Calypso (music)

Calypso is a form of Trinidadian folk music used both for social commentary and entertainment. Traditionally, calypso lyrics feature satirical political content, as draconian censorship laws limited public free speech in Trinidad. Using lyrics replete with culturally specific references, enslaved individuals in Trinidad used calypso as a means of communicating information in a covert fashion. Satire and ribaldry have been important facets of calypso as well.

There is no connection between this music genre and the Calypso of Greek mythology. The term is derived from the word kaiso, an exclamation of praise (similar to bravo), used by Hausa speakers, primarily in northern Nigeria and Niger. Calypso melodies are based on rhythms found in West African music. Singers of calypso are known as calypsonians, or chantuelles. The instruments most commonly used in calypso include the guitar, maracas, trumpet, flute, saxophone, trombone, bongos, congas, concertina, steelpans, and the cuatro, which is similar to a lute. Calypso music has been featured prominently in films (Island in the Sun in 1957 and Beetlejuice in 1988); television shows (The Muppet Show in 1978 and The Simpsons in 2005); and Broadway musicals (Jamaica in 1957 and Once on This Island in 1990). "Under the Sea," a calypso song from Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989), won both a Grammy and an Academy Award.

Brief History

Griot performance was the precursor of calypso. As early as the fourteenth century in the Mali Empire, griots sang sardonic choruses of tribute, ridicule, and stories. An enslaved West African named Gros Jean ("Fat John") is credited with introducing calypso to a French-colonized Trinidad in the 1790s. Originally known as caïso and cariso, calypso is defined by rhyming eight-line stanzas alternating with four-line refrains, in a call-and-response pattern common in West African music. Set against syncopated melodies, the language employed is florid, and the lexicon is colloquial. The earliest calypsos were performed in French Creole. The somewhat fluid migration throughout the Francophone Caribbean contributed to the propagation of the genre in places like Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint-Barthélemy. An influx of Barbadian émigrés to Trinidad in the late nineteenth century helped to popularize English-language calypsos.

The music and dancing of the harvest festival known as Canboulay also played a substantive role in the development of calypso. It was celebrated alongside Carnival when French Catholic plantation owners organized elaborate masquerades to luxuriate before Lent’s six weeks of asceticism. After the abolition of slavery, calypso music—especially the practice of competitions between calypsonians—was absorbed into Carnival culture.

Overview

The first sound recording of a calypso song, performed by Lovey’s String Band of Trinidad, was made in New York at the Victor Gramophone Company in 1912. Calypso records were used to disseminate news and other important information, particularly reporting political corruption, during the 1930s. As such, the British colonial government actively sought to censor the content of calypso songs. By World War II, calypso was starting to gain a foothold in American popular music. The Roaring Lion, Mighty Sparrow, Aldwin Roberts, and Lord Kitchener all achieved modest successes in the 1950s. The Andrews Sisters, famous for their 1941 hit, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," spent ten weeks atop the Billboard pop chart with their version of "Rum and Coca-Cola" in 1945. Gone from this version is the critique of American soldiers’ maltreatment of Trinidadian women during the 1941–1947 US occupation of the island nation.

Harry Belafonte is credited with popularizing the genre. His 1956 single, "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)," was an international success, as was Calypso, the album on which it appeared. Technically, "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" is a mento, a type of Jamaican call-and-response folk song. Due to the similarities in structure and content between mento and calypso, the song served to increase interest in the latter genre as well. The album Calypso was an unprecedented success, becoming the first LP (long-playing) album to sell over one million copies. The album spent ninety-nine weeks on the US Top Forty pop charts, including fifty-eight weeks in the Top Ten and thirty-one weeks at number one. Until Belafonte’s commercial success, calypso was seen primarily as folk music used to protest colonial control. In addition to Belafonte’s well-known version, five other recording artists have reached the Top Forty with the same song: The Terriers, Sarah Vaughan, Stan Freberg, Steve Lawrence, and the Fontane Sisters. In 2011, the song returned to the US pop charts, having been sampled for rapper Lil Wayne’s triple-platinum single, "6 Foot 7 Foot," and singer Jason Derulo’s gold dance single, "Don’t Wanna Go Home."

Genres heavily influenced by calypso have proliferated since the 1950s. Jamaican musicians combined the rhythms of calypso and mento with the walking bass of American jazz and rhythm and blues to create ska in the 1950s. Reggae and rocksteady subsequently developed from ska. Outside of the Caribbean, ska became popular in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, and in the US, Japan, and the rest of Europe in the 1990s. Well-known ska artists of the late 1990s through the 2010s include Prince Buster, The Specials, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and No Doubt. In the late 2010s, the political activist musical group Captain SKA, which regularly features reggae and ska themes in their music, released "Liar Liar GE2017" (2017) amid the country’s elections. The song used traditional vocals and music but included portions of speeches and interviews of British politician Theresa May and reached fourth on the UK’s Singles Chart. The groups produced a similar song in 2019 entitled "Nigel Farage is a Racist."

Soca is probably the most successful of calypso’s subgenres. A fusing of calypso with American funk and Indo-Caribbean music, soca first emerged in marginalized communities in Trinidad in the late 1970s. Soca quickly became popular in Jamaica, Guyana, Belize, Montserrat, and eventually the rest of the Caribbean. The name is a combination of the first two letters of soul and calypso, representing not soul music, but rather the spirit of the Trinidadian people. Lord Shorty was an early innovator of the genre. Among the best-known modern soca musicians, Trinidadian soca recording artist Machel Montano began his career at a young age on the television competition show Star Search. His song "Big Truck" (1997) was his first major success in soca music. He continued releasing soca music in the 2010s and 2020s, including the solo albums Too Young to Soca? (1985), The Book of Angels (2007), Happiest Man Alive (2014), G.O.A.T. (2019), and The Wedding Album (2021). In 2017, Montano was featured in the autobiographical documentary Machel Montano: Journey of a Soca King. His mother, Elizabeth Montano, later released the novel King of Soca: The Biography of Machel Montano (2022), outlining Soca’s rise to fame.

In the discos and dance clubs of the 1970s in Dominica and Guadeloupe, cadence-lypso was popular. Synthesized from calypso and Haitian cadence rampa, cadence-lypso was influenced by the Black Power and Rastafarian movements. The optimistic, anticolonial lyrics were popular in the nationalistic, youth-oriented counterculture of the era.

Since the 1960s, the traditionally male-dominated genre has produced a number of notable female calypsonians, including Singing Sandra, Abbi Blackman, and Denyse Plummer. One of the first female calypso singers, Calypso Rose, gained popularity in the 1970s and continued her career into the twenty-first century with songs like "Calypso Queen" and "Woman Smarter," both released in 2016. She performed her calypso-inspired music at the 2019 music festival Coachella at the age of seventy-eight. While calypso was still recorded and performed in the Caribbean by singers like David Rudder, Black Stalin, Chalkdust, and Sugar Aloes in the 2010s and 2020s, its commercial presence was primarily represented by the genres it inspired. Many recording artists continued the soca tradition and had international success with their recordings. For example, Kevin Lyttle’s song "Turn Me On" (2004) reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100. Singer Rupee’s (Rupert Clarke) album 1 on 1 (2004) introduced elements of gospel music and flamenco tones to the soca genera. The album’s popularity led to Rupee’s collaboration with artists like Rihanna, Lil' Kim, and Pitbull.

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