to calypso, the sexy carnival boat rides of St. Thomas, and the hip circling wining that prevails today all over the Caribbean and the diaspora. This leads her to begin a tangy pan-Caribbean dance performance piece, “Rigidigidim De Bamba De,” by diaspora-diverse women who delve into their island memories, conflicted and joyful, while playfully wining.Less
Cynthia Oliver connects the Anglophone islands of the West Indies by calypso and its offshoot soca and the dancing done to this infectious music. She celebrates its early dispersion by radio, her relatives on St. Croix in the Virgin Islands diverse ways of dancing to calypso, the sexy carnival boat rides of St. Thomas, and the hip circling wining that prevails today all over the Caribbean and the diaspora. This leads her to begin a tangy pan-Caribbean dance performance piece, “Rigidigidim De Bamba De,” by diaspora-diverse women who delve into their island memories, conflicted and joyful, while playfully wining.
Andrew R. Martin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812407
- eISBN:
- 9781496812445
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812407.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This introductory chapter briefly discusses an in-depth study of the US Navy Steel Band and its relationship within the scope of two overarching narratives: the development of post-WWII military ...
More
This introductory chapter briefly discusses an in-depth study of the US Navy Steel Band and its relationship within the scope of two overarching narratives: the development of post-WWII military public relations and recruiting, and American popular culture's fascination with Latin and Caribbean music over the past century. The chapter then explains what a steelpan is, along with the steelband movement in Trinidad and Tobago, and how it impacted the development of steelbands in America. It also explores how the American calypso craze of the late 1950s influenced the formation of the US Navy Steel Band.Less
This introductory chapter briefly discusses an in-depth study of the US Navy Steel Band and its relationship within the scope of two overarching narratives: the development of post-WWII military public relations and recruiting, and American popular culture's fascination with Latin and Caribbean music over the past century. The chapter then explains what a steelpan is, along with the steelband movement in Trinidad and Tobago, and how it impacted the development of steelbands in America. It also explores how the American calypso craze of the late 1950s influenced the formation of the US Navy Steel Band.
Francio Guadeloupe
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520254886
- eISBN:
- 9780520942639
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520254886.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This ethnography probes the ethos and attitude created by radio disc jockeys on the bi-national Caribbean island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten. Examining the intersection of Christianity, calypso, and ...
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This ethnography probes the ethos and attitude created by radio disc jockeys on the bi-national Caribbean island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten. Examining the intersection of Christianity, calypso, and capitalism, the book shows how a multiethnic and multi-religious island nation, where livelihoods depend on tourism, has managed to encourage all social classes to transcend their ethnic and religious differences. In the analysis, the book discusses the island DJs, whose formulations of Christian faith, musical creativity, and capitalist survival express ordinary people's hopes and fears and promote tolerance.Less
This ethnography probes the ethos and attitude created by radio disc jockeys on the bi-national Caribbean island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten. Examining the intersection of Christianity, calypso, and capitalism, the book shows how a multiethnic and multi-religious island nation, where livelihoods depend on tourism, has managed to encourage all social classes to transcend their ethnic and religious differences. In the analysis, the book discusses the island DJs, whose formulations of Christian faith, musical creativity, and capitalist survival express ordinary people's hopes and fears and promote tolerance.
Shannon Dudley
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195175479
- eISBN:
- 9780199851522
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195175479.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
At the time of Trinidad’s independence from England, the most popular and hotly contested carnival performance venue for steelbands was the “Bomb,” in which steelbands played arrangements of foreign ...
More
At the time of Trinidad’s independence from England, the most popular and hotly contested carnival performance venue for steelbands was the “Bomb,” in which steelbands played arrangements of foreign repertoires performed in calypso style. Especially popular were carnival arrangements of European classical music. The projection of such colonial icons by the national instrument at the national festival brought together highly charged and seemingly incongruous symbols, and contributed to heated debates about the national culture that persist in important ways up to the present. This chapter outlines contrasting interpretations of the Bomb to analyze the aesthetics of the steelband’s diverse constituents and to sort out some differences between musical thinking and political thinking.Less
At the time of Trinidad’s independence from England, the most popular and hotly contested carnival performance venue for steelbands was the “Bomb,” in which steelbands played arrangements of foreign repertoires performed in calypso style. Especially popular were carnival arrangements of European classical music. The projection of such colonial icons by the national instrument at the national festival brought together highly charged and seemingly incongruous symbols, and contributed to heated debates about the national culture that persist in important ways up to the present. This chapter outlines contrasting interpretations of the Bomb to analyze the aesthetics of the steelband’s diverse constituents and to sort out some differences between musical thinking and political thinking.
Francio Guadeloupe
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520254886
- eISBN:
- 9780520942639
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520254886.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter introduces one of the many disc jockeys working in SMX: DJ Fernando Clarke. Clarke is one of the many DJs working on PJD2, the oldest and most popular radio station in SMX. The chapter ...
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This chapter introduces one of the many disc jockeys working in SMX: DJ Fernando Clarke. Clarke is one of the many DJs working on PJD2, the oldest and most popular radio station in SMX. The chapter first describes the kind of work the disc jockeys in PJD2 do, and then focuses on Clarke's celebrity status. It reveals that Clarke does his best to promote his “Christian partying man of the people” image, even though it does not fit well with other aspects of his life. From there, the chapter introduces the Saturday calypso ritual and the marriage between the biblically derived ontological idea of the sinful nature of man and the contextual importance of tourism.Less
This chapter introduces one of the many disc jockeys working in SMX: DJ Fernando Clarke. Clarke is one of the many DJs working on PJD2, the oldest and most popular radio station in SMX. The chapter first describes the kind of work the disc jockeys in PJD2 do, and then focuses on Clarke's celebrity status. It reveals that Clarke does his best to promote his “Christian partying man of the people” image, even though it does not fit well with other aspects of his life. From there, the chapter introduces the Saturday calypso ritual and the marriage between the biblically derived ontological idea of the sinful nature of man and the contextual importance of tourism.
Margot Norris
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813034027
- eISBN:
- 9780813038162
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034027.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Fritz Senn, one of the most incisive readers ever to tackle Ulysses, calls “Calypso” “probably the easiest chapter in the novel.” This is certainly true for veteran readers of the novel, who can ...
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Fritz Senn, one of the most incisive readers ever to tackle Ulysses, calls “Calypso” “probably the easiest chapter in the novel.” This is certainly true for veteran readers of the novel, who can bring the knowledge of the whole work to bear on figuring out nearly everything that goes on in this episode. But how would “Calypso” strike a first-time or virgin reader, as we might call such a hypothetical figure? This chapter advocates a return to first principles in its endeavor to track the heuristic dilemmas faced by a “virgin” reader of “Calypso.” Adopting Paul Grice's notion of implicature, the role of the unspoken and the implied in discourse, this chapter charts the path the reader must steer through the false leads, explanatory gaps, perplexing conjunctions, semiotic lapses, and insinuated points of view of this episode. It shows that all interpretations of Ulysses must necessarily be incomplete and imperfect and that, moreover, James Joyce forces us to collude in the guilty secrets at which the text playfully gestures only often to reveal as figments.Less
Fritz Senn, one of the most incisive readers ever to tackle Ulysses, calls “Calypso” “probably the easiest chapter in the novel.” This is certainly true for veteran readers of the novel, who can bring the knowledge of the whole work to bear on figuring out nearly everything that goes on in this episode. But how would “Calypso” strike a first-time or virgin reader, as we might call such a hypothetical figure? This chapter advocates a return to first principles in its endeavor to track the heuristic dilemmas faced by a “virgin” reader of “Calypso.” Adopting Paul Grice's notion of implicature, the role of the unspoken and the implied in discourse, this chapter charts the path the reader must steer through the false leads, explanatory gaps, perplexing conjunctions, semiotic lapses, and insinuated points of view of this episode. It shows that all interpretations of Ulysses must necessarily be incomplete and imperfect and that, moreover, James Joyce forces us to collude in the guilty secrets at which the text playfully gestures only often to reveal as figments.
Shane Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226568300
- eISBN:
- 9780226568584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226568584.003.0101
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter shows how the first calypso craze relied on an ethnographic apparatus that produced calypso through signs of authenticity, while the second calypso craze relied on a cinematic apparatus ...
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This chapter shows how the first calypso craze relied on an ethnographic apparatus that produced calypso through signs of authenticity, while the second calypso craze relied on a cinematic apparatus that produced calypso through signs of inauthenticity, continually making visible the technological program, its apparatus, and its malfunction in their narratives. Though these films document some of the most accomplished and remarkable black performers of the midcentury—including Herb Jeffries, Lord Flea, the Duke of Iron, and Maya Angelou—Vogel approaches them not as artifacts that would allow us access to these lost performances but instead show how these filmic performances reproduce and thematize the internal (il)logic of the calypso craze itself. That is, in foregrounding the fad’s technological production in their filmic performances—the recording booths, the projectors, the jukeboxes, and the screens that recorded and transmitted the fad—these films insist upon the fundamental tautology of the calypso craze itself.Less
This chapter shows how the first calypso craze relied on an ethnographic apparatus that produced calypso through signs of authenticity, while the second calypso craze relied on a cinematic apparatus that produced calypso through signs of inauthenticity, continually making visible the technological program, its apparatus, and its malfunction in their narratives. Though these films document some of the most accomplished and remarkable black performers of the midcentury—including Herb Jeffries, Lord Flea, the Duke of Iron, and Maya Angelou—Vogel approaches them not as artifacts that would allow us access to these lost performances but instead show how these filmic performances reproduce and thematize the internal (il)logic of the calypso craze itself. That is, in foregrounding the fad’s technological production in their filmic performances—the recording booths, the projectors, the jukeboxes, and the screens that recorded and transmitted the fad—these films insist upon the fundamental tautology of the calypso craze itself.
Shane Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226568300
- eISBN:
- 9780226568584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226568584.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter introduces the "calypso craze" of the 1950s and the central figure of the story, Harry Belafonte. Stolen Time is not an exhaustive history of the fad, but rather looks at specific ...
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This chapter introduces the "calypso craze" of the 1950s and the central figure of the story, Harry Belafonte. Stolen Time is not an exhaustive history of the fad, but rather looks at specific instances of the calypso craze that illuminate the shape of black fad performance in the United States across a range of overlapping media: nightclub acts and sound recordings (chapter 1), film (chapter 2), television (chapter 3), musical theater (chapter 4), and dance. Rather than a sociological approach that details where and how the calypso craze was consumed, Stolen Time instead looks at the creative and unexpected ways that black performers themselves used the conditions of fad culture to (dis)engage with the entertainment industry, trip the performance circuit between the United States and the Caribbean, and shape the history of performance in the United States and its relationship to the black diaspora.Less
This chapter introduces the "calypso craze" of the 1950s and the central figure of the story, Harry Belafonte. Stolen Time is not an exhaustive history of the fad, but rather looks at specific instances of the calypso craze that illuminate the shape of black fad performance in the United States across a range of overlapping media: nightclub acts and sound recordings (chapter 1), film (chapter 2), television (chapter 3), musical theater (chapter 4), and dance. Rather than a sociological approach that details where and how the calypso craze was consumed, Stolen Time instead looks at the creative and unexpected ways that black performers themselves used the conditions of fad culture to (dis)engage with the entertainment industry, trip the performance circuit between the United States and the Caribbean, and shape the history of performance in the United States and its relationship to the black diaspora.
Shane Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226568300
- eISBN:
- 9780226568584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226568584.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter turns to Geoffrey Holder to locate the calypso craze in relation to modern black concert dance in the 1940s and 1950s, when black dancers developed new techniques by which to engage the ...
More
This chapter turns to Geoffrey Holder to locate the calypso craze in relation to modern black concert dance in the 1940s and 1950s, when black dancers developed new techniques by which to engage the ongoing encounter between Africa, Europe, and the New World. While the commercialized calypso craze seems far removed from the high art context of black concert dance, they were in fact coextensive with each other, and dancers moved between these spheres. Albeit in very different modes, both the calypso craze and black concert dance staged the African diaspora in performances that rerouted the assumptions of racial authenticity toward new aesthetic expressions.Less
This chapter turns to Geoffrey Holder to locate the calypso craze in relation to modern black concert dance in the 1940s and 1950s, when black dancers developed new techniques by which to engage the ongoing encounter between Africa, Europe, and the New World. While the commercialized calypso craze seems far removed from the high art context of black concert dance, they were in fact coextensive with each other, and dancers moved between these spheres. Albeit in very different modes, both the calypso craze and black concert dance staged the African diaspora in performances that rerouted the assumptions of racial authenticity toward new aesthetic expressions.
Shane Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226568300
- eISBN:
- 9780226568584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226568584.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
In summarizing the main points of the book, this conclusion notes that in the black calypso craze it was not Trinidadian culture that was stolen, but the culture industry and the temporality of the ...
More
In summarizing the main points of the book, this conclusion notes that in the black calypso craze it was not Trinidadian culture that was stolen, but the culture industry and the temporality of the fad. This stolen time was not an imperial appropriation but a form of exchange across black difference within the idiom of fad culture. This book examines the constrained possibilities of this exchange as it occurred in the short-lived North American fad for calypso. By taking seriously these counterfeit performances of Afro-Caribbean cultures and histories, Stolen Time argues that the black calypso craze provides insight into the development of diasporic consciousness in the mid-twentieth century as African American performers self-reflexively and circuitously engaged with Caribbean performance traditions. This exchange was not one way; it went in multiple directions, including back to Trinidad.Less
In summarizing the main points of the book, this conclusion notes that in the black calypso craze it was not Trinidadian culture that was stolen, but the culture industry and the temporality of the fad. This stolen time was not an imperial appropriation but a form of exchange across black difference within the idiom of fad culture. This book examines the constrained possibilities of this exchange as it occurred in the short-lived North American fad for calypso. By taking seriously these counterfeit performances of Afro-Caribbean cultures and histories, Stolen Time argues that the black calypso craze provides insight into the development of diasporic consciousness in the mid-twentieth century as African American performers self-reflexively and circuitously engaged with Caribbean performance traditions. This exchange was not one way; it went in multiple directions, including back to Trinidad.
