Understanding Caribbean Music
You hear it frequently these days: “What’s happening to Caribbean music? Where is calypso? Where did we get these strange songs with no melody and just boom, boom?†The short answer is that it’s not strange at all.
Change is always the norm in popular music; thirty years ago, Lord Shorty, propelling Soca in Trinidad, was lambasted by adults even as young people were galvanized by his music. One prominent band leader refused to play Shorty’s songs.
Our music changes as the world in which it lives changes. The current change is not an oddity; it has always been so. Sometimes the shifts are so gradual to be unnoticed, like the segue from instrumental music to vocals in carnival road marches.