“Rock n Roll in Yuh Caca Hole”: jointpop’s Alternative Narrative

Because of the proximity of the Caribbean to the United States of America, Caribbean music has inevitably been influenced by American culture and market demands. Usually, however, the interrogation of Caribbean music, especially the Trinidadian scene, is often conducted with the focus only on Calypso, Soca and Chutney, and not on alternative forms such as rock, alternative, pop, punk or metal which have significant American influence. These musics are considered foreign and non-indigenous to the space.

The consequences of World War II on the Caribbean went beyond Sparrow’s “Jean and Dinah”. The Second World War saw the arrival of American soldiers in the region and with them came rock and roll, which had been pioneered by the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix and impacted indigenous musical forms such as calypso and, eventually, soca.

Although the impact of American culture on the Caribbean is often more overtly observed in cinema, fashion and cuisine, for several decades, Trinidad has had an active and fertile underground rock-n-roll culture, running parallel to the emergence and development of both soca and chutney musics. But the local rock music scene has always remained a sub-culture, popular among, and supported by, only a small, select crowd. The British-influenced rock, punk and pop music of the seventies eventually gave way to American-influenced rock and pop music promoted by radio stations such as 95.1 and music television shows such as the Kasey Casem Count Down and eventually MTV and VH-1 music videos which dominated local consumption in the 80s, 90s and new millennium. Despite its roots in African American musical forms, by the 70s, rock music was considered to be “white people music” and identified as such in Trinidad. Since Euro-creoles were generally considered to be the oppressors and a marginal, as well as marginalized minority, their music was viewed with suspicion and treated as foreign by the majority of the Afro-creole population. Indeed, for an Afro-creole person to show interest in rock music, was to be “playing white”. The heavy metal or glam metal music of the 80s, was also considered foreign, associated with whites and also associated with the Indo-creole population, who were considered by the Afro-creole population to be “playing white” or certainly aspiring to be “white”. This association of rock and pop music with “whiteness” and “Indianness” therefore made them taboo musical forms, ignored or even resented by the mainstream as not “we thing”. “We” used to mean local or Trini; and local or Trini often being equated with Afro-Creole cultural forms. 80s bands such as Charlie’s Roots, led by David Rudder, and Taxi, led by Cathy Imamshah had to be careful about how much white-influenced popular music they sang to avoid jeopardizing their crowd appeal and credibility during the Carnival season. They struggled with issues of diversity and balance in their music as well as audience acceptance. 90s bands such as Second Imij, which eventually became Imij and Co., suffered much the same dichotomy and to some extent Kees The Band struggles with this contemporarily. Calypso, now superseded by Soca, which has been joined by Chutney are considered to be national musics. Bands that play these musics are considered to be patriotic and promoting “we culture”. Anything outside of those three forms are considered foreign.

One of the most prominent bands within the rock genre is jointpop, led by guitarist Gary Hector with band members Damon Homer, Dion Camacho, Jason Girdharrie and Phil Hill. This band has been in existence for 15 years and has had tremendous impact on the local rock scene. They tour the United States and the United Kingdom regularly, have released five albums, and hold local concerts. Despite their longevity, relative popularity and immense talent, they have remained virtual unknowns: exiles in their own home primarily because, while their sound is indigenous, the musical form they have chosen is considered to be foreign and the members of this band remain outsiders on both the local and foreign rock scene. Of course, the irony of it all is that all current indigenous music are in fact derivations of imported forms. Calypso is a combination of African and European forms (Rohlehr; 1990, Warner-Lewis; 1991) and soca a combination of African, European and East Indian music forms (Guibault, 2007).

Behind the Music:

After spending five years in the band Odd Fellows Local (known for underground hits such as “Little Miss Popular” and “Arrest Arrest”), in 1995, Gary Hector got together with a group of other musicians: Gerard Rajkumar, Damon Homer, Libert Carimbocas and Graeme Granger to form the music band jointpop. It is a name he says just "popped" into his head and is always spelt in lowercase.

jointpop, at that point in time was just another of the many garage rock bands that seemed to spring up overnight in Trinidad. Some of jointpop's then contemporaries were Smith Tuttle, Brown Fox, Incert Coin, Orange Sky. Some had been spawned out of Anchorage Restaurant's annual Pop/Rock competition that encouraged local bands to come and play cover songs from their favourite foreign bands. In between playing for the show some of these bands attempted to create their own original music. jointpop never fit the cover-band template though and remained resolute in its commitment to develop its own brand of music. The band cites as its major influences a mash up of:

Dylan, Stones, Beatles, Kinks, Clash, Pistols, Smiths, Blondie... way too much rock n roll to mention… Sparrow, Kitch, Maestro ,Shorty, Merchant, Explainer, Shadow, Blue Boy and the great David Rudder, sadly for me it stopped after Rudder in my opinion, the art of the songwriter as Calypsonian. King David Rudder would have the biggest impact on me and to this day his lyrics just melts me….all the time.. I always have to write him some very humbling email after hearing some songs or watching some TV re run. And the pop style writers back in the day, Sparks, Wildfire, Tony Wilson, Stumpy Chapman, Mave and Dave, Carol Addison, Mac and Katie Kisson, Nadie La Fond, Nappy Meyers and the great Andre Tanker, with whom I became very close too and he played on our records and also on stage with us. Special man. (interview, 2011)

In the ensuing year,s the band changed members, remaining with the core duo of Hector and Homer on guitars and adding Camacho on drums, Gidharrie on bass and Hill on keyboards. In total, the band has released the following albums: Port of Spain Style (1999), Exile Baby (2002), an EP called jointpop (2005), Bess of jointpop (2006), The January Transfer Window (2007), and The Longest Kiss Goodnight (2010). The style of the band has evolved along with the albums. The earliest album has been described by BC Pires, journalist and self-professed acolyte of the band, as Calypso-Rock. Exile Baby (2002), their sophomore album began the departure from the calypso rock formula and in their last two albums the sound has been decidedly rock with punk touches.

Hector asserts the following on the rock music scene in Trinidad:

Growing up in a musical country with songs on the 2 radio stations, at least back then, you would hear all the great calypso songs of the day and also that of some pop style songwriters, which just floated into your consciousness. The fact that rock n roll being only just an underground situation in tnt has been accepted by us a very long time ago. There is no way we can change the musical landscape in tnt, and that was never the intention, because we respect the local music made here and it’s good for the identity of our country, but at the same time, for us to be considered ‘outsiders’, sometimes it’s not fair, but we don’t care really. Some people love to go out and see the local rock bands perform, but that number gets smaller when the bands play original songs. If you really want to check the number of rock music fans in tnt, just go to those over rated concerts by all the 70’s and 80’s bands they bring here to perform, 20 to 30,000 people ; and at those terrible tribute bands and cover band competitions you will find 5,000 people. But only mention the word “original” and here comes the loyal 60 to 100 people.

It is against such a framework of foreignness and otherness that rock music enters into the local landscape. When asked his thoughts about the potential of the local rock industry, Hector’s frank response was:

Well first of all there is no “Music Industry,” far less a Rock Music Industry. So much needs to be put in place for any chance of that happening. Without radio support, there can be no music industry. That’s the bottom line. All other points and arguments follow that. Radio remains the most important media for music. Repetition is the key. And if you don’t believe me, just check, any bad song repeated on the radio can be sung along to after a while. Like telling a lie over and over....it becomes the truth.

With rock music recordings being further marginalized, then the bands would just give up, or try to please radio and the public, then get lost, so they just won’t survive, plus they are smarter than jointpop, and go and find real jobs or just play in a cover band and have fun. And too much of the rock music scene here is about playing 2 gigs, with some fans screaming and winning a band competition and they are bigger than The Beatles, sad it’s that way because they don’t get the chance to just continue and feel some beautiful pain.

It’s the expensive reason why we are here right now on tour in the UK. We have no choice but to be here to expose our music and story to people who are interested in us. They follow us online, or from UK radio, UK press and when we do interviews with radio and press it’s the same thing they want to know. Feels strange being on radio in England, Scotland, Germany, USA, and Australia, and imagine Russia. But jointpop can’t get onto 99% of tnt radio.

When asked about what it is like to be in a rock band from Trinidad touring the UK Hector says:

Because of where we come from, we are free of all music biz trappings. So we are free to write as we please, any topic and style, versus if we were from London for example. We may get caught up in all the 'Brit' scene, the Camden fashion and 'most' of the bands sounding the same etc. But at the same time, our local scene is one of "no ambition". The radio, press and the Music Industry in general are all mainstream, so the underground is really suffocating. In the UK, so many independent and Underground Radio ,Press, TV, Mags etc. The UK’s got an actual Music Industry, and sadly T&T do not have a Music Industry. The jointpop story is one of a rock n roll band on a calypso and reggae island here in Trinidad and Tobago. About trying to find a voice in your own home. Just about being travellers and rock n roll troubadours.”

15 years is a long time to remain unknown in a country whose life revolves around the daily ritual of performance. Trinidadians like swagger, grand charge, picong, cheekiness, and a good melody. These things have been the mainstay of the calypso and soca forms for decades and are the mainstays of jointpop’s compositions. Writer and music critic for Caribbean Beat magazine, Jonathan Ali ranks jointpop’s Gary Hector among the greatest song writer’s to have emerged from Trinidad, placing him next to David Rudder and Andre Tanker. Ali laments that because Hector’s medium is rock music, few people will ever be exposed to his greatness (interview, 2011). He also cites the introspection that a rock ballad allows for as one of the features that allows Hector’s skills as a song writer to be showcased.

A chronological sampling of their music easily demonstrates that the sound of their music has undergone radical changes in the 15-year life span of the band. From the calypso influenced songs on Port of Spain Style (1999) to the rock and industrial punk infused music of the Longest Kiss Goodnight (2010), the band’s themes, not sound, have remained consistent. jointpop’s 50 plus songs have all contended with critical post-colonial and post modern issues like exile, rebellion, the pitfalls of the entertainment industry, love, mimicry and nationalism.

When questioned about the importance of socio-political commentary in his music, Hector says:

It’s only important if it matters. The writer must have something to bother about. I love my country and my people very much, and I hate to see people abuse it, and she has never been abused more than now in the past 20 years. It’s strange because I feel like I’m at War with the country I love. It’s funny when some people say to me about some situation of the day...”why don’t you write a song about that ?.... and I can find many songs I wrote and recorded before. And it’s only because back to the point above of radio being the loudspeaker for the people. No one hears about the issues in the songs, because they can’t. And as far as Politicians go, well, they don’t deserve ink from my pen. They all build a wall for me to try to score around.

If there was a genre known as Calypso-Rock, then jointpop’s 1995 debut album Port of Spain Style (1999) would be the quintessential album. The ten songs on offer on it fulfill all the content requirements of great calypsos, while the music is a fusion of calypso and rock instrumentation. “Lost in Space (Port of Spain Style)” the album’s title song is the bands defiant opening salvo that discusses a space that rejects them while they remain committed to it. Its opening verse leads listener into a conversation on one of the band’s key tropes: displacement. It is a trope that is repeated later on in their career in songs like “Exile Baby” (2002), “Radio Luxembourg” (2005) and “Planes, Trains and Pain” (2010). Hector, in a velvet murmur tells you that this is “Port of Spain style” and then launches into a full length lament:

I feel like I walking, a long long time,

I feel like I walking in vain

I feel like I walking on my two hands

I feel like I walking away.

Is only faces

Different places

No one to see,

Nowhere to go…

Is trouble now

Is bacchanal

This despair over the Trinidad milieu remains throughout the band’s oeuvre and on this album is repeated in songs like “Urgent”, (Doh Study Me (Study Yuhself), “½ Past Nine”, and “Bashment To Halloween”. This latter pair provides biting commentaries on the social malaise in Trinidad. In “½ Past Nine”, possibly the band’s most popular song locally, Hector compares two time periods, a nostalgically remembered past and the present. He croons:

How come in my time, I cyah smile in the morning

How come in my mother’s time

Well, Ma could live in anytime

But this time, aint no nice time

The only nice time is after ½ past 9. (“1/2 past 9”, 1995)

“Bashment…” is a biting satirical take on our love of pappyshow and mimicry. In it, Hector takes shots at the Trinbagonian’s constant need to mimic and adulate foreign cultures. In one verse he fires off the line at the local rock music scene when he says: “They only playing cover music like they come from Cover Land”. And sums up his disgust saying:

Sometimes they does make me sick,

My people like they only on gimmick.

And sometimes it does make me grin, Lord,

This country I living in.

I get the shock of my life. (“Bashment to Halloween”, 1995)

There is also at least one tribute song on the album venerating a calypso great, “King Radio” and one song of affirmation, “Rise”. The rock elements on this album are sublime rather than overt. Most of the songs feel like blues and funk influenced calypsos, with their reliance on rhythm guitar, driving bass and drum syncopations and the touches of flute and saxophone provided by Carimbocas. But the combination of rock and calypso made jointpop a difficult band to market. They weren’t quite rock, no one would think of their music as really calypso, so where to place them? Local radio stations barely played them. The ones whose format was soca and calypso ignored them and the radio stations with pop-rock formats such as 95.1 The Rock grudgingly played “1/2 past 9” on rare occasions.

Exiled Babies

By 2002’s Exile Baby, the band’s sound had evolved into an esoteric mix of calypso, rock and punk. The songwriting credits on this album are accredited to Mick Richardson, Hector’s alter-ego and to those in on the joke, it’s a nod to two of Hector’s influences, Mick Jagger and Nick Richardson of the Rolling Stones. The calypso ballad style that was evident in “Bashment to Halloween” and “1/2 Past 9” disappears, but the social commentary, satire and lament remain in every song on the album. In terms of coherence of sound Exile Baby is probably the band’s weakest production. The album’s opening song, Exile Baby, hark’s back to the placelessness and wandering evident in Port of Spain Style as Hector and band are “looking for who made me, looking for who saves me...” A considerable chunk of the album features songs about the pains and pitfalls of Trinidad’s entertainment industry and fame: on “(I Hate) Entertainment”, Hector professes that he hates entertainment, but wryly admits that he has become entertainment.

“122345…544321” looks at the fleeting nature of fame where one minute you are popular and then 544321 minutes later nobody knows your name. “New Fast Food in Town” is yet another take on the fickleness of the entertainment industry as well as a larger social comment on the consumerist nature of Trinidad’s society, that deconstructs a meal order at a fast-food service counter wherein the customer requests:

6-piece original

a portion of distortion

some cold emotion to get them high (“New Fast Food”, 2002)

This new fast food is making the society sick, as they hold their heads and bellies while bawling and vomiting on the sides of the street. In “The Great Pop Swindle” (a pun on the iconic 70s documentary The Great Rock Swindle), Hector affirms that he’s not going to let what’s supposed to make him happy make him sad or drive him mad. And in an earlier song, he declares he is “Not For Sale” and asks:

Would you sell your father’s underwear?

Would you sell your mother’s pretty grey hair?

Would you give your love to anyone that comes near?

...Would you throw your legs up in the air?

...We all out of love

We not for Sale! (“Not For Sale”, 2002)

“I Never Promised You a Clothes Garden” (a pun on the song “I never Promised You a Rose Garden”) is both a comment on the economic disappoints that people who pursue music face as well as a love song. In it, Hector sings:

I watch you recline

As you watch me decline

Hope your dreams come true

Then I’ll do it all for you

Bridge:

(help) I can’t stop falling

(help) pick me up off this ground

(help) Someone prop me up until Sun Down, until Sundown

Chorus: If only I could take you to London,

If only just to say goodbye

If only, if only, if only I...

By Exile Baby the melancholic lament heard in 1999s Port of Spain Style became a cacaphonic wail as well as castigation of the society in songs like “ Crack, Pitbull and Gun” complete with distorted guitars when he says:

No, no no, why Trinis so?

Yes, they want it

But like they want it all

And like they need it

But like they need it all

And now we have it

Oh, look we have it all

Of all the things we can do for fun

And of all the things we should do for fun

Crack, Pitbull and Gun!

We’re very strange people

Oh, Trini on the run

The song is an interesting juxtaposition of guttural moan at the song’s start followed by an almost frivolous scatting sequence that both emphasises and undermines the seriousness of the issue Hector is highlighting. Crime and violence have become essential traits of our society, and this song hints at the desensitisation and numbness that has begun to creep over the wider society as a result of drug and gun-related crimes.

Planes, Trains and Pain

In 2007 and 2010 jointpop released two albums, The January Transfer Window and The Longest Kiss Goodnight that would see the band’s sound go entirely in the direction of rock and punk; while the social commentary remained steadily entrenched, even in the ballads. These two albums do not feature any of the multiple artists collaborationss that happened on Port of Spain Style (1999) or Exile Baby (2002), the sound of these last two albums is minimalist in terms of its instrumental nature, and yet fuller because, whereas in the earlier albums the only counterpoint to Hector’s vocals was the silky lead guitar rifts of Damon Homer, in January Transfer Window, the conversation now happens between Hector’s voice, Homer’s guitar and Phil Hill’s keyboard with Camacho and Girdharrie providing tight and unwavering support on the drums and bass. An excellent example of this is “The Irony of It All”, classic social commentary by Hector in the form of a rock ballad and filled out satisfyingly by Hill’s orchestration and Homer’s virtuosity. Other features of these last two albums are tongue-in-cheek references to Beatles trivia such as Yoko Ono, McCartney’s “Band on the Run” and “Eleanor Rigby”, and Lennon’s “Fool on the Hill”. The instrumentation on the songs still reveals influences from The Clash, The Cure and even some country music, but all pulled together much more tightly than the earlier albums. The band’s foreign listenership has obviously influenced its musical focus and there are nods to this in songs like “Walsall Wonderland”, “Camden Ketchup”, and “The South of France”.

Entertainment, the music industry, displacement and otherness remain constant themes throughout these two albums as well. Yet, the tone is far less strident now, much more accepting, if not resigned, to their position as constant outsiders to any music scene they enter.

$ouls for $ale?

Despite their settled sound, the band’s rebellious tone is far from curtailed. “Rock n Roll in Yuh Cacahole” has long been their defiant call to arms, always used in a call-and-response style to an enthusiastic audience, who might like “foreign” music but remember their oral traditions. The defiance and thumbing of the nose at the system, a feature of sub-altern voices remains central to their music, but of late the jointpop that once defiantly claimed it is not for sale has decided “Fuck That!”, its soul is going cheap. The rock game is a hard one, it is getting harder and harder to write these songs and have to tour in exile baby and market their Port of Spain Style to Radio Luxembourg, while at home their music is considered not Trinbagonian enough because we have arrived at preconceived notions about what is national in a space influenced and developed by foreign cultures.

When asked about the band’s future and where they are likely to fit in, Hector gave his typical straightforward response:

Once jointpop continue to just write songs, record albums and perform when allowed, then that’s enough of a fit for us really (interview, 2011).

The Irony of it All

In the larger scheme of things, jointpop’s narrative is important for several reasons. Through their music and their very existence this band represents people who are in and of this space but do not necessarily seem to fit because they do not ascribe to any preconceived notion of national identity. If rock music is an amalgamation of Afro and European sound and instrumentation, what makes it any less valid to this space than calypso music? What makes calypso, soca and chutney music, forms that have all been influenced by or have sampled foreign musical forms, more national? Why does a certain type of music have to be limited to an ethnic group? Who makes rock white and calypso black? What makes a musical form that utilises protest, satire and socio-political commentary any less valid than calypso? What allows Machel Montano’s sampling of an Irish singer ( Enya’s “Caribbean Blue”, in “Band Of De Year”, 2006) or Destra Garcia’s sampling of a Norweigian band (Aha’s “Take On Me” in her 2003 offering, “Bonnie and Clyde”) to be considered national music, while jointpop’s indigenous compositions are considered foreign?

In a space that is grappling with shifts in postcolonial and postmodern ideology jointpop’s subversive questions about identity and nationalism may be just an/Other narrative we need to hear.

Essential Discography

Port of Spain Style (1999)

1. Lost in Space; 2. Urgent; 3. King Radio; 4. 2 High; 5. After ½ Past Nine; 6. Bashment to Halloween; 7. Is Only Propaganda (But Ah Like It); 8. Doh Study Me (Study Yuhself); 9. Rise; 10. Sawng.

Exile Baby (2002)

1. I Need to Make a Call; 2. Exile Baby; 3. Not For Sale; 4. (I Hate) Entertainment; 5. 122345 544321; 6. Jazz; 7. La Belle Rosette; 8. New Fast Food; 9. Harde Bapre; 10. Crack Pitbull and Gun; 11. The Great Pop Swindle; 12. I Never Promised You a Clothes Garden

EP (2004)

1. Let’s Pray for Rock and Roll; 2. The Water Supreme; 3. Radio Luxembourg; 4. Voodoo vs Voodoo; 5. Monsta Me

The January Transfer Window (2007)

1. The Irony of it All; 2. Monday Morning Love Situation; 3. Mystery; 4. Walsall Wonderland; 5. Yoko Ono; 6. The Desperate Housefly; 7. The Fool; 8. The Bet; 9. The Spelling Bee; 10. Brass & Steel; 11. Mayaro Heart Burn Blues; 12. I know; 13. Quality Daydream Time; 14. Dancing in the Moonlight

The Longest Kiss Goodnight

1. Loveless Street; 2. Planes, Trains and Pain;3. $oul$ Going Cheap; 4. We Can’t Work it Out; 5. Camden Ketchup; 6. Dirty Little Secrets; 7. The Bleeding Broken Hearts Club; 8. Please Don’t Tell My In-Laws (I’m an Outlaw); 9. The Wrong Side of the Sunshine; 10. The South of France

Carnival, Culture and Society (C2K11) Pt 1.

There are many things that shape the ethos of a space. Chief among them is culture. And by culture here I do not refer to just the visual and performing arts, nor do I refer to only specific aspects of those arts. Rather I refer to our habits and norms, daily practices and rituals coupled with our artistic practices.

In Trinidad and Tobago we have a lot of schizoid issues with culture. This is a society and space whose indigenous people were murdered, so that few of them remained while a new culture, belonging to the Europeans imposed itself. But the interesting with culture is that it doesn't die (yet we complain about that every year); it may not remain in its original form, but because of retention it will still live on. So aspects of Amerindian culture remained with us, (tapia houses, rookoo food colouring, hammocks and the many Amerindian words we still use etc.) despite the best practices of the Europeans that settled here.

Every culture that has settled here since 1598 (that's around when when the first Spanish colony was established) has had to juxtapose itself in some way to European culture. European culture is not homogenous. Here in Trinidad we had Spanish, French, Corsicans, Germans, Italians, Irish, English and Scot. The Spanish were few and their contribution to culture here was minimal. Indeed, much of what we consider to be Spanish culture here is really the contributions of Venezuelan peasanst (who were Spanish, Amerindian and African in their composition) who came in the latter half of the 1800s to assist with the cocoa industry here. Indeed, their arrival helped to reinfuse Amerindian culture into the space ( hence the pastelles, basket making, payme etc).

But under European rule, any other culture that had to survive here had to be clever enough to mimic and submerge. In short it had to know how to show the Europeans the aspects of their culture that the Europeans would be comfortable and happy with, and mask the other aspects of their culture. This was especially true of the Africans. To this day African culture is frowned upon and viewed with suspicion. The closest Trinidad and Tobago has gotten to acknowledging Africans (as opposed to Afro-French) and their culture in this space is through the Emancipation holiday and Shouter Baptist Liberation Day (both done withing the last 30years of our history). And the Shouter Baptist Religion is a Euro/Afro hybrid. I doubt that Orisa worship will be treated with any civility in my lifetime and that is perhaps the lone AFRICAN cultural form we have here. Yet there are many things about Trinidad and Tobago that are inaccurately defined and described as African culture.. in this space,despite all the ramajay about words and how to use them we are very politically incorrect...and what is called African is really Afro-Creole. I know some people won't see the difference....but is just like how Indians from Trinidad are not the same as Indians from India!

It is indisputable that this space has been occupied by very many groups, the majority of them not "Western": Africans, Indians, Chinese, Arab/Levantine. Yet when we interrogate this space we refuse to accept that non-Western philosophical traditions must also be employed to tackle the issues that are rampant here.

I want to address Carnival, moreso because I see it being attacked annually and I am not sure that people have an accurate grasp of what they are attacking. The festival called Carnival was introduced here by French immigrants in the late 1700s. Back then they didn't have street parades, they had masquerade balls in private homes. The enslaved people there witnessed this. Many of them with knowledge of their ancestral traditions in Africa, regardless of which ethnic group they were from, saw how this festival of masquerade could be useful to them.

Masquerade is the backbone of African drama. In Africa a festival can last as little as three days or as long as three months with all the requisite masking and ritual taking place. This ability for sustained masquerade, didn't die. Check our parliament.

The Carnival that we know now, though still based structurally on what the French brought here, has been systematically informed by the Afro-French creole population that settled here in large numbers from 1783 onward. The predominant culture seemed to be that of the Yoruba ethnic group (although there is enough evidence to show the presence of other ethnic groups here).

Now most Trinbagonians haven't the slightest clue what I am talking about when I start discussing ethnic groups and their respective culture. They see things as black, white, indian, chinese, syrian (interesting how the first two groups always reduced to their colour, while the others retain their immigrant nationalities). But the cultures of the ethnic groups that settled here played an important role in structuring the culture of this space.

French Roman Catholocism has made a lifestyle out of the idea of guilt and redemption. Just ask author Lawrence Scott. This need for release and redemption has made Carnival an absolute need here. People who don't come from a culture that is predominantly Catholic will therefore not quite grasp our fascination with catholic and absolute need for it.

Carnival because useful too as a space in which to continue the artforms and ancestor veneration practices of the Africans here. Their merging of Carnival with their religio-cultural forms, hybridised it. But no one bothered to tell the Europeans that the Africans here were using the Carnival for spiritual reasons so, for all intents and purposes it continued to be considered a secular holiday. The drumming, always a source of unease for Europeans (hence the reason it is still illegal in our Constitution), along with the dancing was considered to be evil, lascivious....WOTLISS! Sexuality and shame go hand in hand in Catholicism....it doesn't in the Yoruba tradition simply because sexuality is viewed as being sacred and transcendental. So it is celebrated through the body and this celebration of our sexual selves becomes apparent during Carnival (although it is there all year long) and continues to coupled with guilt, shame and seen as a "black people thing".

Carnival today is still considered to be very much a "Black" cultural form. And it's significance to the retention of African culture is very much misunderstood. It is seen as a season of sexual permissiveness, wild and loose behaviour, time to free up and do what you want. That aspect of Carnival was original to it. Brought here by the Europeans. It is evident in the root of the word Carne Vale: farewell to the flesh. Yet the loose sexual behaviour is something associated ONLY with "Black" people. I find that bit of stereotyping particularly interesting.

Guilt, in the way Catholicism understands it, does not exist in the Yoruba system for a very simple reason, the way the cosmology is structured. There is no bi-polar structure to life...no Heaven and Hell. Yoruba culture is not linear but cyclical. A person is not all good or all bad but possessed of both essences that they will display according to circumstances. The same with their deities. No deity is one-sided there is no ALL GOOD God and ALL EVIL Satan. Rather each deity has the potential to be both positive and negative. But that is not a Christian value system, it is one that is very African and what they Europeans didn't understand they labelled as evil...it's the basis of xenophobia all over the world. If I can't understand you, then you bad.

Yoruba introduced into Carnival parody, mimicry, satire, irony, sarcasm, resistance, revolt, ancestral veneration and secrecy. For two days you could be someone else and "play ah mas" this was the equivalent of being possessed by the ancestors after donning a mask. Very few people understand this.

Carnival is the sort of lifeblood festival that this country will not give up, because our entire society is structured around it a fact that pisses off people who don't come from a culture in which Carnival is important.

There is a very important reason that chutney music remains the lone Indo-centric artform that has been able to successfully enter the Carnival space. Chutney music is derived from the Matikor tradition. That Friday night of the wedding preparations when the women get together to prepare the bride for her passage into the world of marriage. It is a ritual that is mischievous, rebellious and sexy. Carnival's guiding deity in the African tradition is Esu, the god of choice, mischief, decision, sex and ritual ecstasy. His equivalents in the European tradition are Bacchuss/Dionysus/Pan. There is no other Indian cultural form that could have so easily made the accommodation for something likeCcarnival and its grassroots origins (as opposed to the more upscale origins of bhajans for eg) made it all the more accessible.

What for me is disturbing is how the history of our traditions have now gotten lost in the pursuit of the dollar. If you ask me what is killing Carnival and undermining the very valuable contribution it can make to our society I'd say competitions and sponsorship.

The guidelines of competition now force artists to fit a mould to get crowd response to get the $$$$, because everybody have to eat ah food..Ent it?

This shift in our approach to Carnival has resulted in a change in our culture and of course the society.

(To be continued...)

Carnival, Culture and Society (Pt2): Why HD is Mr Carnival

This is an edited version of a paper I presented at a conference a year ago. I did some tweaking as a result of comments I have been reading on a FB group I am a part of. In this piece I try to show how important Montano has been to Soca as well as why he is more than a performer and is really a channeller of the ESSENCE or ENERGY that dominates Carnival. It's a bit long and has many cultural and historical references. Your feedback is appreciated.

Blurring Boundaries: Machel Montano’s Soca Agenda

My fascination with my topic began at age sixteen. I was standing in Port of Spain watching bands make their way down Independence Square and a music truck housing Machel Montano and his band XTATIK was coming towards me. I don't remember the song he was singing. But I remember the experience of following his truck, like a lemming almost, swept up in the euphoria he created as he sang, pranced about the truck and gyrated to the crowd’s total enjoyment. I have followed his career faithfully since then, as have many others, and I have noted with interest the impact Montano has had on Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival. When he opted out of live performances this year many fans were disappointed. It was a lively topic of discussion rife with both debate and speculation. The general conclusion though, was that he was greatly missed, and Carnival 2010 lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. It got me to thinking about how much Montano has come to both represent and channel the spirit of Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, because he wasn’t the only artist missing from the Carnival this season. Destra Garcia and Iwer George had sat it out as well, but their absences caused less of a ripple. Despite his physical absence, his music still dominated Carnival this year as many as 10 tracks from the album 34 was released and received regular airplay. In the weeks leading up to Carnival he was still one of the top three contenders for the Road March title and eventually placed third in the competition.

In thinking about Montano’s essence and its effect on Carnival , my focus shifted from orthodox areas of study like transnationalism to something a little more esoteric and indigenous. This paper will instead look at Montano’s body of work in the last 13 years, maps its key features and assess the impact he has had on soca music, link it to Carnival and perhaps figure out why he is so special to Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival.

In interrogating the phenomenon that is Montano's influence, and looking at its features, it became clear that mainstream theory would not be adequate for my purposes. Even though both post colonial and post modern theories could easily apply, I wanted to look at the essences that guide the festival that functions as Montano’s muse. While it is widely acknowledged that Carnival has its roots in both European and African traditions, we are more likely to hear about the European deities that reign over carnival in the form of Dionysus or Bacchus. More often than not Dionysus is referred to as the god of wine and festivities, according to myth, he is the god of rebirth; he is less well known for being the god that inspires ritual madness and ecstasy, the liberator of one’s normal self by madness, ecstasy or wine. Dionysus also has a relationship to the cult of the souls and is said to preside over communication between the living and the dead, past and present (Frazer, 1922).

If Dionysus is the European deity, it stands to reason then, that the co-relative deity from Africa is Esu. “Esu is the androgynous deity, the divine messenger, linguist and interpreter…the divine enforcer of the will of Oludumare, the Supreme being. In Yoruba philosophy, Esu emerges as a divine trickster, a disguise artist, a mischief maker, a rebel, a challenger of orthodoxy, a shape-shifter, and an enforcer deity (Aiyejina, 2009).” Funso Aiyejina’s 2008 professorial inaugural address and a later paper delivered in Nigeria in 2009, makes a coherent link between the god Esu and Earl Lovelace’s Bacchanal Aesthetics. Showing both how the deity has been demonized as well as how its essence presides over the spirit of Carnival through mischief making, inciting ecstasy, madness and euphoria, challenging orthodoxies and traditions and the evolution of forms and the varying dualities that are present in the festival.

Given the inherent similarities between the European and African deities, the features of Bacchanal Aesthetics provided a good framework against which to assess Montano’s impact on soca music in the last 13 years.

Creation and Evolution

The creation of Soca music is attributed to Garfield Blackman (first known as Lord Shorty and then in the 80s and 90s as Ras Shorty I), who developed a particular fusion of music that took its main elements from a merging of both African and Indian musical forms. Shorty I claims that his naming of the musical form came from the "so" of calypso and the "kah" from the first syllable in the Indian alphabet. His experimenting with this new form was in his words to serve two purposes. In an interview given in 1979 he says: "I was trying to find something because the talk was that calypso was dying and reggae was the thing...Everybody was putting it [calypso] down...Calypso was dying a natural death." Years later in 1997 he says to ethnomusicologist Jocelyn Guilbault that through the merging of the two musics he was attempting to fight "racialism". These two features, fighting to produce a relevant musical form and using music for integration would become dominant themes in Montano's career. While Blackman was creating soca music throughout the seventies with notable hits like "Indrani" and "Om Shanti" and the very significant album The Love Man. The new music received mixed reviews. Lord Shorty was criticized for the pre-dominance of Indian rhythms on his tracks, his dress code and lyrics were also critiqued as being too sexual. The song "Om Shanti" was considered to be controversial because it used a religious Hindu phrase for a music that was considered to be secular. It was felt that Lord Shorty was "playing Indian". In 1975 Lord Shorty changed some of his recording style, removed the Indian instruments such as the tabla and dholak drums that featured prominently on his albums and instead used western instruments imitating Indian rhythms. These changes seemed to be more palatable and acceptable to the listening audience. By Lord Shorty's account it was Cecil Hume, known in the performing world as Maestro who took up the new musical arrangements in 1976 with the song "Savage". In 1978 the success of Lord Kitchener's "Sugar Bum Bum" would seal the deal for Soca music, making its form a Carnival staple (Guilbault, 2007). Throughout the 80s and 90s Soca quickly captured audiences and a local and diasporic market. The music focused more on feelings, emotions and dancing whereas calypsos held their traditional territory of political and social commentary. The tents remained the space of calypsos while the fetes, discotheques and dancehalls became the venue for soca music. In the 80s artists like (Kelvin Pope) the Mighty Duke and Blue Boy (Austin Lyons) dominated soca with his Spiritual Baptist-influenced rhythms and melodies such as "Soca Baptist" (1980), “Rebecca” (1981), “Ethel”, and “Blue Fever” (1986). Soca, in the hands of artists like Blue Boy, Christopher Tambu Herbert and The Mighty Duke dominated the Road March competitions in the 80s and 90s. In the 1990's Lyon's image underwent a change and he emerged as Super Blue and again dominated the soca and road march arena winning the Road March titles in four successive years with "Get Something and Wave" (1991), "Jab Jab" (1992), "Bacchanal Time" (1993) and "Signal to Lara" (1994). In 1993 the Soca Monarch competition was launched, the first prize then was valued at TT$25,000. Super Blue became its first winner and would dominate the competition for several years (http://www.icerecords.com/Superblue.htm). His performances of Bachannal Time and Birthday Party appeared on the first worldwide broadcast of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival via CNN in 1993. Super Blue is the only calypsonian to have appeared on Sesame Street. Super Blue's presence from the 80s to late 90s would dominate soca music and he is credited with introducing the "jump and wave" style that is now such a popular feature of the music and the parties that play the music.

It is in the waning years of Super Blue's presence that Machel Montano and his band XTATIK would emerge and take up their positions in the driver's seat and from 1997 with the release of the album Heavy Duty to the present Machel Montano, in whatever incarnation of his stage persona, has dominated soca both locally and internationally.

It is important to note, that soca music, independent of whichever artist is dominating the scene, remains a controversial form for many reasons. Some critics claim that it is not calypso. Rather, it is an offshoot of this “more traditional” form. Researchers like Rohlehr have been able to establish that the calypso as we know it now, is a hybrid music with influences from both Africa and Europe. Soca, as Lord Shorty explains, appears to be a hybrid of a hybrid, merging a form that was Afro/Euro with Indo elements. In both A Scuffling of Islands and Calypso and Carnival in Pre-Independence Trinidad Rohlehr carefully maps the various controversies that surrounded the emerging calypso form from kalinda, to oracular to ballad. And it appears as if evolution, fluidity and change, more than anything else are the features of the form. However, there have always been arguments about essentialism and what are the features of a “true true” calypso, or classic calypso, as opposed to the features of soca. And while scholars still struggle to determine what the difference is between calypso and soca, a debate now rages on about what really constitutes soca: is it rhythm, tempo, musical arrangement, lyrical content. No one can define it, so everyone re-defines it. And since the form was developed as a response to the perceived death of another, if it too starts to wane, does it not require evolution to enable its rebirth?

The Boy Wonder

When Montano and XTATIK exploded onto the stage in 1997, in many senses it was a re-birth for the band because Montano was not new to the stage, public scrutiny or public dissent. From as early as 1986 he was making waves with his controversial performance with the Joker Des Vigne- penned, “Too Young to Soca?” that took him all the way to the prestigious Dimanche Gras show, where Montano, as the youngest performer to ever perform in the competition, clad in diapers and a bib, wowed the crowd with his confidence, insouciance and precociousness. Those features would remain trademarks throughout his career. His precociousness would later translate into an unabashed sexuality that came to be associated with both his music and stage performances.

By 1997 Montano, as either a solo artist or with his band, under either the names Pranasonic Express or XTATIK had released 13 albums that covered a range of genres from the period 1984 - 1996. The band and their lead singer played calypso, soca, soca parang, and rhythm and blues. Yet, despite the diversity of their repertoire they were still only relatively successful in the local music industry. Indeed, between 1984 to 1996 Montano and his band, despite their many albums had only a handful of hits and Machel was still known for his mostly for the 1986 calypso “Too Young to Soca” and his soca parang hit “Soca Santa”. By 1996, however albums like “By All Means” and “Men at Work” had begun to make inroads into the local consciousness, partly because of the music videos that accompanied songs, wherein Montano and XTATIK utilized wining marionettes that caused quite a stir, because of the mixture of innocence and profanity in the performances. The government housing projects at Maloney Gardens received its own 15 minutes of fame in the video for the “Men At Work “ album which featured Montano and his XTATIK frontline dressed in coveralls, hanging from a building, wining. Montano had begun to crossover in many ways. He was no longer catering to a calypso audience that for the most part was made up of a more mature crowd, and his style was shifting away from its calypso base and beginning to incorporate dancehall elements in both its sound and presentation.

Says Montano:

When we decided to form a band, we looked around at the bands that were existing and realized that we’re young and our band is not the same crowd as the calypso with the older heads. We would go to shows and there would be only old people around us…In 1997, I said, “look fellows, we need to do something new’…we decided we needed to come up with something new and to do it all on our own. (Guilbault, 2007)

Transformation

In an interview given in 2003 Montano says of himself and his band, “the most important thing we brought is the will to transform (Guilbault, 2007).” This statement would prove to be accurate in multiple ways. Much in the same way Lord Shorty and Blue Boy experimented with their look and sound from the 70s to the 90s, Montano, his band and the music would evolve at what seemed like warp speed between 1997 to the present.

The Pranasonic Express would eventually evolve into XTATIK and this band would have several incarnations changing members and names from XTATIK to XTATIK 5.0, the XTATIK Circus, the XTATIK Road Marching band and the Band Of D Year; it is currently known as the HD Family complete with back-up dancers. This evolution of names, according to Montano, was related to the band’s evolving sound.

There are several recurrent features in Montano’s and XTATIK’s work between 1997 and 2010. The body of work reveals motifs of overt sexuality, challenges to orthodoxy that are often seen in the theme of tradition and change, hybridization or mixing of musical forms and constant innovation and re-establishing of boundaries.

Tradition and Change

If calypso was seen as the staid artform that observed traditions, provided commentary and preserved the societies’ history, then soca was its anti-thesis. It was light, playful, sexual, lyrical content was not its focus; it turned its nose up at the notion of tradition and orthodoxy. Montano though seems to have made the effort to straddle two worlds with the musical offerings from his band. In making an effort to acknowledge traditions while moving the artform forward from 1997 to the present Machel has collaborated with calypso stalwarts such as Lord Melody, Lord Blakie, Lord Nelson, Calypso Rose, Shadow, The Black Stalin, David Rudder, Andre Tanker and The Mighty Sparrow. He has also collaborated with some of the most prominent names in chutney music creating hits with the likes of Drupatee Ramgoonai, Rikki Jai and Andy Singh. Part of Montano’s strategy has also been to sample the melodies of past calypso hits and he has done this with music from artists like Lord Kitchener, The Black Stalin, The Mighty Shadow and the Mighty Sparrow. Throughout the 13-year span that this paper tries to cover Montano has paid homage to Kitchener’s “Gimme D Ting” “Tay Lay Lay” (sung by Peter C Lewis) and “Sugar Bum Bum”, Sparrow’s “Congo Man”, Lord Nelson’s “We Like It”, Shadow’s “What Dey Say Dey Say” and “Poverty is Hell”, and The Black Stalin’s “Bun Dem” in the form of sampling or using the melody wholesale adding new lyrics and re-mixing it on a riddim. These are just the ones that I have been able to recognize. In some instances Montano has sampled calypsos of yesteryear for only a few bars of a song and that has made identification somewhat more difficult. The ones I have listed here, reflect more overt use.

Montano’s use of what we would call classic calypsos, as well as his collaborating with the older generation of calypsonians has done two things. Created a trend among other soca artists of his generation such as Bunji Garlin, KMC, Fay-Ann Lyons and Shurwayne Winchester who have all apparently followed in Montano’s footsteps – and I say this because their collaborative acts came years after Montano had begun doing his – and done collaborations of their own. Garlin has done collaborations with Explainer on his 80s hit “Loren”, he reprised Maestro’s “Fiery” to win the 2008 Soca Monarch competition and circa 2001 collaborated with former Calypso Monarch Singing Sandra on the song “Lies”. Shurwayne Winchester has collaborated with Calypso Rose in her reprise of “Tempo” and KMC as recently as Carnival 2010 teamed up with Ronnie McIntosh. These collaborations have also breathed new life into the careers of older artists, providing them with a younger audience, from the re-mixes, as well as exposing the younger audience to calypsos and soca music of yesteryear. Interestingly enough, none of these artists have yet to collaborate with Super Blue – an artiste who dominated the scene for the better part of two decades.

Since the word sampling has come up. While Montano may not be the first soca artist to have sampled music - Lord Nelson’s “Disco Daddy” back in the 70s, which made use of the Shaft television series theme song, is evidence of this – his use of music samples has certainly surpassed that of any other soca artist of his generation. In many instances one song can have multiple melody samples on them overlapping each other. What made Montano’s sampling such a hit was the choices he made early in his career. Montano chose melodies that hark back to the childhood of his major listening audience. Fans were able to hear samples of nursery rhymes, popular church choruses, pop songs, dancehall tunes, even songs from the children’s television programme Sesame Street. With most of his focus being on fun playful lyrics and catchy beats Montano tapped into the subliminal feel good memories that these melodies evoked and while the older heads shook in disapproval, ticket sales for the venues he performed at soared. In 1997 Heavy Duty sampled as few as three songs – Kitchener’s “Gimme De Ting”, Shadow’s “What Dey Say Dey Say” and the nursery rhyme “Old Mac Donald Had A Farm”. Given the huge success and overwhelming popularity of “Music Farm’s” technique –a combination of sampling and multiple artists singing different verses, a novel practice then in the calypso and soca world - Montano’s use of sampling only increased and every album featured popular melodies, some instantly recognizable, others, not so much.

In the last 13 years his sampling has spanned music from the disco era, rhythm and blues, rock and pop. Machel has used songs like the hymn “Stand Up and Tell Me”, Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and “Thriller”, U2’s “With or Without You”, Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”, “Aap Jaisa Koi Mere” from the filmi hit Qurbani, Maxwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me”, Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”, Celia Cruz’s “La Vida Carnaval”, Shania Twain’s “Party For Two”, Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”, Enya’s “Caribbean Blue” and Michelle Branche’s, “A Thousand Miles”. It is therefore no wonder that he is sometimes referred to as the Puff Daddy of Trinidad and Tobago.

Coupled with this sampling of various genres came the riding of riddims. I stand to be corrected, but the first example of it I picked up in his work is in his 2000 album where Montano rides the Y2K riddim on a remixed version of “Poverty is Hell” with Shadow. And this is a classic example of how Montano would play with various forms: he takes an old song, from one of the older more venerated artists, re-mixes it on a riddim and sings it with the artist. Riddims were nothing new to the music scene in Trinidad and Tobago, but it was for the most part isolated to dancehall. Afficionados of the Jamaican artform will already know of the tradition of several artists penning lyrics for and piggy backing on the same melody.

From 2000 onwards the riding of riddims as well as regional collaborations with dancehall and other artists became the norm in soca music - again, pioneered by Montano. The idea of multiple artists singing on a song was almost unheard of in calypso. I can think of no examples and prior to Montano’s experiments with it in 1997, there seems to be no evidence of it happening in soca music either. But from 1997 onwards collaborations between local and foreign artists quickly became a trend. So much so that a current way of judging the pedigree of a soca artist is by the number of collaborations he has done.

Between 2000 to the present Montano has rode the Takeover Riddim in 2005 (We Not Giving Up), Legendary Riddim in 2006 (Hot), the Tambourine Riddim in 2007 (One More Time), Temper Wine and Push Bumper Riddims in 2009 (Temper Wine and Push Bumper), and in 2010 the Bubble Up Riddim and Jumbie Gutter Riddim. And between 1997 to the present he has collaborated with the following regional artists: Shaggy, Beenie Man, Red Rat, Buccaneer, Spragga Benz, Tall Pree, Onyan and Wanskie of Burning Flames, El La Kru, Allison Hinds, Collie Budz, Mr Vegas, Vybz Kartel, Sizzla Kalonji, Macka Diamond (with Patrice Roberts from the HD Family), De Marco, Serani and Buju Banton. His collaborations with international artists is a shorter list, but not necessarily any less impressive. The list includes Minmi (Japan), members of the G-Unit, Wyclef Jean, Doug E Fresh, Lil Jon, Pitbull, Busta Rhymes, Casely and recently Janet Jackson.

This eclectic mix of genres, beats, riddims and remixes since 2003 have been showcased annually in his concert the Alternative Concept. Through his impressive showmanship Montano has re-established boundaries about live performances. By the early 90s as soca fetes became more popular with the younger audience, attendance waned at calypso tents and they began to struggle. Tents like the Spektakular Forum toyed with various formulas, shortening the social and political commentary sets and introducing soca artists to bring down the curtain on their nightly shows. But this experimentation has been to no real avail. Many tents have since closed while more and more fetes are launched each year, with soca artistes demanding top dollar to perform. The format of a typical fete features dee jay music until about midnight and then between midnight, and the show’s close off time, usually 4 am, there will be a series of live acts performing their songs. While these performances tend to be high energy and filled with antics that normally show case the artist’s wining skills or the wining skills of a member of the audience there was not much variation in the format of the performances – until the Alternative Concept.

The Alternative Concept Concerts were introduced about a year into Montano’s evolution to concept albums around 2002. These albums followed a particular format or theme: marching bands, circuses, angels, magical drums. There were songs that developed the theme in the album, along with collaborations with various foreign artists and remixes of these songs. Each album also featured at least one song from the year before, but always re-mixed. Some of the albums also featured a repeat performance by an artist from the previous year as well. The concerts were exactly what they billed themselves as, concerts, and not a mere fete. Audiences were treated to well choreographed performances that featured dancers, guest acts, surprise acts and circus-like tricks. Past shows have featured marching bands, Montano allegedly parachuting into the performance venue, Wyclef Jean arriving onstage on a white motorcycle, Montano exploding out of a drum, and of course live performances with Montano and his various foreign acts. The Alternative Concept performances are also staged in New York and London annually and gives Montano the perfect space to showcase his music and specific performance style.

Montano’s constant boundary pushing has of course earned him numerous critics. He has been accused of being too sexual, of inciting violence in fetes from as early as 1998 with “Toro Toro” and “Footsteps”, of not actually singing soca music and of lacking originality with his productions. He has taken on his critics in several songs, actually showing that despite soca’s reputation for being light, he can use the form to protest. From as early as “Winer Boi”(1997) and “What Dey Say Dey Say” (1997), to more recent hits like “Carnival”(2003), “We Not Giving Up”(2005), and “Madder Than Dat” (2005) Montano takes on his critics saying:

Call: Machel, why you wining so?

Response: That’s because I am a good winer man

Call: Tell me why you wining so?

Response: This is what I tell them

Just because I could wine

Try pull me down

Like me hang on clothes line

But me get like Tarzan

And swing pon a vine

Anytime me fall below the line

Me bounce back and me come one time…

I going to make them critics cry

I going to wine ‘til they day I die.

In “We Song (Ba Dang) he defends his musical choices by saying his sound is rougher,as in better and more cutting edge, than the other artists around him. It is this choice to be cutting edge and to take chances in the face of perceived rules and censorship that has sustained him in the music business because each year his fans anticipate him upping the ante, and thus far Montano has not failed.

So what does any of this have to do with Esu?

Montano has become an influential artist in a festival that has many resonances in Trinidad and Tobago. For some, Carnival is a secular festival, while for others it has ritualistic importance, and as all know, ritual is an important part of religion. All religious rituals have a presiding deity that is venerated. Esu, is one of those deities whose essence is manifested throughout the carnival period, not just through music, but through many other practices of the season. Esu is the god of indeterminacy, chance and revolts, Montano has manifested all of these qualities in the choices he has made in his musical career. Femis Osofisan says:

If a knowledge needs to be carried forward, something must come and disturb the present stability. It is when the present stability is disturbed that we then move forward again, else we stagnate, and die. …Revolts must come in order to have progress, which is why questioning must continue. That’s the principle that Eshu represents, constant questioning, constant challenge to authority, to orthodoxy. The restless iconoclastic spirit (Osofisan, Excursions in Drama and Literature, pp80-81).

We are still in the process of judging the long term impact that Montano’s experimentations and challenges to orthodox calypso and soca forms have had. And while his critics grapple with the implications of what he has done with soca music, he continues to do more. He has relocated to the music scene in Los Angeles now, and has renewed his attack on the cross-over market, as seen with his 2010 collaborations, and yet again questions are being raised about what is soca music and is Montano producing soca, improving the art form or watering it down for an international audience. Of course, in answering many of these questions, our first step might be in deciding if soca music, like Machel Montano, can be constrained within boundaries and defined.