The mid-1970s was a period of cultural reaction to the strong calls for change heard throughout the Western world in the late 1960s. Bob Marley and the Wailers would answer the call from Jamaica, putting reggae on the world stage. In Trinidad and Tobago, calypso, our national music, would experience a prolific rise in innovation and revolution.
In 1974, Shadow overthrew all the competition with the compelling bass line of “Bassman”. While the Maestro picked up the pace with “Tempo” (1975), Valentino, in “This Place Nice” (1975), would return to a slower, more mournful juvenile mode to reflect on a society losing its soul .
The search for “soul”, sweetness in rhythm and a unity in the nation, which sometimes avoided politics, would however be the revolutionary contribution of Lord Shorty/Ras Shorty I. His “Infinite Vibrations” (1974) effectively launched the music which he called “Sokah” and we all know and love him as Soca.
This creation was not a musical occasion, but a studied response to the challenge of giving new life to calypso for a new generation, and to do so, not by attaching calypso to any familiar foreign music, but by creating something new from the musical rhythms of Trinidad. .
In an interview with GBTV in 1995, Ras Shorty put the birth of Soca on record:
“The purpose of Soca in the 70s – actually, it was sometime around 1969-1970 – the purpose was to bring East Indians and Africans together in Trinidad. So there was a combination of the two main rhythmic structures in Trinidad to create a sound that would be thoroughly Trinidadian. Let’s call it a ‘Dougla beat,’ so to speak.”
He went on to dismiss the idea that Soca was a mixture of American soul music and calypso:
“It’s not soul like ‘American soul,’ but the soul of Trinidad, the soul of calypso, the inner man, the depth, the beauty of Trinidad that has come out in the music, not American soul and calypso. This is a total misunderstanding, wrong definition and all.”
From that desire to unite the country through his music came the controversial “Indrani” by Ras Shorty I.
“It all started with ‘Indrani’ in 1971. What happened in 1971 when I did ‘Indrani’—I recorded it in 1972 for 1973—I tried to combine East Indian rhythm and African rhythm together. I didn’t have a name, but I knew I had something. The year after that I made my first album called The Love Man and I did all the songs on the album, ten songs on the album, with dholak and everyone started judging me. “Oh, I’m trying to play Indian, I’m trying to mix Indian music with calypso and it can’t work and dadadadada…” So the album failed… in sales.”
The following year, 1974, he returned to the studio again and released the hit album, Endless Vibrations.
“I took the rhythmic structure from the dholak and put it in the drum set, so no one could tell I was doing Indian music. So I just take the accent and put it on the drum set, and then I take a name and say Sokah. The ‘ka-h’ represents the East Indian influence.
The spelling change from Sokah to Soca is attributed to journalist Ivor Ferreira who published a story using the latter spelling. Ras Shorty I had no problem with this. “For me, it was a matter of rhythmic structure and not just a spelling, as long as it conveyed Soca, the soul of calypso – not soul and calypso.”
Soon Soca achieved one of its creator’s goals by bringing the younger generation back to their music, although the direction it took with its “jump and wave” lyrics was not what he expected. However, Soca’s father stayed the course and continued to experiment with music.
In 2000, at the age of 59, Ras Shorty I passed away, leaving us the gift of Soca’s endless vibrations.
