Kaiso The Trinidad Calypso

A study of Calypso music from its early days to the latest victory songs of carnival. Discography, photos of leading Calypsonians, & up-dated bibliography. From original 1982 edition.

Roy Cape is a Trinidadian saxophonist active as a band musician for more than fifty years and as a bandleader for more than thirty. He is known throughout the islands and the Caribbean diasporas in North America and Europe. Part ethnography, part biography, and part Caribbean music history, Roy Cape is about the making of reputation and circulation, and about the meaning of labor and work ethics. An experiment in storytelling, it joins Roy's voice with that of ethnomusicologist Jocelyne Guilbault. The idea for the book emerged from an exchange they had while discussing Roy's journey as a performer and bandleader. In conversation, they began experimenting with voice, with who takes the lead, who says what, when, to whom, and why. Their book reflects that dynamic, combining first-person narrative, dialogue, and the polyphony of Roy's bandmates' voices. Listening to recordings and looking at old photographs elicited more recollections, which allowed Roy to expand on recurring themes and motifs. This congenial, candid book offers different ways of knowing Roy's labor of love—his sound and work through sound, his reputation and circulation as a renowned musician and bandleader in the world.

Between 1945 and 1965 rhythm and blues artists made dozens of recordings incorporating West Indian calypso. This book draws musical and cultural connections that make the case for recognizing the significance of West Indian calypso in the history of African American popular music.

Using the historical principles of the Oxford English Dictionary, Lise Winer presents the first scholarly dictionary of this unique language. The dictionary comprises over 12,200 entries, including over 4500 for flora and fauna alone, with numerous cross-references. Entries include definitions, alternative spellings, pronunciations, etymologies, grammatical information, and illustrative citations of usage. Winer draws from a wide range of sources - newspapers, literature, scientific reports, sound recordings of songs and interviews, spoken language - to provide a wealth and depth of language, clearly situated within a historical, cultural, and social context.