Help Make This Dream Come True - Click Here
For The Theme Park Proposal
|
|
    Caribbean Weekly Hot Shot submitted by viewers like you:  Send us your favorite Caribbean picture with a brief description (Please, no copyright protected material - THANK YOU! INSTRUCTIONS: Click Send Picture, then click attach (file) on your email program, locate picture file on your computer, attach picture file, insert description, & press send on your email program.) |
Our motto here is "The island music brings us together, our singing makes us united." We can think of no better way that you our guests and we the hosts can unite as one. Just as there are visitors from all over world coming here everyday, so we combined an assortment of Caribbean nationalities within our docent community. Let's bond around a wide variety of musical instruments and talents remembering that variety is the spice of life. Some of that spice is found in the Puerto Rican salsa, another flavor in Jamaican reggae, and now you begin to taste the musical buffet. Join us and welcome this new experience with open arms as we become a friends, just one big happy Caribbean family around a universal love of music. Music is the heartbeat of Caribbean, and it is certainly hard to ignore. The strains of calypso, reggae, soca (soul-calypso), and steel pan, throbbing bass dub music booming out from dollar buses, and the dance rhythms of Puerto Rican salsa, merengue from the Dominican Republic, and zouk from the French Antilles, provide a catchy backdrop to the Caribbean experience.
Live music performances in dubs and bars are easy to find throughout the islands. Music festivals are also well worth tracking down. The most famous events include Jamaica's Reggae Sun splash (Feb.), the St Lucia International Jazz Festival (May), and the SL Kitts Music Festival (June). |
|
You can email comments to the webmaster at webmaster@caribbeantown.com. Copyright © 1999 - 2002 Caribbean Town. All rights reserved. Visit us at www.caribbeantown.com Revised: November 11, 2006, Site Map, Search |
The music of the Caribbean - the lilting, syncopated calypso, born in Trinidad
and now universal - is instantly recognizable. Simple, musically
unsophisticated, a tuneful narrative of local gossip, calypso is as slangy and
catchy as the Caribbean voice, which, of course, varies from island to island.
The accepted accompaniment is the steel drum, first hammered out of oil drums by
the Trinidadians in the 1940s. Calypso was popularized around the world by Harry
Belafonte, singing about banana boats and about Matilda (who took his money and
"run Venezuela") in the 1950s. To many the New York-born Belafonte is
still the ultimate Trinidadian. By the 1960s, when Bob Marley and other
Jamaicans thrust into the public ear the revolutionary reggae (a kind of cross
between calypso and rock, with a shuffle beat), West Indian music had crossed
over from folk to mainstream popular music. Nevertheless, it still sounds best
on its home turf. There are few travellers so jaded that they don't enjoy
hearing "Yellow Bird" played on a steel drum on any island even for
the millionth time.
Calypso
is the grandfather of the music scene, with its origins buried way back in West
African slave traditions. Forbidden to speak their native languages,
slaves were however, permitted to sing; the planters believed it helped them
work faster. Yet unbeknownst to their employers, the slaves used song to
keep alive the West African storytelling tradition and to pass along information
and messages of protest conceded in allegorical terms. Today's calyposians
are still judged not only on the music but also on the message they put across.
Trinidad
is the home of calypso and steel pan music, which originated in the dockyards of
Port of Spain during World War II when oil drums were recycled for makeshift
drums. Reggae emerged from the Kingston ghetto of Trenchtown with its most
famous exponent, Bob Marley, in the 1970s.