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The
History of Music in Barbados |
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The music of Barbados includes
distinctive national styles of
folk and
popular music, as well
as elements of
Western classical
and
religious music. The
culture of Barbados
is a syncretic mix of African and
British elements, and the island's music reflects
this mix through song types and styles,
instrumentation, dances and aesthetic principles.
Bajan folk traditions include
the
Landship
movement, which is a satirical, informal
organization based on the British navy,
tea meetings,
tuk bands and numerous
traditional songs and dances. In modern Barbados,
popular styles include
calypso,
spouge and other
styles, many of them imported from Trinidad, the
United States or elsewhere. Barbados is, along with
Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and the Virgin Islands,
one of the few centers for Caribbean jazz.
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Bajan culture is
syncretic, and the
island's musical culture is perceived as a mixture
of African and British music, with certain unique
elements that may derive from indigenous sources.
Tension between African and British culture has long
been a major element of Barbadian history, and has
included the banning of certain African-derived
practices and black Barbadian parodies of British
traditions. Simple entertainment is the
basis for most Barbadians' participation in music
and dance activities, though religious and other
functional music also occur. Barbadian folk culture
declined in importance in the 20th century, but then
rekindled in the 1970s, when many Barbadians became
interested in their national culture and history.
The religious music of the
Barbadian Christian churches plays an important role
in Barbadian musical identity, especially in urban
areas. Many distinctive Barbadian musical and other
cultural traditions derive from parodies of Anglican
church hymns and British military drills. The
British military performed drills to both provide
security for the island's population, as well as
intimidate slaves. Modern Barbadian
tea meetings,
tuk bands, the
Landship
tradition and many folk songs come from
slaves parodying the practices of white authorities.
British-Barbadians used music for cultural and
intellectual enrichment and to feel a sense of
kinship and connection with the British Isles
through the maintenance of British musical forms.
Plantation houses featured music as entertainment at
balls, dances and other gatherings. For
Afro-Barbadians, drum, vocal and dance music was an
integral part of everyday life, and songs and
performance practices were created for normal,
everyday events, as well as special celebrations
like
Whitsuntide,
Christmas,
Easter,
Landship
and
Crop Over.
These songs remain a part of Barbadian culture and
form a rich folk repertoire.
Western classical music
is the most socially accepted form of
musical expression for Barbadians in
Bridgetown, including a
variety of vocal music,
chamber and
orchestral
music, and
piano and
violin. Along with
hymns,
oratorios,
cantatas
and other religious music, chamber music
of the Western tradition remains an important part
of Barbadian musical through an integral role in the
services of the Anglican church.
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Though inhabited prior to the
16th century, little is known about Barbadian music
before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1536 and
then the English in 1627. The Portuguese left little
influence, but English culture and music helped
shape the island's heritage. Irish and Scottish
settlers emigrated in the 17th century, working in
the
tobacco
industry, bringing still more new music
to the island. The middle of the 1700s saw the
decline of the tobacco industry and the rise of
sugarcane, as well as
the introduction of large numbers of African slaves.
Modern bajan music is thus largely a combination of
English and African elements, with Irish, Scottish,
and modern American and Caribbean (especially
Jamaican) influences as well.
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While slavery was ongoing (1627-1838), African music
included work songs, funereal and religious music.
Though slave owners initially allowed dances, this
ended in 1688 because officials feared that the
slaves would plan a rebellion at such festivities.
The same law also prohibited the use of drums and
horns, which were feared to be used as communication
to facilitate slave rebellions. The elite
plantocracy of the island during the colonial era
felt that Christianity was ill-suited for slaves;
instead, the Church of England sent missionaries to
convert the slave population. Any cultural element
of apparent African origin was suppressed in the
name of promoting Christianity. Legal restrictions
furthered this goal by banning parties on Sundays,
the Christian day of rest, as well as dances like
the outdoors fertility dance, Jean and Johnnie.
Traditional African music continued in spite of
legal restrictions, including the use of drums and
rattles, and declamatory and improvised call and
response vocals. Much African music was used in
Obeah, an African religion found throughout the
island. By the beginning of the 19th century, slaves
provided most of the musical accompaniment for
plantation festivities, such as the Harvest Home,
while the white elites participated in
dignity balls.
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With the slave population approaching three times
the white population, many slave owners feared
revolts. This led to the
Slave Consolidation Act in 1826, which
reaffirmed the ban on drums and horns. Christian
missionaries also discouraged the performance of
African music, which pushed the field underground,
where it was passed through secret societies and
rituals. Slavery in Barbados was finally ended in
1838, and newly-emancipated blacks celebrated with
instruments including drums and horns, as well as
banjos, tambourines and xylophones. Still, however,
the use of horns and drums was discouraged, leading
to the primacy of vocal music; at the same time, new
Protestant churches from North American moved into
the island, bringing with them American parlor
music, cowboy songs and revivalist hymns.
Following emancipation, ensembles consisting of
snare and bass drums, flute and triangle emerged;
these were called tuk bands, and may have been based
on British fife-and-drum corps. They used African
polyrhythms and syncopation, and accompanied the
community dance troupe Landship, which simulated the
movement of ships at sea through dance, as well as
at various kinds of celebrations and festivals. In
1889, the Royal Barbados Police Band formed. This
instrumental ensemble remains popular, and has
performed across the world.
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Early in the 20th century, calypso music arrived
from Trinidad. Without many local fans, only a few
Barbadian calypsonians arose, including
Da Costa Allamby and
Mighty Charmer.
Beginning in about the 1940s, when the crop over
festival was cancelled due to the decline of the
sugarcane industry, Barbados has seen the influx of
popular music from other countries, including the
United States, United Kingdom, Jamaica and Cuba.
Following independence in 1966, Barbadian calypso
became more popular, especially the white band The
Merrymen, known for songs like "Brudda Neddy" and
"Millie Gone to Brazil". Jackie Opel, a Barbadian
singer, also arose, playing a blend of calypso and
reggae that evolved into spouge music. Spouge was
immensely popular in Barbados from about 1969 to
1973. In 1974, the Crop Over Festival was revived,
featuring calypso competitions; as a result,
calypso's popularity grew, rapidly overshadowing
spouge and other genres, with only dub music
achieving equal stature.
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Barbadian culture and music are mixtures of European
and African elements, with minimal influence from
the indigenous peoples of the island, about whom
little is known. Significant numbers of Asian,
specifically Chinese and Japanese, people have moved
to Barbados, but their music is unstudied and has
had little impact on Barbadian music.
The earliest reference to Afro-Barbadian music may
come from a description of a slave rebellion, in
which the rebels were inspired to fight by music
played on skin drums, conch trumpets and animal
horns.Slavery continued, however, and the colonial
and slave owning authorities eventually outlawed
musical instruments among slaves. 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.
Early Barbadian folk music,
despite legal restrictions, was a major part of life
among the island's slave population. For the slaves,
music was "essential for recreation and dancing and
as a part of the life cycle for communication and
religious meaning". African musicians also provided
the music for the white landowners' private parties,
while the slaves developed their own party music,
culminating in the crop over festival, which began
in 1688. 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.
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Barbadian folk songs are heavily influenced by the
music of England. Many traditional songs concern
events current at the time of their composition,
such as the emancipation of the slaves of Barbados,
and the coronations of Victoria I, George V, and
Elizabeth 1; this song tradition dates back to 1650.
The most influential Barbadian folk songs are
associated with the island's lower-class laborers,
who have held on to it their folk heritage.
Some bajan songs and stories made their way back to
England, most famously "Inckle the English Sailor"
and "Yarico the Indian Maid", which became English
plays and an opera by George Coleman with music by
Samuel Arnold, and first performed in London in
1787.
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Barbadian folk dances include a wide variety of
styles, performed at Landship, holidays and other
occasions. Dancers and other performers at the crop
over festivals, for example, are popular and an
iconic part of Barbadian culture, known for dancing
in the costumes of sugarcane-cutters. The Landship
movement features song and dance meant to imitate
the passage of a British navy ship through rough
seas; Landship and other occasions also feature
African-derived improvised and complexly-rhythmic
dances, and British hornpipes, jigs, maypole dances
and Marches.
The
Jean and Johnnie
dance was an important part of bajan culture until
it was banned in the 19th century. 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. The dance was
eventually banned because the dance was associated
with non-Christian African traditions.
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The Barbadian folk tradition
is home to a great variety of musical instruments,
imported from Africa, Great Britain or other
Caribbean islands. The most central instrument group
in Barbadian culture is the percussion instruments.
These include numerous drums, among them the pump
and the tum
tum, made from a hollowed-out tree trunk,
the side snare drum and a double-headed bass drum of
tuk bands. Folk musicians also use gongs made from
tree trunks, bones,
rook jaw, triangle,
cymbals, bottles filled with water, xylophones.
Rattles are also widespread, and include the
pan-Antillean
shak-shak
and the calabash, de shot and rattle.
More recently imported folk percussion instruments
include the conga and bongo from Puerto Rico,
Dominican Republic and Cuba, and the tambourine.
String and wind instruments play an important role
in Barbadian folk culture, especially the
bow-fiddle, banjo and acoustic guitar; more modern
groups also use an electric and bass guitar. The
shukster is a distinctive instrument,
made by stretching a guitar string between two sides
of a house. Traditional Barbadian wind instruments
are largely metal, but in their folk origins, were
made out of locally found materials. Barbadian
villagers burned finger holes, for example, on
bamboo tubes, made trumpets out of conch shells and
pipes from pumpkin vines. Many modern groups use
harmonica, accordion, alto and tenor saxophone,
trumpet and trombone.
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Though Western classical and other music play an
important role in Anglican church services on
Barbados, religion and folk music are closely
intertwined in the everyday lives of most
Barbadians. The basis for religious folk music is
the Anglican hymn, a kind of praise song mostly sung
on Sundays, a day when Christian Barbadians come
together with family members to sing and praise God
to ask for strength for the next week's work.
Pentecostal music
has become a part of Barbadian religious
and musical traditions since the 1920s. Music plays
a role in Pentecostal ceremonies, and is provided by
emotional and improvised performances accompanied
tambourines. In addition to the Anglican and
Pentecostal traditions, Rastafarian music has spread
to the island in more recent years, along with
African American musical forms, especially gospel,
and the Spiritual Baptist religion, which derives
from the Trinidadian
Shango
cult that spread to Barbados in the
1960s.
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A
number of holidays, festivals and other celebrations
play an integral role in Barbadian folk, and
popular, music. Whitsuntide, Christmas, Easter are
important, each associated with their own musical
traditions, as are distinctly Bajan festivities like
the crop over festival and the Landship movement.
The original crop over festival celebrated the end
of the sugarcane harvest. These festivals were held
in the great house of the plantations, and included
both slaves and plantation managers. Celebrations
included drinking competitions, feasting, song and
dance, and climbing a greased pole. Musical
accompaniment was provided by triangle, fiddle,
drums and a guitar, played by slave entertainers.
Crop over festivals continue to play a part of
Barbadian culture, and always feature music by
performers in sugarcane-cutting costumes, even
though many modern performers are not themselves
sugarcane-cutters.
The Barbadian Landship movement is an informal
entertainment organization which mocks, through
mimicry and satire, the British navy. Landship began
in 1837, founded by an individual known variously as
Moses Ward and Moses Wood, in Britton's
Hall in
Seamen's
Village. The structure of the Landship
organization mirrors the structure of the British
navy, with a "ship" which is connected to a "dock"
(a wooden house similar to a
chattel house), and
leaders known as Lord High Admiral,
Captain,
Boatswain and other navy ranks.
Each unit is named like a typical navy ship and may
include actual names of British ships or places.
Landship performances symbolize and reflect the
passage of ships through rough seas. Parades, jigs,
hornpipes, maypole dances and other music and dance
types are a part of the Landship Society's
celebrations. The
Council of the Barbados
Landship Association regulates the movement.
Barbadian Christmas music is mostly based on church
and concert hall performances, where typical North
American Christmas carols are performed, such as
"White Christmas" and "Silver Bells", alongside
works by English composers like William Byrd, Henry
Walford Davies and Thomas Tallis. In more recent
years, calypso, reggae and other new elements have
become a part of local Christmas traditions. As
recently as the 1960s, Barbados was home to a
distinctive practice, in which scrubbers
traveled from house to house singing hymns and
receiving rewards from households.
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Tuk bands are Barbadian musical ensembles,
consisting of a bow-fiddle or pennywhistle flute,
kittle triangle and a snare and double-headed bass
drum. The kittle and bass drum provide the rhythm,
while the flute gives the melody. The drums are
light-weight so they can be carried easily, and are
made by both rural villagers and drummers using
cured sheepskin and goatskin. Tuk bands are based on
the British military's regimental bands, which
played for many years for special occasions, like
visiting royalty and coronations. The tuk sound has
evolved over the years, as has the instrumentation,
with the bow-fiddle used before being most commonly
replaced by the pennywhistle flute. Tuk bands are
now most common in Landship events, but are still
sometimes independent. 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" The
upbeat modern sound of tuk ensembles are a
distinctly Barbadian blend of African and British
music.
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. After declining following World
War 1, tea meetings have recently been revived and
have regained their widespread popularity. 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.
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Barbados
has produced few internationally popular
musicians, but has a well-developed local scene
playing imported styles like American jazz and
Trinidadian calypso, as well as the indigenous
spouge style.
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Prior to the 1930s, Barbadian calypso was called
banja, and was performed by laborers in
village-tenantry areas. Itinerant minstrels like
Mighty Jerry,
Shilling Agard and
Slammer
were well-known forerunners of modern
Barbadian calypso. Their song tradition embraced
sentimentality, humor, and opinionated lyrics that
continued to the 1960s, often by then accompanied by
guitar or banjo.
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. Promoters like
Lord Silvers
and Mighty
Dragon, however, kept the popular tradition
alive through shows at the Globe Theatre, featuring
pioneers
Mighty Romeo,
Sir Don Marshall,
Lord Radio and the Bimshire Boys and Mike Wilkinson.
These performers set the stage for the development
of popular Barbadian calypso in the 1960s.
In the early 1960s, bajan
calypso grew in popularity and stature, led by
Viper, Mighty Gabby
and the Merrymen. The first calypso competitions
were held in 1960, and they quickly grew larger and
more prominent. The Merrymen became the island's
most prominent contribution to calypso by the 1970s
and into the 80s. Their style, known as blue beat,
incorporated Barbadian folk songs and ballads, as
well as American blues, country music, and a
distinctive sound created by harmonica, guitar and
banjo.
By the beginning of the 1980s,
kaiso,
a form of stage-presented calypso, was widespread at
crop over and other celebrations. The foundation of
the
National Cultural
Foundation in 1984 helped to promote and
administer calypso festivals, which attracted
tourists, stimulating the calypso industry. 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.
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Spouge is a style of Barbadian
popular music created by Jackie Opel in the 1960s.
It is primarily a fusion of Jamaican ska with
Trinidadian calypso, but is also influenced by a
wide variety of music from the British Isles and
United States, include sea shanties, hymns and
spirituals. Spouge instrumentation originally
consisted of cowbell, bass guitar, trap set and
various other electronic and percussion instruments,
later augmented by saxophone, trombone and trumpets.
Two different kinds of spouge were popular in the
1960s, raw spouge
(Draytons Two style) and
dragon spouge (Cassius Clay
style). The spouge industry grew immensely by
the end of the 1970s, and produced popular stars
like
Blue Rhythm Combo,
the Draytons Two and
The Troubadours.
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Jazz is a genre of music from the United States
which reached Barbados by the end of the 1920s. The
first major performer from the island was
Lionel Gittens, who
was followed by Percy Green,
Maggie
Goodridge and
Clevie Gittens.
These bandleaders played a variety of music,
including swing, a kind of pop-jazz, Barbadian
calypso and waltzes. With little recorded music on
the island, radio broadcasts such as Willis
Conover's
Voice of America had a major influence. In
1937, riots over poverty and disenfranchisement
occurred, and people like Clement Payne had risen to
fame advocating reform. In that year, Payne was
deported and riots broke out in Bridgetown,
spreading throughout the island. The following year,
the Barbados Labour Party was formed by
C. A. Braithwaite
and Grantley Adams.
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. The first Barbadian bebop musician
from the island was Keith Campbell, a pianist who
had learned to play many styles while living in
Trinidad during a time when American soldiers were
stationed there, providing a ready market for bands
that could play American music. Other musicians of
this period included Ernie
Small, a trumpeter and pianist, and
bandleader
St. Clare Jackman.
In
the 1950s, R&B and rock and roll became popular on
the island, and many jazz bands found themselves
pushed aside. 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. Though
mainstream audiences were still listening to R&B and
rock, modern jazz retained a small core of followers
into the 1960s. The foundation of the
Belair Jazz Club in
Bridgetown in 1961 helped to keep this scene alive.
With independence in 1966 came a focus on black
Barbadian culture, and music like calypso, reggae
and spouge, rather than the preoccupation with
British standards of musical development. Calypso
jazz arose during this period, pioneered by groups
like the Schofield Pilgrim. The genre had developed
by 1965, when original works like "Jouvert Morning"
and "Calypso Lament" were composed. Artists like the
pianist
Adrian Clarke became
popular during the 60s as well.
In
the early 1970s, jazz fan and critic
Carl Moore launched
a project to keep jazz alive on the island, while
Zanda Alexander's
performance in Bridgetown in 1972 is said to be the
first Caribbean jazz festival. Oscar Peterson's 1976
performance in Trinidad also inspired Barbadian
musicians, as did the radio program
Jazz Jam,
which was broadcast starting in the mid-70s on the
Caribbean Broadcast Corporation. In 1983, however,
the Belair Jazz Club closed, and was not replaced by
any long-term clubs. Later in the 1980s, jazz
declined greatly in popularity, though saxophonist
Arturo Tappin
organized the
International
Barbados/Caribbean Jazz Festival, while other
performances were organized by a group called the
Friends of Jazz.
More jazz calypso fusion musicians appeared on the
scene during this period, including
Janice Robertson and
her Trinidadian husband
Raf.
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Academic study of Barbadian music remains limited.
Some song collections and other activities have been
conducted, but there remain significant holes in
scholarship, such as the music of recent immigrants
from China and India, who presumably have brought
with them styles of Indian and Chinese music. Due to
a lack of archaeological and historical records, the
island's indigenous music is unknown. Since the
1970s, an increase in general interest in Barbadian
culture has spurred greater study of music, and
given an incentive to radio and television stations
to create and maintain archives of cultural
practices.
On
modern Barbados, oral transmission remains the
primary mode of music education, and there are few
opportunities for most people to become formally
educated in music of any kind. The elders of the
island, who are the most educated in oral
traditions, are held in high esteem due to their
knowledge of folk culture.
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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
crop over festival celebrates the end of the
sugarcane harvest, and is inaugurated by the ritual
delivery of the last of the harvest on a cart pulled
by mules. The champion sugarcane workers are crowned
King and Queen for the event.
In
addition to crop over, music plays an important role
in many other Barbadian holidays and festivals. The
Easter
Oistins Fish Festival,
for example features a street party with music to
celebrate the signing of the
Charter of
Barbados, and the
Holetown Festival,
which commemorates the arrival of the first settlers
in 1627. Opera, cabaret and sports are a major part
of the Easter
Holders Season. On
November 30, the Barbadian Independence Day,
military bands in parades play marches, calypsos and
other popular songs. This is preceded for several
weeks by the
National Independence
Festival of Creative Arts.
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