In closing, the Trinidadian identity project as expressed through soca can best be summed up with the common West Indian phrase “Is Ah We Ting.” Soca music’s open-arms stance is a by-product of Afro-Trinidadian security and strength, relatively speaking, as co-creators of a new, independent national identity with a culture worthy of exportation. By contrast, the defensive, self- af‹rming posture of go-go music can be summarized by a similar African American slogan from the early 1990s: “It’s a Black Thing”—in this case, a black DC thing—“You Wouldn’t Understand.”
Both genres have a long way to go in gaining respectability, both among the upper classes of Trinidad and Washington and in the larger music cultures be- yond their regions. Soca—and Carnival—has spread throughout the Lesser Antilles, a fact that makes Trinidadians extremely proud. Carnival, pan, and ca- lypso represent what several writers refer to as the trinity of Trinidadian cul- tural achievements.36As Trinidadians and other eastern Caribbean natives have
immigrated to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, they have exported Carnival beyond the Caribbean, albeit in a somewhat diluted, Pan- Caribbean fashion. But this, too, is part of the Trinidadian project, stretching back to the days of the West Indian Federation on up to CARICOM and at- tempts to forge a Pan-Caribbean identity.37 Soca is at the forefront of this movement, with Destra’s appeals to Caribbean “massive,” Nadia Batson’s tune “One Island,” Patrice Roberts’s “Come to the Islands,” and Barbadian Alison Hinds’s song “Wine Meh.”
Yet Trinidad’s soca artists still struggle for regular airplay after Carnival, leading many to tour extensively in the months between the end of Carnival and the beginning of the next season. Critics such as Bukka Rennie accuse fete soca of being one more instance of the commercialization and mass marketing of Carnival as well as a takeover by middle-class interests. In 2005, for example, the Trinidad and Tobago government invested ten million U.S. dollars into Carnival celebrations. This reaped a bene‹t of $150 million for the economy as a whole, which was estimated at $13–18 billion in 2005.38The government nat- urally seeks to capitalize on Carnival in order to drive tourism to the island and raise its pro‹le among nations. Soca’s “golden child” status is temporary, how- ever, and closely connected to the annual in›ux of Carnival dollars from De- cember to February into the national income.39
Unlike Trinidad, Washington has a natural tourism draw and does not need the go-go economy. Initially, the city’s most popular stations would not play go- go at all. While a few record labels—Sugar Hill, Island, and Def Jam—›irted with the DC sound in the early 1980s, go-go has yet to break out of the Wash- ington area in any substantial way.40Additionally, as DC leaders seek to elimi- nate the city’s old “murder capital” image and attract more af›uent develop- ment and residents, go-go’s close relationship with DC’s ghettoes and projects has made the genre an easy target for the news, city administrators who want to appear tough on crime, and the white and black middle class who make up their primary audience and constituent base. Certain fans have made it harder for go-go music to survive by starting ‹ghts or worse—wounding or killing people in or near go-go clubs. Lornell and Stephenson and many other defend- ers of go-go emphatically point out that this violence usually does not take place inside the clubs. But when a police of‹cer was killed inside the IBEX nightclub in 1997, the city shut the club down, starting a trend that has pitted city of‹cials against the go-go community.
Two grassroots organizations, the Go-Go Coalition and Peaceoholics, have successfully mobilized band members, industry staff, and go-go supporters to
protest club closings. They have also organized community conferences on public safety at go-go clubs and pro-peace go-go concerts and have advocated special security measures, including ID cards, to track attendees and remove troublemakers from the premises.41As go-go music matures, it is slowly break- ing out of the “local hood ›avor” box it has been trapped in. Go-go bands have been used at health fairs, HIV awareness events, and fund-raisers for Hurricane Katrina victims. Gospel go-go has also begun to grow in popularity. In the last ‹ve years, Chuck Brown has been embraced as a hometown hero by local lead- ers, and mainstream urban-format radio stations have created evening go-go programming. True to its name, DC’s homegrown music keeps going and go- ing and going.
Pressing notes, “Once musical effects attain a certain currency, they form part of a cultural evolution, which proceeds nongenomically from generation to generation.”42 Through the use of polyrhythmic drumming, call-and-re- sponse, repetition, and display, both soca and go-go seek to make this evolution real in the lives of its listeners and the cultures to which they belong. In this re- spect, soca and go-go are included in what Pressing calls “relatively complex creative adaptations of traditional African and African diasporic rhythmic techniques [which] are a natural consequence of a culture of questioning and re›ection that encompasses maintenance of historical reference and accommo- dation to innovation.”43Using this framework, I have sought to rescue both genres from their stigmatization as mindless party music or uninspired bucket beating.
Notes
1. Warner, Kaiso! The Trinidad Calypso, 21. 2. National Library, “Calypso: Subject Guide.” 3. Dudley, “Judging by ‘The Beat,’ ” 287. 4. Ibid., 294.
5. Lornell and Stephenson, The Beat, 23. 6. Ibid., 12.
7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid.
10. Cowley, Carnival, Canboulay, and Calypso, 14. 11. Inside Trinidad and Tobago Carnival.
12. Wilson, “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” 154. 13. Lornell and Stephenson, The Beat, 25. 14. Ibid., 12.
15. Ibid. 16. Ibid.
17. Pressing, “Black Atlantic Rhythm,” 304. 18. Quoted in ibid., 290.
19. Cowley, Carnival, Canboulay, and Calypso, 124. 20. Quoted in Warner, Kaiso! The Trinidad Calypso, 59. 21. Quoted in ibid., 82.
22. Dudley, “Judging by ‘The Beat,’ ” 286. 23. Cowley, Carnival, Canboulay, and Calypso, 56. 24. Inside Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. 25. Ibid.
26. Cowley, Carnival, Canboulay, and Calypso, 20, 33. 27. “DC Voting Rights Historical Timeline.” 28. Ibid.
29. Martin, “Q & A: The Financial Control Board.” 30. Straight Up Go-Go.
31. Chuck Brown, interview on Kato and the TMOTTGoGo Morning Show. 32. Lornell and Stephenson, The Beat, 11.
33. Chuck Brown, Go-Go Live at the Capital Centre. 34. Ibid.
35. The Music District.
36. “Kitch the Legend”; Montano and Garcia, “Carnival.” 37. Warner, Kaiso! The Trinidad Calypso, 70.
38. Meschino, “Soca Battles Pirates,” 25. 39. Ibid.
40. Lornell and Stephenson, The Beat, 43–44.
41. Go-Go Coalition, http://www.gogocoalition.org; Pierre and Williams, “Pulse of Go-Go,” A1.
42. Pressing, “Black Atlantic Rhythm,” 298. 43. Ibid., 285.
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