Hip-hop isn’t the only cultural movement celebrating its golden anniversary this year; soca, the up-tempo, propulsive descendant of calypso created in Trinidad and embraced across the Caribbean diaspora, also celebrated its golden anniversary this year.
Soca, like calypso and the steel pan, the national instrument of Trinidad & Tobago, developed from festivities associated with Trinidad’s world-renowned pre-Lenten carnival. In the late 1700s, French settlers in Trinidad brought their costume ball traditions to the island; the West African slaves there were forbidden from participating. With the emancipation of slavery in 1834, freed Africans developed their own rituals and, over time, these practices produced` calypso, the steel pan and elaborate, colorful masquerading, called “playing mas,” concentrated in the streets of Trinidad’s capital Port of Spain during carnival’s climax, the Monday and Tuesday preceding Ash Wednesday.
In 1973, calypso artist Lord Shorty recorded “Indrani,” a song that fused Indian instrumentation with African-influenced calypso rhythms, bringing together Trinidad’s dominant ethnic groups in what he explained, in Dr. Rudolph Ottley’s book Calypsonians from Then to Now Part I, as “the soul, the spirit, the depth of calypso.” It was the result of intentional experimentation to modernize the structure of calypso, the first recorded music of the English-speaking Caribbean, in a bid to make it more palatable to wider audiences. Lord Shorty incorporated into calypso’s beat the dholak, a small drum of Indian origin, and the dhantal, an iron-rod percussion instrument, both essential components in an Indo-Trinidadian music called chutney. Despite initial protests – that Shorty was destroying calypso and ridiculing Indian culture with the song’s suggestive lyrics – “sokah” was here to stay (a journalist’s altered spelling of Shorty’s new style eventually stuck).
