Music of Dominica
Popular music is widespread, with a number of native Dominican performers gaining national fame in imported genres such as calypso, reggae, soca, kompa, zouk and rock and roll.
Groups include WCK (Windward Caribbean Kulture), Native musicians in various forms, such as reggae (Nasio Fontaine, Lazo, Brother Matthew Luke), kadans (Ophelia Marie, (Exile One, Grammacks) and calypso (The Wizzard), have also become stars at home and abroad.
There is also "Cadence-lypso", the Dominica kadans, which has set the stage for some of the region's most significant musical developments such as zouk and bouyon (another Dominican creation).
The quadrille is an important symbol of French Antillean culture, and is, on Dominica, typically accompanied by a kind of ensemble called a jing ping band.
Until the late 1950s, the Afro-Dominican culture of most of the island was repressed by the colonial government and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, both of which taught that African-derived music was evil, demonic and uncultured.
[1] This perception changed in the mid- to late 20th century, when Afro-Dominican culture came to be celebrated through the work of promoters like Cissie Caudeiron.
The villages of Wesley and Marigot are also unique in their preservation of English language and music rather than the more French-based styles of the rest of the island.
[2] Characteristics of Dominican music include the West African use of call and response singing, clapping as a major part of rhythm and lyrical, dance and rhythmic improvisation.
[2] Bélé are folk songs of West African origin, traditionally performed recreationally in the evening during the full moon, and more rarely, lavèyé (wakes).
[2] The quadrille is a dance form that is an important symbol of French Antillean culture, not just in Dominica, but also Martinique, Guadeloupe and other Francophone islands.
Jing ping bands are made up of a boumboum (boom pipe), syak or gwaj (scraper-rattle), tambal or tanbou (tambourine) and accordion.
[6] The chanté mas (masquerade song) tradition is based around pre-calypso Carnival music performed in a responsorial style by partygoers.
The Dominican Carnival masquerade lasted for two days of parading through the streets, with a singer dancing backwards in front of the drummer on a tanbou lélé.
Dominican work songs are accompanied by the tambou twavay drum, and are performed by workers while gathering fruit, building roads, fishing, moving a house or sawing wood.
[8] Dominican popular music history can be traced back to the 1940s and '50s, when dance bands like the Casimir Brothers and, later, The Swinging Stars, became famous across the island.
Early recording stars from this era included Swinging Busters, The Gaylords, De Boys an Dem and Los Caballeros, while chorale groups also gained fans, especially Lajenne Etwal, Siflé Montan'y and the Dominica Folk singers.
The Gaylords’ hits, such as "Ti Mako", "Pray for the Blackman", "Lovely Dominica" and "Douvan Jo", were either English or the native Creole, (kwéyòl).
Gordon Henderson's Exile One innovated this style, as well as turned the mini-jazz combos into guitar-dominated big bands with a full-horn section and the newly arrived synthesizers, paving the way for the success of large groups like Grammacks, Experience 7, among others.
Drawing on these influences, the supergroup Kassav' invented zouk and popularized it with hit songs including "Zouk-La-Se Sel Medikaman Nou Ni".
The most influential figure in the promotion of Cadence-lypso was the Dominican group Exile One (based on the island of Guadeloupe) that featured mostly the cadence rampa of Haiti and calypso music from the English-speaking Caribbean.
By the end of the 1970s, Gordon Henderson defined Cadence-lypso as "a synthesis of Caribbean and African musical patterns fusing the traditional with the contemporary".
Gordon Henderson, Exile One's leader and founder, coined the name "Cadence-lypso" in his full band that used a full-horn section and was the first to use the synthesizers in kadans.
The first to export kadans music to the four corners of the globe: Japan, the Indian Ocean, Africa, North America, Europe, The Cape Verde islands.
Music authors Charles De Ledesma and Gene Scaramuzzo trace zouk's development to the Guadeloupean gwo ka and Martinican bèlè (tambour and ti bwa)[13] folk traditions.
Ethnomusicologist Jocelyn Guilbault, however, describes zouk as a synthesis of Caribbean popular styles, especially Dominica cadence-lypso, Haitian cadence, Guadeloupean biguine.
The music kizomba from Angola and cabo-love from Cape Verde are also derivatives of this French Antillean compas style, which sounds basically the same, although there are notable differences once you become more familiar with these genres.
Grammacks, Exile One, Ophelia Marie, and many Dominican bands played cadence-lypso (Dominica Kadans) that later influenced zouk love in the French Antilles.
They began using native drum rhythms such as lapo kabwit and elements of the music of jing ping bands, as well as ragga-style vocals.
The best-known band in the genre was Windward Caribbean Kulture "WCK"[citation needed] in 1988 by experimenting a fusion of Jing Ping and Cadence-lypso.
[2] Modern Carnival on Dominica takes place on the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, and is a festive occasion during which laws against libel and slander are suspended.
