Everything that has happened in soca music since the 2000's has just been a series of rebranding and marketing exercises besides for the speeding up and total computerisation of the music (with the removal of live musicians playing real brass, steelpan and other instruments from the recording studio sessions to save on recording costs).
This has been my observation about soca music since the 2000’s; everything that could have been done with the music fusion wise, beat wise, etc has been done between the 70's and the 90's which is the point at which soca music was already 20 to 25 years old.
So since Soca started in the early to mid 70’s we have seen great musicians like:Shorty (the Father of Soca) - fusing Calypso music with East Indian rhythms (later to be rebranded as Chutney-Soca), funk and soul in the early 70’s (1971 to 1974) and changing the rhythmic and bassline structure of the music as a result.
Ed Watson (who worked closely with Shorty in the early 70's) - fusing the then young soca music with cadence, rumba, mambo, meringue & highlife in the late 70’s to early 80’s.
Shadow – doing his own disctinctive calypso style with his heavy haunting basslines from 1974 onwards that was eventually fused with the popular soca style introduced by Shorty.
Wellington – doing his own new calypso style with his funky basslines for a period from 1974 to 1977 that was eventually fused with the popular soca style introduced by Shorty.
NB: Apparently Wellington is still a bit bitter about this because he was racing against Shorty to introduce a new more modern style of calypso in the early 70's and Shorty's Soca style hit the jackpot and won out in the popularity race.
Maestro & Pelham Goddard - speeding up soca music and fusing it with blues and soul and tackling some urgent issues before he tragically died in August 1977.
Kalyan - fusing the then young soca music with American funk, disco and soul and successfully crossing over to the international North American market in the late 70’s.
NB: The general sound of Kalyan's music was leaning so much towards the North American market that it was eventually branded more as North American than Caribbean music. Kalyan also influenced and was influenced by big American funk/soul bands like Brass Construction and Kool & The Gang.
Shorty - fusing gospel and reggae influences with soca to develop
Jamoo Soca in late 70’s onwards.
Lord Laro, Andre Tanker, Becket and others also start to occasionally or regularly fuse elements of reggae with calypso and soca from the late 70’s onwards.
Rapso also becomes properly established in Trinidad in the late 70’s courtesy of
Bro. Resistance and his Network Riddim Band Rapso Movement who were mainly inspired by Afro-centric artist
Lancelot Layne and the Black Power Movement of the early 70’s. Rapso music usually contains Soca with strong elements of African drumming, Steelpan and Orisha influences.
Crazy did the first
Parang Soca fusion song in December 1978 that started the annual Christmas parang soca craze of fusing traditional Trini parang music with soca.
The first
Jab-Jab soca, "Look De Devil Dey", was recorded by late calypsonian
Penguin in late 1979 and was a major hit and Road March contender for T&T carnival in early 1980.
Penguin was beaten to the 1980 Road March title by
Blue Boy with one of the first
Soca and Baptist chanting musical fusions aptly entitled "Soca Baptist".
NB: Both Penguin's and Blue Boy's popular 1980 road songs were arranged by
Pelham Goddard.
In 1980 we also saw
Lord Nelson do a fresh new trend setting fusion of soca with disco music in his big hit called "Disco Daddy" with
Clive Bradley as arranger.
In the 80’s we saw Soca spreading from T&T to most of the other Caribbean islands and worldwide starting with the international hit “Sugar Bum Bum” by
Kitchener in 1978 followed by “Lorraine” from
Explainer in 1982 and then “Hot Hot Hot” and “Long Time” by
Arrow in 1983 and 1984 respectively.
Chutney Soca also got coined by
Drupatee (1987) and became a very popular sub genre of soca during the 80’s in Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname (all Caribbean countries with large East Indian populations).
Also in the 80’s with the popular rise of zouk, we saw artists like
Prince Unique from T&T and others from St Lucia, Dominica, Antigua and other islands regularly fusing
zouk with soca.
Soca started to be very strongly influenced by the popularity of Jamaican dancehall in late 80’s early 90’s leading to the birth of
Ragga Soca, a term coined by producer & arranger
Kenny Philips during the 1993 T&T Carnival season.
Computerisation of soca beats also started happening during the 80's amongst certain producers & arrangers like
Leston Paul and
Frankie McIntosh but it was
Burning Flames and
Seventeen Plus from the Northern Caribbean Small Islands who were two of the first soca bands and producers to computerise all their instruments in their soca music minus the singer's voice.
Computerisation of soca beats and the hectic speeding up of soca music led to
jam & wine, jump & wave, ringbang, Bouyon soca, Jab-Jab soca and other uptempo styles being firmly established as soca sub-genres by the 90’s.
Pop, rock, r&b, Latino, African and other international music styles were also regularly added to soca music during the 80's and 90’s by artists like
Burning Flames, Machel Montano & Xtatik, David Rudder and others eventually leading to what we are currently branding today as
Island Pop, Island Fusion, Socaton, Afrobeat-Soca and other
Pop/Dance/R&B Soca styles.
Late 90's (1999 to be exact) the first
Soca Riddim album is launched by
Chinese Laundry "Pigtail Riddim" that has since led to the current Soca Riddims craze that has been dominating soca music in recent years leading to much less creativity in soca music than was the case before the 2000's.
So there is a very strong argument that the popularity and reliance on Soca Riddims today has damaged the previous creativity within the soca music genre that we regularly saw between the 70's and the 90's.
So basically since the 90’s nothing new has really happened in soca music other than various rebranding and marketing exercises with labels like
Groovy Soca, Power Soca, Bashment Soca, Island Pop, Socaton, etc which are all just labels given to the music for stuff that was happening many many years before in the music before we came up with the labels.
So there you have it. I officially submit the very strong argument that everything else that has happened in soca music since the 2000’s is nothing new and all we have been doing since then is carrying out clever rebranding and marketing exercises with all the recent soca labelling and re-labelling.
I challenge anyone who believes otherwise and is not on BS to prove me wrong regards my observation.
If you are a proper soca music fan from the 70's till now or do proper research then I believe you will have little choice but to agree with my observation.
Who agrees or disagrees with me, please speak up now in this thread or forever hold your piece!
