Chutney already part of soca
By Debbie Jacobs (Trinidad Guardian)
So far, I have stayed out of the petty, stupid discussions about making the name of the national awards an ethnic or racial issue, but I put my foot down when people throw out inane ideas like changing the name of our football team from The Soca Warriors to the Soca Chutney Warriors.
The very idea of that name change is offensive to me as an ancient world history teacher and calypso fan because it shows how ignorant many people are about T&T history and music.
All Trinidadians and Tobagonians have to do is listen to Ras Shorty I’s music when he was The Lord Shorty and they would know that his vision of soca was a mixture of American soul, calypso and East Indian rhythms. The late Ras Shorty I made no bones about his musical vision of bringing all Trinidadians together under one type of music. He talked about his purpose-driven ideal of merging East Indian and African music together in several interviews throughout his entire life.
Don’t people listen to Shorty’s early soca songs: Om Shanti Om or Endless Vibration? Or is it that people are so petty and stupid they’re trying to divert positive attention away from our accomplishment of making the World Cup and concentrate instead on how to divide us as a people once again?
I had already sent this week’s column when I opened up the Express and saw music promoter Randy Glasgow jump on this inane bandwagon of changing the national football team’s name. I scrapped my original column to submit this one because I was so upset.
Now don’t get me wrong. I like Randy. He’s a decent fellow trying to do something with our music. But Randy, you’re supposed to know more about soca music and not say things like “I wanted to make an appeal to (T&T Football Federation’s special adviser) Jack Warner because chutney is T&T’s invention and I feel once it is given the recognition on the world stage…”
I don’t know what happened to the rest of that thought. It was cut off with a set of ellipses. Anyway, Randy goes on to say, “it will further help unify our country and bring all races together. People say it’s a divided society. It would send a good signal that we living together and we can work together. I think the soca fraternity will welcome such as initiative.”
No, Randy. A name change will not make us less divisive. It will make us a country of idiots who don’t know squat about our culture. It will send a signal that we are NOT willing to stand as a unified front for the sake of the football players and we are not capable of standing up against all the trouble that faces us today.
Most of the problems we have in this society stem from our inability to understand ourselves, let along each other. We don’t know what it means to be a Trinidadian. We want to sieve the callaloo now and reconstruct the ochroes and callaloo bush.
What further upsets me is that I’m not hearing any discussion on the radio setting the record straight about the history of soca music. Someone—and it’s probably not those clueless deejays on the radio—must educate people about their musical history before someone makes an embarrassing mistake that we have to live with forever.
I don’t know about you but as a history teacher I don’t want to go down in history for supporting the decision of changing the national football team’s name because it’s just a matter of semantics. It will bring no real benefit to anyone and you know if we don’t reach where we hope to go in this football World Cup some fool will probably blame it on the addition of Chutney to the Soca Warriors name.
No, we have to be brighter than that and we have to depend on the media, historians, calypso connoisseurs and right-thinking people to educate us about soca music—which is not just the jump and wine party songs, recycled pop melodies, or hip hop and reggae wannabe rhythms that define our airwaves today.
Yes, there are individuals making a contribution to soca music today, but overall we have strayed far from the original melodic soca songs with scintillating rhythms and lyrics “to make a politician cringe and turn a woman’s body to jelly” if I may borrow a line from David Rudder’s Calypso Music.
If you want to know and feel what original soca music felt like and you can’t get your hands on Shorty or get one of these radio deejays to be able to spell his name so they could look up Shorty’s music in the archives, then you could close your eyes and listen to Shurwayne Winchester’s new soca chutney song on his album. Don’t ask me what it’s called because I’ve heard it about 100 times and I haven’t heard a deejay announce the name yet.
When you think about it, changing the name of the football team to Soca-Chutney Warriors is actually an insult to the Indian community. It’s saying Trinidadians of East Indian descent were NOT part of a defining moment in our musical history. It’s wiping out a whole ethnic group’s contribution to soca.
With all due respect, Mr Warner, if you dare to entertain the thought of changing the name of our national football team to the Soca-Chutney Warriors I will totally freak out.
In the meantime, I’m calling you, Shurwayne, to ask if you could please find Rose for me. Get the Winchester ready, Rose and Shurwayne. We’re heading down the street with More Tempo for the Soca Warriors.