Exploring Soca Music

Soka music is a modern form of calypso with an uptempo beat. It fuses calypso with Indian rhythms and is often confused with reggae. Soka was created by Lord Shorty in Trinidad and Tobago. Popular Soka songs include "Sugar Bum Bum" and "Hot Hot Hot." Soka music is celebrated during the yearly carnival and is known for its celebratory and fun nature. However, the deeper meaning of Soka music is often neglected when it is popularized in the West. Despite this, Soka music has the power to unite and bring people together in celebration. Hello and welcome to On Beat, a podcast debunking all kinds of music genres from all different perspectives and angles. I'm your host Roxanne. I'm Janine. And welcome to Monday, March 25th, 2024's episode on Soka Music. We all may have heard songs like Who Let The Dogs Out and Follow The Leader. However, are we aware of their origins? These songs are of a genre called Soka music, which is a modern form of calypso with an uptempo beat. This genre is often confused with reggae. However, they are not the same thing. Soka fuses calypso with Indian rhythms, which are the musical traditions of Trinidad and Tobago where it emerged from. Soka was created in Laguna, Trinidad by Garfield Blackmon, who is better known by a stage name Lord Shorty. The name Soka stems from the soul of calypso and its Indian influences due to Trinidad's two main ethnic groups. Blackmon is better known for his stage name, Lord Shorty, and he released the song Cloak and Dagger in 1963. Lord Shorty's music conveyed controversial and sociopolitical issues. However, he became disenchanted with the music he had created due to how he was dissatisfied with the sexualization of women within the genre. Some popular Soka songs include Sugar Bum Bum by Lord Kitchener, Soka Baptist by Super Blue, and Hot Hot Hot by Arrow. Today, it is regarded as a popular indigenous Caribbean music form, which combines its African and East Indian rhythms with reggae, Latin, and cadence to name a few genres. Soka music is particularly celebrated during the yearly carnival. Yes, carnival music is when the Soka artists bring out their efforts for that year. So each year, starting around Christmas time in the panyard, where the song is introduced, different songs are introduced, sometimes a little bit in the fall. The lead up from that time until Carnival Tuesday, when all the music is put on, artists can win a title of Soka Monarch, where their music is like the most popular that the crowd loves. The Sunday before, there is a contest to see who will be awarded the King and the Queen of Soka for that year. This music is then brought to all parts of the world, whether it be Miami, Montreal's Kara Fiesta Parade, Toronto's Carabana, Vancouver has one, Edmonton has a carnival as well. New York is famous for its carnival, and Nottingham in London is also the carnival. So let's say Trinidad expats have gone throughout the world and brought their culture with them to these different parts, and that shows that people in these new settings enjoy participating in this cultural event. It's very much a genre that indicates celebration, despite its origins being very, I guess, particular to where it comes from. It's something that worldwide everyone could recognize for those qualities. Yes, for sure. Everybody enjoys themselves. There's an expression in Trinidad where they say, I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover. In other words, they love to have fun. Instead of picking a fight with somebody, it's more or less Trinidadians will try to use humor to kind of have the situation calm down, you know. The lyrics, you will hear the humor, like they will be making, maybe making fun of a certain situation, talking about how much fun they can have in whatever we're doing. Okay, you've gone through this, you've gone through that, but yes, we can surmount that and have a good time, you know. In a way, it comes from slaves mocking their slave masters to some degree. What they would say would have a double entendre, so that the slave masters, when they hear it, they don't think anything of it. Also plays in with the costumes of carnival. The costumes came from imitating, bolding up their slave masters. That's how it began, but now it's much more colorful. There's always a theme to it and it's bright. For Trinidad, we'll say that they don't know how the island doesn't sink at carnival time for all the people that come into the island. So, it's sort of religious overtones. It's always the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. So, what you would say is that people would go and party until, until midnight and then go get their ashes from the priest and that's it. While the pie was nice, the party was bumpin' Hurry up! And everybody havin' a ball Hurry up! I tell the fellas startin' in callin' Hurry up! And the girls just walk to the door Who let the dogs out? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who let the dogs out? Who? Who? Who? Who? Hurry up! The way our culture interacts with soca music often neglects its deeper meaning. Take, for example, the song, Who Let the Dogs Out, which was written by Trinidadian artist Anson Douglas, mainly about men who catcall women. This song was made famous when it was re-recorded by Baja Men and was popularized in the West after having appeared in the Rugrats movie. Once this song got infiltrated in the West, its deeper meaning was neglected and it mainly became appropriated by sporting events. It also ranked third in Rolling Stone's Most Annoying Songs of All Time list. Yeah, speaking about that song in particular, the original title of it was just called Doggy. And yes, he wanted to bring up a point that maybe you should consider how you behave around women. They are not just objects, they are beings just like you. And that way of empowering women, that theme of empowering women, is also brought up by other female artists such as Alison Hines, who's considered to be the queen of soca music. Yes, you can go out and have fun, but also be aware that you have a value. So these kind of themes, even though just because it has an infectious beat, a beat that you can't resist, it has a little meaning behind it. It's never just simple. So that was missed out in the newer version of the Rugrats, where it totally takes out other lyrics that Anselm had put into the original song. Yeah, I feel like this is the case with a lot of music genres that are very culturally defined. Once they infiltrate themselves into the West, they kind of become diluted and almost like novelty. Yeah, especially you're not really sitting down to study it. You might miss all of that. At the same time, I feel like culture doesn't always have to be complex. For example, a song like Who Let The Dogs Out actually has a deeper feminist meaning that no one really seems to know, based on how the song is infiltrated in the world as we know it. But at the same time, I feel like not everything has to have a super sociopolitical meaning to appreciate it. When we look at intersectionality in culture, we often attach a certain narrative to it, that it's deep, and it's complex, and it reveals, almost emphasizing it's a product of a struggle narrative. And I feel like it doesn't have to be. No, yeah, that's it. Some songs, I guess it's just fun. Do you think people listen more and actually take it to heart more because it's something that's easily digestible? I think both ways. Some people will take it, hear it, and say, oh, I didn't think about that. You get them to actually reflect on what the message the artist is saying. And other people, to music, it's just fun to listen to and that's it. Yeah. Maybe later on in life they might choose to do something, think about what is going on. But I think there's, it depends on maybe the personality of the person. Yeah, that's true. If something is really important to people, more than one artist will say something about it. Yeah, will bring it up and bring it to life. We kind of want to have fun music to distract ourselves from the realities of life and serve as a distraction. How no matter what is said in the song, no matter what the context of the lyrics are, the immediacy of the music and how it hits us when we listen to it is something very fun and very celebratory. And it's kind of almost like a distraction that unites rather than polarizes and isolates people within their kind of melancholy and their woes. Yes, I agree. I agree. Like even with during the first COVID appearance, you know, it's like Carnival was cancelled for the first time in Trinidad, you know, I don't know how many years, maybe a hundred years or something like that. And what did the artists do? They talked about, oh, you know, well, I can't go out in the streets and celebrate, so I'll celebrate in my backyard, you know. Okay, we'll get a pot and pan like the students did during Maple Spring and I'll bang on the pot. Yeah. And I'll have fun in my own little space, you know. And, you know, it's like, okay, we'll do that and we'll do that maybe for another year. But after that, you know, it's like, no, no, now we want to get out. Yeah. Like everybody got itchy. But, you know, like we can have fun even though it's a somber atmosphere. We can have a little fun, you know. Yeah. It'll help us to live through the event that we're that we have going on at the moment. Exactly. How people were playing in their backyards on pots and pans when there was no carnival. Right. And that's just what I feel like the genre of music just has this, like, transportative quality where you very much, like, immerse yourself in it. Yeah, I know. I do. I don't know if anybody else does, you know. And that's something so, I think, so powerful about music as a whole, how it could just have these just elements where regardless of the origin of where it comes from, it has the power to unite and the power to really be such a vessel for celebration and such a vessel for good times and such a vessel for dancing and such a vessel for unity. And just, yeah, like it unites and it's just a great time. And I feel like that's something that's essentially the gist of Soka music and why we enjoy it. Even when it gets kind of, I guess, extracted from its original context, still it has this narrative where it's always associated to unity and parties and a physical what's extracted. Maybe the full message might not be what is taken with it to its other form, but it's always being together. It's always having fun, you know. We, I guess, I think we can, probably we're better at solving things when we're at play than we are at always being serious, you know. I think the mind gets tired. Yeah, a hundred percent. I agree. I feel like the, I feel like having fun is essential to navigate everything else and should be at the core of it. Yeah, I should remember that message as well. Just have fun. Don't, just think of the feeling you get when you listen to Soka and apply that throughout life. Remember to have fun. I don't always do that. Exactly. And it's really, it's really sweet how we have a music genre that reminds us of that. Yes. Perfect. This concludes this week's episode of On Beat, a podcast debunking music genres. If you like this podcast, be sure to hit the follow button and follow us on all socials at OnBeatPod. Join us next week as we will be debunking music and jazz.