Zahra Gordon

Asking the question why Buhwamoder gets more airtime than Kurt Allen in Trinidad is the same as asking why Lil’ Wayne gets more airtime than Talib Kweli in the US. To me, it seems as though something is unbalanced in both cases but my taste might just be “different” Even though I wine, jump, and chip to the same soca “riddims” if at a party (where I am not in charge of the music selection), I have a “different” relationship to the music. I wouldn’t buy a Buhwamoder CD if there was one.

Its not so much that there is a problem with Buhwamoder (actually…there might be a few but that’ll be in the next blog), but a problem with his popularity and the perception of what qualifies as quality music. So the majority of people in Trinidad are making predictions and anticipating which artiste and “jump/wave/wine/bend over” song will win Soca Monarch and Road March but lack similar eagerness for the Calypso Monarch. That’s the problem: what about the music? 

What about harmony? Melody? Social commentary? Composition and story-telling? The content is not the problem. Its the lack of creativity and musicianship, the monotony. Imagine there’s a song out this year that uses only one word: “ting.” What are we as an audience supposed to gain from that? There was a time when more was demanded of Trinidadian music. There is a history behind soca, that came from calypso that came from something more potent that bending over and ting:  

It was an extension of the Yoruba genre of boast, defiance and religious melancholy. It was a musical art form that was born on the slavers and estates of the island. It became the battling song of the masqueraders during enslavement, when, given the nature of the Carnival and the conflicts that characterised relationships between Whites and Africans, the enslaved captives needed a medium to express themselves politically and to provide a sense of self-fulfillment. It continued through out the 19th and 20th centuries to embody the sounds of freedom and history in its culturally coded messages (Liverpool, 206)