Chutney Soca

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In Guyana, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago, Chutney-Soca music is a crossover style of music incorporating Soca elements and Hindi-English lyrics, Chutney music, with Indian instruments like the dholak and dhantal.

[edit] History

Chutney soca is a prime example of how Indo-Trinidadians have established roots in Trinidad and have created an original, syncretic art form.[1] Resulting from the intervention of Indo-Trinidadians into Soca music in the 1980s,[2] the addition of chutney-soca to the island's musical life signified a consolidation of the East Indian influence on Trinidadian culture and politics, particularly during the 1990s. It was during this time that Trinidadian musicians, performing in the popular style of calypso and its substyle, soca, began to incorporate Indian themes into their lyrics. An early, significant example of this is the song 'Sundar Popo,' by Black Stalin. This song, whose whimsical lyrics concern a veteran Indian singer, won Black Stalin the coveted Calypso Monarch Prize in February 1995. Although it was neither in chutney style nor in Hindi, 'Sundar Popo' was labelled chutney-soca because of its theme.[3] Similar efforts followed in the wake of May 30, 1995, which marked the anniversary of the first arrival of "indenturees" in Trinidad and was designated by the island's government as Indian Arrival Day.

Chutney-soca's rise in popularity through the mid- to late 1990s was expedited by its changing role in Trinidad's Carnival celebration.[4] The 1995-1996 Carnival season saw the establishment of the Chutney Monarch Competition and the performance of a number of chutney-socas during the calypso/soca competition by creole musicians, including Marcia Miranda, Tony Ricardo, Chris Garcia, Brother Marvin, and Luta. Embraced as it was by non-Indian performers, who abandoned formal Indianisms, sang solely in English and emphasized the soca beat, chutney-soca became a national fad. [5] Since the late 1990s chutney-soca has spawned the similar styles of chutney rap, chutney jhumar and chutney lambada, dance music whose Indo-Caribbean themes are mixed with Bombay film music and American popular music.[6]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Peter Manuel, "Chutney and Indo-Trinidadian cultural identity," Popular Music 17:1 (1998): 37 JSTOR, Online (Dec 4 2007).
  2. ^ Lorriane Leu, ""Raise Yuh Head, Jump up and Get on Bad!": New Developments in Soca Music in Trinidad," Latin American Music Review 21:1 (2000): 51 JSTOR, Online (Dec 4 2007).
  3. ^ Peter Manuel, "Chutney and Indo-Trinidadian cultural identity," Popular Music 17:1 (1998): 37 and 42, JSTOR, Online (Dec 4 2007).
  4. ^ Peter Manuel, "Chutney and Indo-Trinidadian cultural identity," Popular Music 17:1 (1998): 38 JSTOR, Online (Dec 4 2007).
  5. ^ Peter Manuel, "Chutney and Indo-Trinidadian cultural identity," Popular Music 17:1 (1998): 38 JSTOR, Online (Dec 4 2007).
  6. ^ Helen Myers, "Trinidad and Tobago," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Vol. 25, Ed. Stanley Sadie (Taunton, Mass.: Macmillan, 2001), p. 742.
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