Soca,
Part One

After Christopher Columbus landed in Trinidad and claimed it for Spain, it was assumed that Trinidad lacked the promise of wealth, thus the island was largely neglected for over 250 years. The original name for the island in the Arawaks’ language was Iëre, which meant “land of the hummingbird.” Christopher Columbus renamed it La Isla de la Trinidad, the Island of the Trinity. It was shortened to Trinidad.

In 1776, French settlers colonized the island, along with Free Coloureds and Africans. These new arrivals brought their language, customs, and cultural traditions. From what is present day Nigeria, enslaved Africans imported a style of music known as “kaiso.” Kaiso used satirical and insulting lyrics, and is related to the picong tradition. (Picong or Piquant is light comical banter, usually at someone else’s expense.) Kaiso singers, called chantwells, sang primarily in French creole.

Enslaved Africans were often forced to put out fires in the sugarcane fields, sometimes set by rebels, other times by planters burning cane before harvest to clear pests. It was grueling work, done under the crack of whips. The final burning of cane stubs at the end of the harvest season became a ritual, marking survival and transition.

In 1797, the British captured Trinidad and turned it into a crown colony, beginning a new phase of colonization similar to what they had already established in Barbados and Jamaica. Britain used the Atlantic Slave Trade to bolster the island’s sugar plantations.

Between Christmas and Lent, Trinidad’s white elite feasted and danced at lavish balls and country parties. From 1783 to 1838, Carnival belonged to the white upper class. Africans and mixed-race people were banned from street festivities but celebrated in private. The British imposed martial law during the season, marked by military drills. Their gatherings, along with the spectacle of martial law, define the earliest Carnival masquerades.

East Indians first arrived in Trinidad and Tobago as indentured laborers from India through the Indian indenture system from 1845 till 1917. After this first wave of Indian immigrants, a second wave of Indian entrepreneurs, or the “professional Indian class,” soon followed. This wave of immigration would reshape the island, and later, its music.

The word “Jamette” comes from the French diametre, referring to those beneath the circle of respectability, the urban working class who lived in Port of Spain’s barrack ranges. It also included anyone partaking in Carnival.

“…hordes of men and women, youthful in years but mature in every vice that perverts and degrades humanity… men without aim, women wanton, perverse, and depraved beyond expression.”

A jamette was a member of the Black working class in Trinidad and Tobago from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. The term “jamette” or “jamet” was used to describe this group of people. By the 1860s, these people became the heart of Carnival as the white elite distanced themselves.

A defining element of this celebration was the cannes brûlées procession. After the British Empire abolished slavery in the 1830s, newly freed slaves were given the opportunity to mock their oppression. Canboulay, from the French cannes brûlées (burning cane), was a ceremony rooted in labor and resistance. Originally celebrated on August 1, Emancipation Day, Canboulay was later pushed to midnight before Dimanche Gras as colonial authorities tried to suppress it. Over time, it evolved into J’Ouvert, the chaotic, pre-dawn start of Carnival. The fires gave way to mud, oil, and paint.

Whites largely viewed Carnival as immoral, obscene, and violent. The kalenda, drumming, dances, and sexually explicit masquerades were deeply objectionable to them. The press fully supported this stance, with editorials condemning Carnival, some even calling for a total ban. It was a time of harsh laws. The British Colonial Government passed several acts prohibiting Carnival activities, including drumming, carrying torches, and “obscene songs and dances.”

In 1883, the colonial government banned drumming. In 1884, the police gunned down twenty-two indentured Indian laborers at Hosay, for celebrating with their drums. Trinidadians began to fashion tamboo bamboo, an answer to the war on their music. Its name derives from the French word for drum (tambour) and the material from which the instrument is predominantly made from.

Many calypso, at this point, had still been sung in French. Julian Whiterose (real name: Henry Julian) is credited with popularizing the calypso form for English speakers. Soon, Victor Records (future RCA Victor) sent engineers to Trinidad to record the calypso sound. Lovey’s String Band is credited with recording the first calypso song. They formed in the 1890s and played into the 1920s.

By the 1930s, metal took the place of bamboo, and the steelpan was born. The Hell Yard Bamboo Band settled on the name Trinidad All Stars Steel Orchestra, becoming the oldest steelband in history. The Dead End Kids became the Desperadoes Steelband Orchestra.

Over time, calypso artists began to push the boundaries of what their lyrics could talk about. Calypso artists used their songs to offer commentary on political events, political corruption, and push the boundaries of expression and censorship. In the name of censorship, calypso records were sometimes dumped into the sea.

In the 1930s, a Portuguese immigrant named Eduardo de Sá Gomes paid to send two calypso singers to record music in New York City. The artists were Roaring Lion, and Attila the Hun. Soon after, they were followed by Lord Invader, whose hit “Rum and Coca-Cola” was later plagiarized by the Andrews Sisters.

By this point, the calypso sound was closely tied to the characteristics of jazz. After World War II, a new star would emerge in Lord Kitchener. After regular appearances on the BBC, and writing a song to celebrate the West Indies’ cricket team’s first victory over the UK team, Kitchener earned a residency in London. He later opened a nightclub in the city.

In the mid-fifties, the Mighty Sparrow began to emerge as the King of Calypso. I would argue that he holds the reputation for being the most famous and consistent calypso performer of all time. Sparrow developed a reputation for witty and intelligent observations on society. His 1956 hit “Jean and Dinah” commented on the large-scale prostitution that the local Army bases once supported. The song’s lyrics detail the desperation of the local prostitutes following the closure of many American military bases in Trinidad in the post-war period.

Which finally brings us to the 1970s and the emergence of “soca” or “soka.” Lord Shorty (real name: Garfield Blackman) is credited with pioneering the genre alongside Maestro and Baron. Soca took calypso music (and its kaiso influences) and infused it with both East Indian musical stylings, and African American funk and soul. The word “soca” comes from the fusion of “calypso” and “soul.”

Thus, within soca, you have a blending of three diasporas.

If that weren’t enough, distinct sounds from America’s R&B scene, Philadelphia (MFSB), Detroit (Motown), and Southern soul (Al Green, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin) to name a few, provided calypsonians with a smorgasbord of sounds to influence soca, which provided the genre with a much needed makeover. Very quickly, calypsonians like Sparrow found themselves fully embracing the musical genre.

Everything that makes hip-hop what it is, boasting raps, rival crews, street battles, and political bars, was already alive in Trinidadian music as far back as the 1800s. It just didn’t hit commercial recordings until the 1920s and ’30s. Calypso, like all great music, kept evolving through the ’50s and ’60s. When rocksteady and reggae artists started shaping their sound into a tool for national and global Black resistance, they were taking notes from calypso. And just like Jamaican music, calypso swung between raw, boastful, and sexually charged ‘slackness’ and a more conscious, political style.

My dad always saw hip-hop as the stepchild of better Caribbean music. To him, hip-hop wasn’t new, it was just the next chapter of something that felt (lazily) familiar to him. Growing up in the States, my father was rarely ever impressed with hip-hop. He thought rap music was little more than just “a lot of talking.” I grew up in New York. I’ve always been pretty obsessed with hip-hop, or what I understand to be hip-hop. With the recent fifty year anniversary of the genre, I often feel that we’re somewhat removed from whatever originally defined “hip-hop.”

Since the DAW has sidelined turntabling to the margins, the computer has changed everything about hip-hop. And “the culture” involves artists who make more than “hip-hop.” Hip-hop has become a shorthand for black electronic music and all of its derivatives. But today, it can be argued, all music is electronic music. Genres have broken down and the only thing left is the racial connotations that are associated with their origins. Hip-hop is just all mainstream black American music after 1987.