The Political Calypso

The Political Calypso PDF Author: Louis Regis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Calypso, a traditional form of music in the Caribbean, began in Trinidad and Tobago as a subtle protest against British rule. Influenced by African and native Caribbean rhythms, the calypso (along with Jamaican reggae) defines the music of the region. Louis Regis examines the evolution of the political calypso from 1962 to 1987, the period of Trinidad/Tobago's independence from Britain, and presents the text of lyrics from this popular folk-urban musical form.Following the songs and their themes chronologically from 1962 forward, Regis discovers the social history, cultural attitudes, and political commentary embedded within the music. He discusses the uneasy alliance between the performer and the politician, the political moods and postures emphasized in the songs, and the national identity of the calypso.Drawing upon voluminous research, Regis's study brings to light little-known and unrecorded songs. With a concluding chapter on the calypso's artistic and performance elements, it will appeal both to specialists in ethnomusicology and to general readers who enjoy the calypso.

The Political Calypso

The Political Calypso PDF Author: Louis Regis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
Calypso, a traditional form of music in the Caribbean, began in Trinidad and Tobago as a subtle protest against British rule. Influenced by African and native Caribbean rhythms, the calypso (along with Jamaican reggae) defines the music of the region. Louis Regis examines the evolution of the political calypso from 1962 to 1987, the period of Trinidad/Tobago's independence from Britain, and presents the text of lyrics from this popular folk-urban musical form.Following the songs and their themes chronologically from 1962 forward, Regis discovers the social history, cultural attitudes, and political commentary embedded within the music. He discusses the uneasy alliance between the performer and the politician, the political moods and postures emphasized in the songs, and the national identity of the calypso.Drawing upon voluminous research, Regis's study brings to light little-known and unrecorded songs. With a concluding chapter on the calypso's artistic and performance elements, it will appeal both to specialists in ethnomusicology and to general readers who enjoy the calypso.

Music, Memory, Resistance

Music, Memory, Resistance PDF Author: Sandra Pouchet Paquet
Publisher: Ian Randle Publishers
ISBN: 976637290X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
"Calypsonians have long been the 'voice of the people', delivering the complaints, criticisms and even the solutions to political leaders. In its earliest manifestations, calypso music emerged in response to a cultural climate that demanded creative modes of expression that could both resist and record political and historical changes taking place in Trinidad and Tobago. Since the 1920s and 1930s, calypsonians typically have composed songs that chronicle their observations and opinions on current events focusing on specific occurrences, from local scandals to current affairs while also examining broader trends. Not only has calypso served as an unofficial record of historical events, it emerged as a cultural weapon that yielded tremendous sway within the general audiences of the Caribbean region. This collection includes contributions from calypsonians, critics, novelists and poets alike, all engaged in representing Caribbean culture in its myriad forms. It represents an array of convergences across critical perspectives, political and social agendas, generations and national boundaries. The work of numerous calypsonians and other singers are explored, including Sparrow; Kitchener; Chalkdust; Denise Belfon; and writers such as Samuel Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, Errol John, Paul Marshall, Earl Lovelace and Lashkmi Persaud. The comparative analyses provide an interdisciplinary approach to Cultural Studies making the volume essential reading for students, scholars and calypso enthusiasts. "

Calypso Magnolia

Calypso Magnolia PDF Author: John Wharton Lowe
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469626217
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
In this far-reaching literary history, John Wharton Lowe remakes the map of American culture by revealing the deep, persistent connections between the ideas and works produced by writers of the American South and the Caribbean. Lowe demonstrates that a tendency to separate literary canons by national and regional boundaries has led critics to ignore deep ties across highly permeable borders. Focusing on writers and literatures from the Deep South and Gulf states in relation to places including Mexico, Haiti, and Cuba, Lowe reconfigures the geography of southern literature as encompassing the "circumCaribbean," a dynamic framework within which to reconsider literary history, genre, and aesthetics. Considering thematic concerns such as race, migration, forced exile, and colonial and postcolonial identity, Lowe contends that southern literature and culture have always transcended the physical and political boundaries of the American South. Lowe uses cross-cultural readings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, including William Faulkner, Martin Delany, Zora Neale Hurston, George Lamming, Cristina Garcia, Edouard Glissant, and Madison Smartt Bell, among many others, to make his argument. These literary figures, Lowe argues, help us uncover new ways of thinking about the shared culture of the South and Caribbean while demonstrating that southern literature has roots even farther south than we realize.

Governing Sound

Governing Sound PDF Author: Jocelyne Guilbault
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226310604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Written in two parts, part 1 explores the development of Calypso, from it's emergence in the pre-colonial period to the post colonial period. In part 2, the focus is on the new Carnival musical practices of soca, rapso, chutney, soca and ragga soca, and the ways in which they contirbuted to the redefination of Trinidadian cultural politics in the neoliberal era. The new rationailities, contigencies, desires and musical experments that animated the new musics and enabled them to gradually displace calypso from its centrality as national expression is examined.

The Calypso Directive

The Calypso Directive PDF Author: Brian Andrews
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 1611454948
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Will Foster, a man with a DNA mutation that provides immunity from disease, escapes from medical quarantine and becomes a fugitive hunted across Europe along with his microbiologist former lover.

The Political Calypso

The Political Calypso PDF Author: Louis Regis
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 9780813015804
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
"A significant contribution to the field of calypso studies. . . . Few published works have taken this extensive a look at the political calypsos and what informs them."--Keith Q. Warner, George Mason University, author of Kaiso! The Trinidad Calypso Calypso, a traditional form of music in the Caribbean, began in Trinidad and Tobago as a subtle protest against British rule. Influenced by African and native Caribbean rhythms, the calypso (along with Jamaican reggae) defines the music of the region. Louis Regis examines the evolution of the political calypso from 1962 to 1987, the period of Trinidad/Tobago's independence from Britain, and presents the text of lyrics from this popular folk-urban musical form. Following the songs and their themes chronologically from 1962 forward, Regis discovers the social history, cultural attitudes, and political commentary embedded within the music. He discusses the uneasy alliance between the performer and the politician, the political moods and postures emphasized in the songs, and the national identity of the calypso. Drawing upon voluminous research, Regis's study brings to light little-known and unrecorded songs. With a concluding chapter on the calypso's artistic and performance elements, it will appeal both to specialists in ethnomusicology and to general readers who enjoy the calypso. Louis Regis, the author of Maestro: The True Master and Black Stalin: The Caribbean Man, is one of the West Indies' foremost authorities on the calypso. He teaches at Pleasantville Senior Comprehensive School in Trinidad.

Miguel Street

Miguel Street PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307370615
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
To the residents of Miguel Street, a derelict corner of Trinidad’s capital, their neighbourhood is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. There’s Popo the carpenter, who neglects his livelihood to build “the thing without a name;” Man-man, who goes from running for public office to staging his own crucifixion; Big Foot, the dreaded bully with glass tear ducts; and the lovely Mrs. Hereira, in thrall to her monstrous husband. Their lives (and the legends their neighbours construct around them) are rendered by V. S. Naipaul with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion in this tender, funny novel.

Erotic Islands

Erotic Islands PDF Author: Lyndon K. Gill
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
ISBN: 9780822368588
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In Erotic Islands, Lyndon K. Gill maps a long queer presence at a crossroads of the Caribbean. This transdisciplinary book foregrounds the queer histories of Carnival, calypso, and HIV/AIDS in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. At its heart is an extension of Audre Lorde's use of the erotic as theory and methodology. Gill turns to lesbian/gay artistry and activism to insist on eros as an intertwined political-sensual-spiritual lens through which to see self and society more clearly. This analysis juxtaposes revered musician Calypso Rose, renowned mas man Peter Minshall, and resilient HIV/AIDS organization Friends For Life. Erotic Islands traverses black studies, queer studies, and anthropology toward an emergent black queer diaspora studies.

Stolen Time

Stolen Time PDF Author: Shane Vogel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022656844X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
In 1956 Harry Belafonte’s Calypso became the first LP to sell more than a million copies. For a few fleeting months, calypso music was the top-selling genre in the US—it even threatened to supplant rock and roll. Stolen Time provides a vivid cultural history of this moment and outlines a new framework—black fad performance—for understanding race, performance, and mass culture in the twentieth century United States. Vogel situates the calypso craze within a cycle of cultural appropriation, including the ragtime craze of 1890s and the Negro vogue of the 1920s, that encapsulates the culture of the Jim Crow era. He follows the fad as it moves defiantly away from any attempt at authenticity and shamelessly embraces calypso kitsch. Although white calypso performers were indeed complicit in a kind of imperialist theft of Trinidadian music and dance, Vogel argues, black calypso craze performers enacted a different, and subtly subversive, kind of theft. They appropriated not Caribbean culture itself, but the US version of it—and in so doing, they mocked American notions of racial authenticity. From musical recordings, nightclub acts, and television broadcasts to Broadway musicals, film, and modern dance, he shows how performers seized the ephemeral opportunities of the fad to comment on black cultural history and even question the meaning of race itself.

Radical Moves

Radical Moves PDF Author: Lara Putnam
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807838136
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
In the generations after emancipation, hundreds of thousands of African-descended working-class men and women left their homes in the British Caribbean to seek opportunity abroad: in the goldfields of Venezuela and the cane fields of Cuba, the canal construction in Panama, and the bustling city streets of Brooklyn. But in the 1920s and 1930s, racist nativism and a brutal cascade of antiblack immigration laws swept the hemisphere. Facing borders and barriers as never before, Afro-Caribbean migrants rethought allegiances of race, class, and empire. In Radical Moves, Lara Putnam takes readers from tin-roof tropical dancehalls to the elegant black-owned ballrooms of Jazz Age Harlem to trace the roots of the black-internationalist and anticolonial movements that would remake the twentieth century. From Trinidad to 136th Street, these were years of great dreams and righteous demands. Praying or "jazzing," writing letters to the editor or letters home, Caribbean men and women tried on new ideas about the collective. The popular culture of black internationalism they created--from Marcus Garvey's UNIA to "regge" dances, Rastafarianism, and Joe Louis's worldwide fandom--still echoes in the present.