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Calypso music

Calypso is a style of Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago during the early to mid-19th century and spread to the rest of the Caribbean Antilles by the mid-20th century. Its rhythms can be traced back to West African Kaiso and the arrival of French planters and their slaves from the French Antilles in the 18th century.

Calypso

Early 19th century, Trinidad and Tobago

It is characterized by highly rhythmic and harmonic vocals, and was historically most often sung in a French creole and led by a griot. As calypso developed, the role of the griot became known as a chantuelle and eventually, calypsonian. As English replaced "patois" (Antillean) as the dominant language, calypso migrated into English, and in so doing it attracted more attention from the government. It allowed the masses to challenge the doings of the unelected Governor and Legislative Council, and the elected town councils of Port of Spain and San Fernando. Calypso continued to play an important role in political expression.


Calypso in the Caribbean includes a range of genres, including benna in Antigua and Barbuda; mento, a style of Jamaican folk music that greatly influenced ska, the precursor to rocksteady, and reggae; spouge, a style of Barbadian popular music; Dominica cadence-lypso, which mixed calypso with the cadence of Haiti; and soca music, a style of kaiso/calypso, with influences from chutney, soul, funk, Latin and cadence-lypso.

Etymology[edit]

It is thought that the name "calypso" was originally "kaiso" which is now believed to come from Efik "ka isu" ("go on!") and Ibibio "kaa iso" ("continue, go on"), used in urging someone on or in backing a contestant.[1] There is also a Trinidadian term "cariso" that means "old-time" calypsos.[2] The term "calypso" is recorded from the 1930s onwards. Alternatively, the insert for The Rough Guide to Calypso and Soca (published by World Music Network) favours John Cowley's arguments in Carnival, Canboulay and Calypso: Traditions in the Making, that the word might be a corruption of the French carrouseaux and through the process of patois and Anglicization became caliso and then finally "calypso"; however, Cowley also notes that the first mention of the word "calypso" is given in a description of a dance in 1882 by Abbé Masse.[3]

Cadence-lypso

Canboulay

Calypso Monarch

Extempo

Soukous

Marrabenta

List of calypso musicians

List of calypso-like genres

List of calypsos with sociopolitical influences

List of Caribbean music genres

a Jamaican folk music related to Calypso

Mento

Soca music

Brega pop

Allen, Ray. ,Jump Up! Caribbean Carnival Music in New York City (Oxford University Press, 2019).  978-0190656850

ISBN

Hill, Donald R. Calypso Calaloo: Early Carnival Music in Trinidad (1993).  0-8130-1221-X. (cloth); ISBN 0-8130-1222-8 (pbk). University Press of Florida. 2nd edition: Temple University Press (2006); ISBN 1-59213-463-7.

ISBN

Guilbault, Jocelyn. Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of Trinidad's Carnival Musics (University of Chicago Press, 2007).  978-0-226-31059-6.

ISBN

Mendes, John (1986). Cote ce Cote la Trinidad and Tobago Dictionary. John Mendes, , Trinidad.

Arima

Munro, Hope. What She Do: Women in Afro-Trinidadian Music (University of Mississippi Press, 2016). I 978-1496807533.

ISBN

Quevedo, Raymond (Atilla the Hun). 1983. Atilla's Kaiso: a short history of Trinidad calypso (1983). , St. Augustine, Trinidad. (Includes the words to many old calypsos as well as musical scores for some of Atilla's calypsos.)

University of the West Indies

Rohlehr, Gordon. A Scuffling of Islands: Essays on Calypso (Lexicon Trinidad LTD, 2004),  976-631-034-3.* Gittens, Sinclair (August 12, 2010). "The origin of calypso". Nation Newspaper. Archived from the original on January 10, 2017. Retrieved January 2, 2017.

ISBN

Turner, John W. Rhythms of Resistance: African Musical Traditions in the Caribbean. Greenwood Press, 1998.

Dobrian, Chris. Calypso Music: A Multifaceted Genre. University of California Press, 2010.

at Curlie

Calypso music

Calypsonians.com