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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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