These singular achievements mask the continuing broader struggle for soca to break out into the wider public consciousness beyond Carnival, or in these cases, music for summer.

Soca had to be remixed or covered for success Brooklyn, New York became a hub for soca’s global spread in the 1980s, with Caribbean entrepreneurs - Rawlston ‘Charlie’ Charles, Granville Straker, Michael Gould (B’s Records) - doing major business. Despite the initial doubts of longevity and popularity beyond a passing fad, calypso icons soon jumped on board the soca train: Calypso Rose “Give More Tempo” (1977), Lord Kitchener “Sugar Bum Bum” (1978), Mighty Sparrow “Soca Disco” (1981). The vibe and energy it provides are addictive and attractive. Soca would become an all-encompassing catchphrase to define music that drove Carnival revellers to frenzied joy. Effectively born from a need to update calypso, and hopefully cross over to a wider audience outside the earnest Caribbean diaspora in North America, soca music was beginning to sonically define the Carnival experience from the 1970s to the present. A musical evolution in real time in a socially re-awakened Trinidad as 1970 island turbulence begat cultural pride and inward inspiration for creativity. That first song that starts a genre is usually identified, in hindsight, by music experts who describe characteristics and instrumentation: propulsive bass over constant percussive groove with the high-hat mirroring the kick drum, and snare drum syncopating alternately in a tresillo rhythm. The names of artists, and the various studio musicians at the important KH Studios in Port of Spain, Trinidad creating that new music in the early 1970s are in the mix for future generations to ascribe fame or infamy: calypsonians Maestro, Shadow, and King Wellington, music arrangers Ed Watson, Pelham Goddard, Art De Coteau and Robin Imamshah. Origin stories, however, can be challenged. “The Origin of Soca” (from the creator himself) interview with Ras Shorty I, 1995 However, it is sometimes easy to attach one man’s name to the creation and development of new music genres in the Americas - James Brown for funk, DJ Kool Herc for hip hop, Brazil’s bossa nova got two names, Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto! For soca, a credible case can be made for innovative calypsonian Lord Shorty’s name to be attached to this genre’s genesis, and the song that started it all, his 1973 tune “Indrani”. New World music - calypso, jazz, rock ’n’ roll, reggae, hip hop, and dancehall - arises from a community of musicians, singers, and interestingly, the media that reports and encourages its development and growth. Lucian Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, describes as the region’s encouragement of “the delights of mindlessness, of brilliant vacuity.” How this music came to define the Caribbean Carnival experience for many, in Trinidad and Tobago and elsewhere, is an exercise of sifting through myth and apocryphal stories, deciphering competitive agendas and egos, and defining a unique space within a global music industry beyond what St. Fifty years on, Carnival in the Caribbean and in the diaspora has a main soundtrack: soca music. In 1973, fifty years ago, there was an evolution of the calypso, and a redefinition of the sound and the business of Carnival music.

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