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I’m surprised that none of the so-called music experts on this forum saw it fit to correct an erroneous statement made by another poster yesterday that “calypso is not soca… first thing.”
I just saw this particular statement a minute ago, and hopefully I will stimulate some discussion about Trinidad’s national music form with this new thread.
The fact is that calypso is, to a great extent, soca! Soca actually means “soul calypso”, and soca music is, in reality, an evolution of traditional calypso, a more modernized form, so to speak.
Arrow’s “Hot, Hot, Hot”, with its rock guitar styling and thumb slapping and plucking bass line and driving bass drum, in my view perfectly reflects the deliberate attempts during the 1980s and 1990s to make the traditional calypso approach more attractive to a wide audience. While there was nothing really new about the horn arrangements in that recording, the lead guitar and bass patterns were certainly different than what emerged from the soca recording studios prior to 1983.
Calypso, despite the early success of Harry Belafonte, never had a mass following outside of the Caribbean community, and (again, in my opinion) the shift to the more “chart friendly” soca was an effort to make the genre more chart oriented.
By the way, the live version of Belafonte’s “Day O” is worth listening for its jazzy approach to an interpretation of a traditional calypso tune.
P.S. On a slightly different topic, are readers aware that the massive rock ‘n’ roll hit of several decades ago, “Louie, Louie” was written by a Jamaican fisherman?
I just saw this particular statement a minute ago, and hopefully I will stimulate some discussion about Trinidad’s national music form with this new thread.
The fact is that calypso is, to a great extent, soca! Soca actually means “soul calypso”, and soca music is, in reality, an evolution of traditional calypso, a more modernized form, so to speak.
Arrow’s “Hot, Hot, Hot”, with its rock guitar styling and thumb slapping and plucking bass line and driving bass drum, in my view perfectly reflects the deliberate attempts during the 1980s and 1990s to make the traditional calypso approach more attractive to a wide audience. While there was nothing really new about the horn arrangements in that recording, the lead guitar and bass patterns were certainly different than what emerged from the soca recording studios prior to 1983.
Calypso, despite the early success of Harry Belafonte, never had a mass following outside of the Caribbean community, and (again, in my opinion) the shift to the more “chart friendly” soca was an effort to make the genre more chart oriented.
By the way, the live version of Belafonte’s “Day O” is worth listening for its jazzy approach to an interpretation of a traditional calypso tune.
P.S. On a slightly different topic, are readers aware that the massive rock ‘n’ roll hit of several decades ago, “Louie, Louie” was written by a Jamaican fisherman?
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