Music of the Lesser Antilles

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Image:LordKitchenerstamp055.jpg The Lesser Antilles is an island chain composed of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, Virgin Islands, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Montserrat. Several popular styles of music have come from these islands, especially including Trinidadian calypso music and soca, and the zouk of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

The music of the Lesser Antilles is very diverse, with important differences between the music of the various islands. Lesser Antillean music is part of the broader category of Caribbean music; much of the folk and popular music is also a part of the Afro-American musical tradition, being a mixture of African, European and indigenous American elements. The Lesser Antilles' musical cultures are largely based on the music of African slaves brought by European traders and colonizers. The African musical elements are a hybrid of instruments and styles from numerous West African tribes, while the European slaveholders added their own traditions into the mix, as did immigrants from India. In many ways, the Lesser Antilles can be musically divided based on which nation colonized them.

The British colonies include Trinidad and Tobago, whose calypso style is an especially potent part of the music of the other former British colonies, which also share traditions like the Big Drum dance. The French colonies are Martinique and Guadeloupe, which share the popular zouk style and have also had extensive musical contact with the music of Haiti, which was also a French colony though is not part of the Lesser Antilles. The Dutch colonies included a number of small islands, including Curaçao, Bonaire and Aruba, who share the combined rhythm popular style. The islands also share a passion for kaseko, a genre of Surinamese music; Suriname and its neighbors Guyana and French Guiana share folk and popular traditions that are connected enough to the Antilles and other Caribbean islands that both countries are often studied in the broader context of Antillean or Caribbean music.

1 Characteristics
- 1.1 Calypso and calypso-like traditions
- 1.2 Carnival
2 British Antilles
3 French Antilles
4 Dutch Antilles
5 Indo-Antillean
6 References
7 Notes
8 Further reading

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Characteristics

While Lesser Antillean music is often discussed as a music area, this division is of limited usefulness. The islands of the Lesser Antilles divide musically along linguistic lines, with the most significant overlap coming from Dominica and Saint Lucia, both primarily Anglophone but strongly influenced by a French colonial past. Because the islands are divided linguistically, the term Antillean music is usually used in reference to one such music area. Thus, for example, the Rough Guide to World Music features a chapter on "Antillean music", which is entirely about the French Antillean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, with a brief sidebar specifically about the Dutch Antilles. In the context of Anglophone music, the term Antillean music most commonly refers to Trinidad and Tobago, home to the well-known calypso style. Music author Peter Manuel, for example, treats all the Anglophone islands as a subject of Trinidadian calypso traditions, while using the title Music of the Lesser Antilles for Francophone Antillean music. Manuel also, like many authors, treats Suriname and Guyana as integral aspects of Caribbean music; due to the Dutch colonial history of both countries, they are often grouped with Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles.<ref>De Ledesma and Scaramuzzo, pgs. 289 - 303; Manuel, pgs. 140 - 145, 183 - 208</ref>

Nevertheless, Antillean music can be characterized by various shared traditions, including the widespread Carnival and related celebrations, and calypso-like song traditions. The Lesser Antilles is also home to a strong Indo-Caribbean population base; though Indo-Caribbean music is found elsewhere in the Caribbean, the prominence of Indian-influenced styles is a hallmark of Antillean music scenes. Antillean music traditions can also be found outside of the Caribbean entirely, most notably in New York City, where the Labor Day Carnival featuring music and parades, mas and steel bands, on the Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn; this Carnival is distinct to New York City, and reflects elements of a pan-Caribbean nature.<ref>Manuel, pg. 210</ref>

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Calypso and calypso-like traditions

Calypso is undoubtedly the most world-renowned form of Antillean music, and is most closely associated with the island of Trinidad. However, calypso has spread throughout the Lesser Antilles, and abroad, and similar traditions can be found natively on many of Caribbean islands, including non-Antillean islands like Jamaica, home to the mento folk style. Within the Antilles, most of the popular calypso stars have come from Trinidad and Tobago; the majority of the exceptions, such as Arrow from Montserrat, have come from other Anglophone islands. Music author Peter Manuel has argued that, despite the modern Anglophone focus to calypso-like song traditions, their origins lie in the "Afro-French creole culture", and notes that the ancestor of the word calypso, cariso, was first used to refer to a Martinican singer.<ref>Manuel, pg. 208</ref>

The island of Carriacou is home to a calypso-like song style, as well as canboulay feasts, calinda songs and steel bands, all similar to though distinct from the related Trinidadian traditions. Modern influences from Trinidad have organized the Carriacou song style, and there are competitions similar to calypso tents on the island.<ref>Manuel, pgs. 209 - 210; Manuel specifically cites much of the material on Carriacou to Donald Hill, Calypso Calaloo: Early Carnival Music in Trinidad (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993)</ref> The Antiguan benna tradition is part of the same song complex, featuring news-oriented and ribald, often satirical lyrics and a rhythmic, uptempo style.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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Carnival

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Annual Carnival celebrations are an important part of the culture of all the Lesser Antillean islands. The Carnivals occur at varying times of year on each island, either pre-Lent, Christmastime or in July and August, and include a wide variety of dances, songs and parades. Contests are common, especially Calypso King and Queen contests, which are held on most of the British Antillean islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands as well as French Saint-Martin and elsewhere. The British Antillean Carnivals are also mostly united by the J'ouvert tradition, which involves calypso and soca band parades and are the highlight of their celebrations.

Summer Carnivals include those on Antigua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Eustatius, Saint John, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Saba, Nevis and Anguilla, the latter two of which are especially known for popular calypso competitions. Christmastime Carnivals include Montserrat, Saint Croix, Saint-Martin and St. Kitts; Montserrat's distinctive Carnival includes masquerades and steelbands, and both islands also feature calypso competitions. The Carnival of Sint Maarten, which takes place a month after Easter, is known for the burning of King Moui-Moui as the culmination of the festival. Many islands, especially the French and Dutch Antilles, are home to pre-Lenten Carnivals, including Martinique, Aruba, Saint-Barthélemy, Bonaire, Curaçao, Dominica, Saint Thomas and Guadeloupe <ref>Cameron, pgs. 480, 502, 525, 536, 573, 593</ref>.

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British Antilles

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There are many popular traditions common to the English-speaking islands of the Lesser Antilles. The calypso tradition, originally from the island of Trinidad, has spread to the neighboring islands; other Trinidadian popular traditions, like soca, are also well-known throughout the region. The steeldrum tradition is also found throughout the English-speaking Lesser Antilles (and abroad), especially in Trinidad and Tobago and Antigua and Barbuda. The British Antilles also share in certain folk traditions. Trinidadian folk calypso is found throughout the area, as are African-Caribbean religious music styles like the Shango music of Trinidad <ref name="Manuel183">Manuel, pgs. 183 - 211</ref>. Variants of the Big Drum festival occur throughout the Windward Islands, especially in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Carnival is an important folk music celebration on all the islands of the Lesser Antilles, and the rest of the Caribbean.

Calypso is part of a spectrum of similar folk and popular Caribbean styles that also includes benna and mento, but remains the most prominent genre of Lesser Antillean music. Calypso's roots are unclear, can be traced to 18th century Trinidad. Modern calypso, however, began in the 19th century, a fusion of disparate elements ranging from the masquerade song lavway, French Creole belair and the stick fighting chantwell. Calypso's early rise was closely connected with the adoption of Carnival by Trinidadian slaves, including camboulay drumming and the music masquerade processions. Popular calypso arose in the early 20th century, with the rise of internationally known calypsonians like Attila the Hun and Roaring Lion <ref name="Manuel183"/>. Trinidadian calypso remained popular throughout the Caribbean in the later 20th century, and other Antillean islands, like Antigua began producing calypso stars. In the 1970s, a calypso variant called soca arose, characterized by a focus on dance rhythms rather than lyricism. Soca has since spread across the Caribbean and abroad <ref name="Manuel183"/>.

Steel drums are a distinctively Trinidadian tradition that evolved from improvised percussion instruments used in Carnival processions. By the late 1930s, bamboo tubes, a traditional instrumental, were supplemented by pieces of metal used percussively; over time, these metal percussion instruments were pitched to produce as many as twenty-some tones. Steel bands were large orchestras of these drums, and were banned by the British colonial authorities. Nevertheless, the tradition spread across the Caribbean, and is now an entrenched part of Trinidadian culture <ref name="Manuel183"/>.

Though Trinidadian popular music is by far the most well-known style of Lesser Antillean music, the other Anglophone islands are home to their own musical traditions. Carriacou and Grenada are home to Carnival celebrations that include a distinct form of calypso, canboulay feasts, calinda stick-fighting songs and the steelband accompanied jouvert, as well as the Big Drum dance, which is also found in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines <ref name="Manuel183"/>. Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines share other folk traditions as well including the funereal music of the saraca rite, a call-and-response form with both European and African lyrics.<ref>Paradise Inn</ref>

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French Antilles

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The most internationally recognized form of French Antillean music is zouk and other styles from the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. French Creole music is also found on the islands of Dominica and Saint Lucia. These islands share traditions like the quadrille dance, distinct from the French version and related to Haitian mereng. The quadrille is a potent symbol of French Antillean culture <ref name="Manuel140">Manuel, pgs. 140 - 141</ref>

Zouk is popular across the French Antilles, and elsewhere. Music authors Charles De Ledesma and Gene Scaramuzzo trace zouk's development to the Guadeloupan gwo ka and Martinican tambour and twi ba folk traditions. Gwo ka is a type of percussion music which consists of seven basic rhythms and variations on them. It has been modernized into gwo ka moderne, though traditional rural performances (lewoz) are still common<ref name="WorldMusic">De Ledesma, Charles and Gene Scaramuzzo</ref>. Ethnomusicologist Jocelyn Guilbault, however, describes zouk as a synthesis of Caribbean popular styles, especially cadence-lypso, biguine, kompa direk and kadans rampa.<ref>Guilbault, Jocelyn, Gage Averill, Édouard Benoit and Gregory Rabess, Zouk: World Music in the West Indies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), cited in Manuel, pg. 142</ref> Tambour and twi ba ensembles is the origin of Martinican chouval bwa, biguine and later, zouk. Chouval bwa includes multiple distinctive instruments and includes internationally famous performers like Claude Germany, Dede Saint-Prix, Pakatak and Tumpak, while biguine has achieved international fame since the 1920s and has since been modernized and adapted for pop audiences, making it a major influence on zouk.<ref name="WorldMusic">De Ledesma, Charles and Gene Scaramuzzo</ref> Between the 1930s and 50s, the dance biguine was popular among the islands' dance orchestras. The biguine uses a cinquillo variant related to that found in other Antillean genres like mereng and kompa direk. In the 1940s and 50s, these dance bands absorbed influences from Cuban, American and Haitian popular music.<ref name="Manuel140"/>

In the 1950s, Haitian compas and cadence rampa became the dominant pop sound of the Lesser Antilles. Weber Sicot and Nemour Jean-Baptiste were especially popular, and were followed by mini-jazz artists like Les Gentlemen, Les Leopards and Les Vikings de Guadeloupe in the late 1970s. The following decade saw the invention of a distinctively Antillean cadence music, especially as the result of Gordon Henderson's Exile One, who invented cadence-lypso by adding calypso horns. Exile One also helped to turn the mini-jazz combos into guitar-dominated big bands, paving the way for the success of La Perfecta, Les Aiglons, Experience 7 and Malavoi, among others. Drawing on these influences, the supergroup Kassav' invented zouk and popularized it with hit songs like "Zouk-La-Se Sel Medikaman Nou Ni". Kassav' arose from Paris in 1978 and adopted a nationalistic tone to their pan-Caribbean and pan-African fusions. Kassav' soon added rock and roll and other influences and became some of the biggest stars in the Caribbean, France and elsewhere as zouk diversified into multiple subgenres. These include zouk-love, pop ballads by artists like Edith Lefel and Gilles Floro. Zouk funk artists like Elza Bruta and Muriel Custos and ragga-zouk bands like RuffNeg, Lord Kossity and Karukeragga have fused the genre with other influences<ref name="WorldMusic"/>.

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Dutch Antilles

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The islands of Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba, St. Eustatius and St. Martin share a popular music tradition that peaked in the 1950s. In modern times, the islands are known for the Combined Rhythm, which includes local favorites like Happy Peanuts and Expresando Rimto i Ambiente. Kaseko music from the mainland country Suriname is also popular <ref name="WorldMusic"/>. The islands each maintain their own sets of dances, ranging from the impromptu Statian road block to the calypso, zouk and soca found across the area <ref>Cameron, pgs. 549 - 582</ref>. The folk music of the island of Curaçao is well-known for the tumba tradition, while Bonaire's Bari is most iconic of that island's tradition.

Curaçao's folk music includes a rich tradition of work songs with apentatonic lyrics sung in Guene or a Papiamento variant called seshi. African-derived music on Curaçao is known as muzik de zumbi, a category that include tambú, seú and tumba. Tambú is an important predecessor of tumba, and was originally a woman's slave song accompanied by the tambú drum, kachu (cow's horn), agan (ploughshare) and chapi (hoe). The seú was a harvest celebration focused around the march of the workers bringing the crops to the warehouses, accompanied by chapu, kachu and drums, and a dance known as wapa <ref>Curacao Culture & Folklore</ref>.

Bonaire's folk music and dance tradition includes most famously the Bari, Baile di Sinta and Simadan dance, which are performed alongside traditional African work songs that have evolved into a set of ritual and ceremonial songs, characterized by polyphony and complex dance. Imported mazurka, danza, carioca, rumba, polka, joropo and merengue are also popular. The Bari dance is performed during a festival also called Bari and accompanied by a drum that is called a Bari. The Simadan festival is held after the sorghum harvest, and features dances like the wapa and traditional song styles like remailo, belua and dan simadan. Folk instrumentation includes the wiri, karko, guitar, triangle, bari and quarta <ref>Bonaire Culture</ref>.

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Indo-Antillean

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Indo-Caribbean people in the Lesser Antillean music area are clustered in Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. Indo-Caribbean folk traditions include the chowtal songs from the springtime festival phagwa, and Hindi bhajans which are still sung at temples despite there being few people who understand Hindi. Guyanan and Trinidadian Indo-Caribbeans developed a tradition that fused elements of calypso with the folk music of North India, a style that was referred to as local music <ref name="Manuel214">Manuel, pgs. 212 - 221</ref>.

Indo-Caribbean music plays a vital role in various annual festivals like the springtime phagwa, where chowtal is traditionally performed competitively and in teams. Indo-Caribbean Shia Muslims celebrated Hosay (Muharram) with floats accompanied by barrel drums called tassa. Wedding music is another important part of Indo-Caribbean music, and is dominated by tan singing. Tan singing is based around the dholak drum and dantal, and sometimes includes verbal duels influenced by picong <ref name="Manuel214"/>.

Indo-Caribbean popular music gained international attention in the late 1980s, with the rise of chutney music. Chutney is a dance music, in its modern form accompanied by soca instrumentation, such as synthesizers and pressure drums. This style is called chutney-soca <ref name="Manuel214"/>.

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References

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Notes

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Music of the Lesser Antilles

From Free net encyclopedia

Contents

Characteristics

Calypso and calypso-like traditions

Carnival

British Antilles

French Antilles

Dutch Antilles

Indo-Antillean

References

Notes

Further reading

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