WatchBoom’s guide to Caribbean music
By Bob Schulman
You've booked a vacation in the Caribbean, and you just can't wait to flake out on the powdery beaches, splash around in the blue-green waters and dance the night away to the sexy beat of reggae music. Chances are you'll actually do all this – but unless you're going to Jamaica, you might be shaking your booty to another kind of West Indian music.
“Most Americans think reggae is the only music we have,” says Caribbean tour operator Ames Godwin. “The fact is, just about all of our islands have their own music...the different beats are usually very peppy, but some are a long way from reggae.”
Unless you've been living on another planet, you've likely heard the reggae tunes of Jamaican superstar Bob Marley. The upbeat reggae rhythm combined with the passion of his lyrics – he called on his fans to stand up for their rights and to live righteously – propelled Marley’s discs to the top of the worldwide charts again and again until his death in 1981 at age 36.
You'll also hear messages like that in the West Indies' old-time calypso music, although usually more subtle and often buried in a little humor.
Today's musical theme is, having fun. For instance, on Martinique, Guadeloupe and the other French-speaking islands you can follow the wiggling bodies to zouk concerts. Known for its brassy, loping rhythm and distinctive back-beat, zouk literally means party.
Equally or even more brassy is soca (a blend of soul and calypso) from Trinidad. Put heavy helpings of percussion on top of the brass, and you get songs like the chart-topping “Hot, Hot, Hot.” Meanwhile, you'll still hear Trinidadian “panners” beating away on steel drums first fashioned out of 55-gallon oil drums in the 1930s.
Another old-timer that's still around is merengue from the Dominican Republic. Played fast with a 2/4 beat, merengue arguably ties with zouk and the hard-driving beat of Haitian compas tunes for the Caribbean's most sensual music.
Nowadays you'll hear fusions of just about everything on the islands. Like zouk mixed with reggae and soca. Or a Bahamian carnival-like junkanoo served up with a compas and a merengue. Or a smörgåsbord of a banjo-backed funji from Tortola, some lively salsa from Puerto Rico or Cuba and just a hint of a minuet-ish quelbe from St. Croix.
Need more spices? Add a dash of spouge from Barbados, tumba from Curacao, scratch from St. Thomas and earlier forms of reggae called ska and rocksteady.
Still another kind of Jamaican music – one that's hardly ever mixed – is called nyabinghi (nye-ah-bing-ee). Played by dreadlocked members of the Rastafarian religion at secluded retreats in the Jamaican mountains, nyabinghi songs are chanted out for hours on end against the slow thumping of African drums. Listen close, and you'll hear Rasta-ized versions of “Roll, Jordan Roll,” “Rivers of Babylon” and other hymns brought to the islands years ago by Pentecostal missionaries.
One nyabinghi CD titled “Wingless Angels” also has an Irish fiddle and a guitar on it, the latter played by the disc’s executive producer, Keith Richards. Yes, THE Keith Richards.
How do you dance to West Indian music? Any way you like. Visitors to the islands are welcome to get out on the floor and do everything from country and western line dancing to old-fashioned swing steps. But if you’d really like to get with it, take a few minutes to learn the simple one-two step of the Dominican Republic's merengue. It'll work for most Caribbean beats.
Where to find Caribbean CDs: A long list of websites offering music from various islands can be found at www.members.cox.net/sweeneyisland. Click “Music” in the information categories on the left side of the page.
Reader's Responses
Africa in the islands
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that calypso, merengue, soca, zouk and the other Caribbean rhythms mostly have their roots in Africa. Slaves stolen from their homeland to work the islands’ fields and mills brought their music with them; for example, melodies of the Bantu, Mandingo and Yoruba cultures are heard today respectively as cumbia in Haiti, son in Cuba and merengue in the Dominican Republic.
Listen close to the singing and you’ll often hear “call and response” – a soloist calls and the rest of the band responds – again, straight out of Africa. For instance, in the Tortolan song “These Beautiful Islands,” Lashing Dogs Band lead singer Aubrey Forbes proclaims (from an old gospel favorite) “There’s honey in the rock,” and the three-man chorus comes back with “Virgin Islanders should get their share.”
In still another throwback to Africa, the islanders’ drums, banjos, reeds and plinkety-plunk “finger pianos” are copied from instruments played hundreds of years ago on the other side of the Atlantic. The finger piano, for instance, comes from the African “kalimba” piano.
You can learn much more about the African roots of Caribbean music in a package of three CDs aptly called “Africa en America.” Forty ethnic songs from 19 countries in the Caribbean region are offered on the discs along with a brochure that tells you where each of the tunes originated and the history of the instruments. You can sample some of the cuts on Amazon.com.