CALYPSO REINVENTS ITSELF

Abstract

The calypso is a living example of Afro-Caribbean oral tradition adapting itself to a process of continuous change. Calypso had its roots in a complex of songs and dances which, in spite of prohibitive legislation both during and after slavery, was kept alive at the regular weekend "dance assemblies" of the African "nations" who had been brought into the Archipelago. The 1950s were significant in the "reinvention" of calypso. The story of chutney's journey towards calypso/soca has been one of the commercialization of a folk music. In the 1980s, Jamaican "dub" and "dancehall" music, particularly the sexually aggressive performance style of the "dancehall queens", was being blamed for the "degeneration" of Trinidad's calypso and soca music into ultra-simplistic lyrics and sexualized "wine-and-jam" performance. In Trinidad, constant self-invention has resulted in the society's preoccupation with the contradictory forces of tradition and change, and in the generation of hybrid forms.

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