Soca (BdC 8/36)

Soca is a “descendant” of calypso. The term was coined in the 1970s, and the genre is attributed to Garfield Blackman, whose calypso sobriquet at the time was Shorty, later evolving to Ras Shorty I, when he became a spiritual man. Ras Shorty combined the calypso with American soul beats and the rhythms of the indigenous chutney music to produce a more contemporary art form that was still used for socio-political commentary, but became the center of the carnival party scene.

A quintessential early soca melody (in my opinion) is Lord Nelson (Robert Nelson)’s Disco Daddy is a good example of how those beats were fused  (here’s a live version of him singing that song). When I hear it I think of James Brown and Issac Hayes in the intro, but then, when you hear the chutney in the melody, it becomes truly Trinbagonian.

Austin “Superblue” Lyons, eight-time Carnival Road March, & five-time Trinidad Soca Monarch (International Soca Monarch) winner.

Fay-Ann Lyons, three-time Road March winner, winner of both International Soca Monarch and Groovy Soca Monarch, daughter of Superblue and calypsonian, Lynette “Lady Gypsy Steele, niece of Winston “Gypsy” Peters .

Grenadian artiste, Tallpree

2009 Soca Monarch and Road March title holders, JW and Blaze