Soca evolution

Carnival Origins

Dara E Healy

Yes, ah from a place where soca the resounding power

Yuh could feel any time any hour, sunshine or shower...

Downtown fete was a safe space

30,000 people of different background

Converge on PSC grounds

Shaking like a earthquake

We used to see the downtown massive and the uptown massive

With no fences to separate

–­ Bunji Garlin, Carry It

SOCA IS shifting again. This time it is moving into the gayelles, the stickfight and flowing in tune with the lavways, the songs of warriors. Increasingly, soca is saying to calypso, "Look meh, remember me? I come from somewhere. Just ask Ras Shorty I, my creator." Soca is stepping out into the world. Some might say that it is not the soca envisaged by its founder, that it has gone too far. Well, I am not so sure.

Kalyan, Atlantik, Traffik, Charlie’s Roots. These are some of the big-name bands that would evoke a raw response from Bunji and others who lived through that amazing time. One Carnival, I decided to go to all of the fetes – Fire, WASA, Army – (for research purposes naturally).

I remember standing on some sort of structure at the edge of the stage in a Fire fete, tightly holding on to a piece of scaffolding, looking down on a sea of faces, jumping and waving in pure joy. It was just different then.

I did not know it at the time, but this was the season of the music producer and Pelham Goddard reigned. He and his team were behind a consistent stream of hits from the late 1970s into the early 90s.

Incredibly, they were responsible for era-defining music like Maestro’s Savage, 1976; Penguin’s Deputy in 1982, Rudder’s Bahia Girl, 1986, and Super Blue’s seemingly unstoppable wins from Soca Baptist in 1980 to Get Something and Wave in 1991.

If soca was in an experimental phase in the 1970s, by 1991 the genre had exploded, musically becoming something that was unimaginable to the inventor of this musical style.

Ras Shorty I expressed his disappointment to an interviewer about the direction that soca had taken. “I believe what God has done for me is take me out of it in 1977 when it began going in that direction. When we had Savage from Maestro and Sugar Bum Bum from Kitchener. That’s when I came out of the whole thing.”

To understand why he would feel so deeply about this music, one needs to appreciate when soca music was created.

The 1970s was more than a time when people of African heritage clamoured for equality. A significant theme of the Black Power revolution was unity between Africans and Indians. For decades, colonial authorities had manipulated the perceived differences between the races. These imposed divisions continued after independence, influencing the way that people felt not just about politics, but about each other.

For Ras Shorty I, soca would have been an essential part of our healing. He documented his disappointment with soca in the 1992 calypso That eh Good Enough – “What are you telling the nation/My calypsonian brother/What are you feeding the young ones/Is it poison or nectar?/Prancing up and down the stage/Like a mad man on a rampage/All you doing is looking for mileage/Abusing your privilege/Sing better songs for the nation.”

For him, soca was meant to be more contemplative, along the lines of Watch Out My children, Who God Bless or Om Shanti. Yet, as we once again ask the crucial question, what is the purpose of soca, artists are providing the answers.

Today, Machel Montano, an artist primarily known for soca, is the current Calypso Monarch. Voice changed the landscape with his positive messaging, slowing down the music and becoming more introspective, perhaps as Ras Shorty intended. Soca has now entered the realm of social activism, as Kes addressed men’s mental health, a topic discussed too little in our society. Etienne Charles weaves jazz into the mix, while other artists experiment with Afrobeats.

Soca artists are also returning to the origins of our Carnival, seeking inspiration from the ancestors, those who fought for our culture. Keegan Taylor’s Doh Kry honours the power and relevance of stickfighting and its powerful lessons about manhood, being a warrior and protector of the community. This year, Super Blue is singing about the 1881 Canboulay uprisings.

So, doh worry, uncle Shorty. Soca coming back home.

Dara E Healy is a performing artist and founder of the Idakeda Group, a cultural organisation dedicated to empowering communities through the arts