Search Results

This chapter examines the agency of women in soca and related genres, including various controversies they confront in this performance context. As women have created a space for themselves in Carnival mas and at the Carnival fetes, a number of “soca divas” have emerged to give voice to female revelers. This and other historical trends in soca underscore the rapidly changing nature of the popular music scene in Trinidad. The chapter considers the shifting attitudes and norms regarding gender roles, giving rise to gender diversity in various performance contexts, how these changes have played out in soca music, and how musical change and innovation continue to expand the possibilities within expressive culture in Trinidad and Tobago. It discusses the ways in which soca and its offshoots have created platforms for expression by women performers, including the two top female soca artists in Trinidad: Destra Garcia and Fay-Ann Lyons.

This chapter explores the conflicts and complexities of Indo-Caribbean femininity at a moment when the Indo-Caribbean woman is breaking away from embodiments of devi, traditional models of female representation strongly tied to religious patriarchy, to diva, a contemporary persona publicly expressed in the realm of chutney soca, a popular form of Indo-Caribbean music that has absorbed the Carnival aesthetic in Trinidad.

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.

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.

This chapter investigates the music of gospel dancehall and hardcore soca artists in Trinidad. It discusses the issues that surround their performances, including the ethical and stylistic implications attendant to their active creation of new social spaces for worship. It examines the ethical discourse surrounding the performance and reception of regional music in general and dancehall music in particular within the Full Gospel community in Trinidad. It traces the cultural and political trajectory of dancehall from the marginalized spaces of lower-class, black Jamaica to Full Gospel Trinidad.

This book examines how women became significant contributors to the performance of calypso and soca, as well as the musical development of the steel pan art form, in Trinidad and Tobago. Drawing on the author's fieldwork in Trinidad that began in 1997, the book considers the ways in which the cultural environment of Trinidad and Tobago was making women more visible and audible than at any previous time in its history. It explores the role that women have played in the creation and maintenance of various genres of music and performance contexts; the role of popular culture, especially musical performance, in sustaining Caribbean feminism and related struggles to overcome gender-based oppression; the dimensions and limitations of women's political agency through musical performance in Trinidad; and whether increased access and agency through expressive forms such as popular music improve other domains of life for women.

The Introduction lays out the organization and the research methodology of the book Jump Up! Caribbean Carnival Music in New York City. It outlines the history of calypso, soca, and steelband music in the diaspora, including the globalization of Trinidad Carnival, which was transplanted to Harlem in the 1930s and to Brooklyn in the late 1960s. The concept of diaspora looms large here, of course, given the historical circumstances of New York’s Afro-Caribbean migrants. The Introduction also looks at the concept of hybridity, including hybridization between African and European musical practices in the Caribbean, which is central to diasporic transnationalism in this context. Also discussed is the concept of “heritage music,” or music that is important and needs to be preserved and protected. In addition, relevant writings on Caribbean music are reviewed and the study is positioned within the broader field of transnational diasporic music scholarship. And finally, a chapter outline is offered.

The first chapter offers a brief history of Carnival music in Trinidad and the emergence of diasporic Carnival celebrations in New York, London, and Toronto. The tangled transnational origins of calypso, steelband, and soca along with their development as expressions of cultural identity and resistance for Afro-Trinidadians together set the stage for the music’s migration to North America and Europe. Calypso and steelband are recognized today as Trinidad’s most distinctive contributions to the world’s musics. The traditions associated with the twentieth-century Carnival are best understood as products of musical hybridity. That is, both calypso and steelband evolved through a similar process of hybridization. This chapter provides the necessary background for understanding this music’s migration and life outside the Caribbean in Harlem and Brooklyn.

Chapter 4 recounts the mass in-migration of English-speaking Caribbean people to Brooklyn in the wake of the new 1965 immigration laws. The closing down of Harlem Carnival in 1961 did not lead to the cessation of Carnival activity in New York. In 1971 the West Indian American Day Carnival Association (WIADCA) launched a Labor Day Carnival parade down Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway, establishing Brooklyn as the new center of New York’s Carnival. There would also be stage shows at the Brooklyn Museum and other nearby venues, as well as an annual Panorama contest and Dimanche Gras dance and stage show as part of the Labor Day festivities. Brooklyn’s Labor Day Carnival would eventually expand into the borough’s premiere cultural event, attracting millions of viewers and providing a nurturing environment for the growth of steelband and calypso, as well as the emerging soca style. Carnival music lay at the heart of the celebration.

Chapter 6 focuses on the rise of Brooklyn soca (soul/calypso), beginning with the story of the early Bronx-based independent record company Camille Records, before shifting to the three most important Brooklyn-based labels: Straker’s Records, Charlie’s Records, and B’s Records. These Caribbean-owned businesses, along with a cadre of influential calypso/soca singers and the music arrangers with whom they collaborated, played a crucial role in the evolution of modern calypso and soca music during the 1970s and 1980s. Brooklyn’s Labor Day celebration had been dominated by calypso from its inception. Indeed, calypso and the new variant soca (soul/calypso) were essential hallmarks of the festivities. Equally important, and concurrent with the rise of Brooklyn Carnival in the 1970s, was the borough’s emergence as a vital transnational center for the recording and production of calypso and soca music.

Building upon the history of the Brooklyn-based record companies outlined in the previous section, chapter 7 interprets soca music as transnational expression, anchored in Trinidadian tradition but indelibly shaped by musical and production practices in the diaspora. The style, structure, and themes of Brooklyn-produced songs are examined and positioned within the broader context of Caribbean and world music recordings of the period. An alternative history of soca is proposed, one emphasizing transnational roots resulting from the confluence of Trinidadian and American musical influences. Various patterns of musical style, international marketing, and diasporic song content are useful in assessing the dynamics of cultural globalization. This chapter looks at issues of stylistic transformation, lyrical content, soca’s location vis-à-vis other popular diasporic world musics, and the interplay of musical hybridity and cultural identity.

Chapter 9 offers a brief survey of recent developments in Brooklyn Carnival and the current status of its steelband and calypso/soca scenes. A description of Labor Day Carnival 2017, marking the 50th anniversary of the celebration, serves as a final coda. Carnival had survived in the face of a multitude of financial, political, and organizational obstacles for five decades, and New York’s Caribbean community was still jamming to soca and steelband music on Labor Day weekend. Over the previous decades, the press continued to portray the event as the city’s largest outdoor celebration, cementing Brooklyn Caribbean Carnival’s stature as an iconic New York cultural attraction. But what was once participatory ritual has increasingly taken on the aura of presentational spectacle. And while the Monday-morning pre-dawn J’Ouvert celebration, continued to operate, violence had marred the occasion in recent years. Nonetheless, Carnival music in Brooklyn has managed to survive, and in some corners flourished, despite a plethora of ongoing financial and logistical challenges.