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| Photo: Kitchener: Mark Lyndersay |
Slow-paced, lyric-driven calypso dates back to slave days, but really took flight in the early 20th century with practitioners like Atilla the Hun and Growling Tiger. Usually songs of protest or social commentary, the most memorable are often laced with innuendo. In the 1950s and 60s the Mighty Sparrow, Lord Kitchener and others took calypso to even greater heights, both musically and lyrically.
Traditional-style calypso is still sung during Carnival, but most calypso recorded today is influenced by the soca style. A rhythmically enhanced form of calypso, soca was born the 1970s. The term has become synonymous with the uptempo Carnival party style, but even slow melodies incorporate soca’s intricate bass lines and percussion. Soca has always been ready to embrace elements from other popular forms, and for several years has been heavily influenced by reggae, dancehall, jazz, R&B, and even techno styles.
Another Afro-Trinidadian form gaining ground is rapso, which features heavy, drum-based rhythms and strong chanting lyrics. Rapso’s veteran practitioners, Brother Resistance and the Network Rapso Riddum Band, have been joined recently by younger performers like Kindred and Home Front.
At the heart of musical Trinbago lies the steelband or pan, which has evolved over the years into a panoply of steel drums ranging in size from the lightweight tenor, which carries a full chromatic scale of notes, to the jumbo-sized bass. There are over 100 steel orchestras in the country: notables include Amoco Renegades, Phase II, Exodus and Fonclaire. The versatility of the pan is highlighted yearly in various festivals and competitions, including Panorama at Carnival time, the small-ensemble festival Pan Ramajay, and Pan Is Beautiful, where orchestras play a classical repertoire. Pan as a solo instrument is showcased at the Pan Jazz Festival, where virtuoso pannists like “Boogsie” Sharpe and Robbie Greenidge play alongside major jazz artists.
With the rise of chutney, Indian music in Trinidad has broken out of the classical and religious arenas and entered the popular music scene. The fast-paced, highly danceable beat has roots in the Hindi folk songs sung at birth and wedding ceremonies, but is today firmly entrenched on the party circuit, with large-scale chutney fetes an undeniable feature of Indo-Trinidadian life.
With such an array of styles, musical fusions are bound to occur, and Trinidad and Tobago does boast several hybrids. Chutney soca mixes soca elements and Hindi-English lyrics with Indian instruments like the dholak and dhantal, and has been a crossover success. Sitarist Mungal Patasar’s Pantar Group has combined pan with Indian instruments to create an inspiring form of Indo-Caribbean jazz. And Trinidad’s traditional Christmas music, parang, which is sung in Spanish with Venezuelan rhythms, has merged with calypso and chutney to create a form known as Chut-kai-pang! Look out as well for Trinbagonian versions of Alternative, Jazz and Gospel. You can find good cassettes and CDs of all these musical forms by browsing in the leading record stores. Georgia Popplewell
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