By Patricia Meschino
Calypso is often cited as the first genre to sell over a million copies: Harry Belafonte’s “Calypso” album released on RCA Records in 1956 holds the distinction as the Recording Industry of America’s (RIAA) first certified platinum release. But the New York born, Jamaica raised Belafonte wasn’t an authentic calypsonian. a controversial issue addressed by Belafonte and others in the brilliant 2004 documentary “Calypso Dreams”. Belafonte’s “Calypso” was released more than 40 years after the very first calypso records were made-in New York City-but calypso’s lineage goes back much further, as the organically developed original soundtrack for the world’s ultimate street party, carnival in the southern Caribbean island of Trinidad.
The result of some 300 years of cultural interactions between African, Spanish, French and English traditions, Trinidad carnival’s celebrations are rooted in the elaborate masquerade balls staged prior to the Catholic Lenten season by wealthy French landowners and their slaves. Under the slave master’s restrictive eye, the Africans were permitted their own celebrations, referred to as jammette (in Trini vernacular jammette means outside the circle of respectability) carnival, which featured chanting, drumming, dancing and masquerading as African folkloric characters or as mockeries of their colonial subjugators.
Following the 1838 Abolition of Slavery, the rituals of the freed slaves permanently altered the identity of the staid French celebrations. The call and response vocals of the chantuelle (French Creole for singer) led bands of masqueraders in stick fighting and cane burning rites. String instruments were added to the satirical and oftentimes risqué French Creole jammette songs, which became known as calypso. By the early 1900s, English language lyrics had been incorporated into calypso, which was now performed in makeshift structures called tents, which, to this day remain annual carnival attractions.
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