Music of Barbados
Many distinctive Barbadian musical and other cultural traditions derive from parodies of Anglican church hymns and British military drills.
[5] Modern Barbadian tea meetings, tuk bands, the Landship tradition and many folk songs come from slaves parodying the practices of white authorities.
Brazilian exiles however, along with sugarcane introduced Samba to the island which featured a mixture of Latin music with African influences which soon developed into Soca-Samba which is indigenous to Barbados.
[3] By the 19th century, the Barbadian colonialists grew to fear slave revolts, and specifically, the use of music as a tool of communication and planning for revolution.
Barbados became home to many performers of these new genres, especially soca and calypso, while the island also produced an indigenous style called spouge, which became an important symbol of Barbadian identity.
By the end of the 17th century, a distinctly Barbadian folk culture developed, based around influences and instruments from Africa, Britain and other Caribbean islands.
The earliest crop over festivals featured dancing and call-and-response singing accompanied by shak-shak, banjo, bones and bottles containing varying amounts of water.
[6][7] Contemporary Barbadian folk songs, especially through the pioneering albums of author and singer-songwriter Anthony Kellman, show a bold fusion of indigenous rhythms such as tuk and calypso with African, Latin, jazz, pop, and East Indian influences.
More than any of his contemporaries, Kellman, through his songs, poems and novels, demonstrates what it means to be Barbadian through a hybrid mix of African and European cultural elements.
This was a popular fertility dance performed outdoors at plantation fairs and other festivals, and was functional in that it allowed women to show off to men and, more rarely, vice versa.
Folk musicians also use gongs made from tree trunks, bones, rook jaw, triangle, cymbals, bottles filled with water, and xylophones.
More recently imported folk percussion instruments include the conga and bongo from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Cuba, and the tambourine.
[3] Tuk bands are Barbadian musical ensembles, consisting of a bow-fiddle or pennywhistle flute, kittle triangle and a snare and double-headed bass drum.
On their own, tuk bands are generally accompanied by a range of iconic Barbadian characters, including "shaggy bears", "mother sally", "the steel donkey" and "green monkeys".
[12][13] Tea meetings are celebrations held in society lodges or school halls, and feature both solo and group performance, theatrical rhetoric and oratory, and other activities.
They are held at nighttime, beginning at 9:00 pm and continuing until midnight, when there is a two-hour break for food and drink before the tea meeting is resumed.
Spouge is a mixture of calypso and other styles, especially ska, and became very popular in the 1960s, around the same time as the Barbadian jazz scene grew in stature and became home to a number of famous performers.
Modern Barbadian popular music is largely based around reggae, ragga and soca, and includes some elements of indigenous styles.
The new wave of singers, largely soca, include Rupee, Lil' Rick and Jabae with lead vocalist Bruce and Barry Chandler, all recent winners at crop over.
[3] The mid-20th century brought new forms of music from Trinidad, Brazil, the United States, Cuba and the Dominican Republic to Barbados, and the Barbadian calypso style came to be viewed as lowbrow or inferior.
As a result, calypso has become a very visible and iconic part of Barbadian culture, and some calypsonians have become internationally renowned, including Mighty Gabby and Red Plastic Bag.
It is primarily a fusion of Jamaican ska with Trinidadian calypso, but is also influenced by a wide variety of musics from the British Isles and United States, include sea shanties, hymns and spirituals.
The spouge industry grew immensely by the end of the 1970s, and produced popular stars including The Escorts International, Blue Rhythm Combo, the Draytons Two and The Troubadours.
The music for the album was composed by mixing and mastering engineer Jeffrey Y. Grosvenor at his studio "Edge Cliff", in Gatineau, Quebec who added his own creativity by infusing African rhythms and Latin patterns.
[17] As political awareness among the black majority on the island spread, so did bebop, a kind of jazz which was associated, in the United States, with social activism and Afrocentrism.
A wave of Guyanese musicians also appeared on the island, including Colin Dyall, a saxophonist who later joined the Police Band, and the Ebe Gilkes Quartet.
More jazz calypso fusion musicians appeared on the scene during this period, including Arturo Tappin, Nicholas Brancker, Andre Woodvine and Raf Robertson.
[22] The main music festival in Barbados is Crop Over, which is celebrated with song, dance, calypso tent competitions and parades, especially leading up to the first Monday in August, Kadooment Day.
The annual December Classical/Pops Festival comprises an all-star orchestra accompanied by pop and rock stars, Broadway performers, opera singers, and film composers as featured guests.
[20] The Barbados Music Awards is an annual event that started in 2006, honoring both local and international artists voted by both the public and a 50-strong committee.
