Music of Trinidad and Tobago: Soca, Calypso, Carnival, and Rapso

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Music of Trinidad Reflection Paper
Music has developed as a result of and despite colonial rule and oppression. In these circumstances, music has provided an avenue for people to release stress and communicate their grievances during unrest or political oppression. Trinidad is famous for its soca music, calypso music, carnival, and rapso. Although these music genres were widespread and famous in the mid-twentieth century, their impact is still felt. For example, Carnival and Soca derive from Black cultural production worldwide. They were inspired by circumstances, bound up in righteous subversiveness, imagination, and rebellion. In other words, both the carnival traditions and soca genre illuminates and promotes the Caribbean history of social movements and riots that communicated grievances against the state-imposed violence as well as the then-colonial administration. These attributes coincide with what is needed, especially when people think about the future where all African American lives matter. An understanding of the Caribbean carnival, as well as listening to soca, offers a means to digest the current pivotal moment of social reform and liberation for Black communities in the United States (U.S.) and the world over.
The power soca can be described as a high-energized sub-genre that inspired the 2020 marches and protests following the murders of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Breonna Tayler, George Floyd, and many others at the hands of police. The nostalgic sounds of soca reiterated that Trinidadian music constitutes a sound of imagination and rebellion. In the current unrest amid the Covid-19 associated economic turmoil, the qualities of the music of Trinidad can be leveraged to inspire how the current generations woul...