This document summarizes the origins and evolution of calypso music from Trinidad. It traces how calypso emerged in the early 20th century from genres like calinda, bel air, and bamboula. It was initially sung in French Creole before transitioning to English. Early forms included single-tone and double-tone ballads. Calypso incorporated influences from jazz, vaudeville, and Latin American genres. It evolved to include different types like road marches, pan calypsos, and message songs. In the mid-20th century, the Young Brigade popularized calypso and incorporated influences from pop and R&B. Later, soca emerged as a fusion genre

1. CalypsoAural
Evolution

2. The Is.  The Calypso is a genre of music emerging from
Trinidad in the 20th century.

3. The Name
 The transformation into “calypso” is seen to have
come from one of these sources:
 The word “carieto,” meaning a joyous song, which
itself evolved into “cariso”
 The French patois creations “carrousseaux” from
the archaic French word “carrouse,” meaning a
drinking party or festivity…
 The Spanish word “caliso,” a term also used for a
topical song in St. Lucia;
 “careso,” a topical song from theVirgin Islands;
 TheWest African (Hausa) term “kaiso,” itself a
corruption of “kaito,” an expression of approval and
encouragement similar to “bravo.”
 (Warner 8)

4. Musical
Origins
Rohlehr
 …Calypso which, with its history of Latin-style
syncopation and its roots in calinda, bel air and
bamboula…(Rohlehr Scuffling 378)

5. Aural
Evolution
Diagram
Extended
Ballad
Chalkdust
French
Creole
Lyrics
CalendaSingleTone
DoubleTone
Ballad

6. Calenda
 Although songs were composed in the minor mode
before, composers began to use it more during this
period. Some of the middle class singers had a little
training in music, primarily solfege.They therefore
composed their calypsos with some measure of
conscious musical choice and it seems that the type
of song composed determined the key or mode
they chose. Four minor modes seem to have been
in common use at the time.They were the re minor,
mi minor, sol minor and the la minor.They probably
were the same as the dorian, Phrygian, mixolydian
and Aeolian modes respectively. (Ahyoung 58)

7. Old Form
 During the first decade of the twentieth century,
old-time singers of ‘single-tone’ of four-line
calypsos in Creole French resisted the efforts of
George ‘Jamesie’Adilla, the Duke of Marlborough
and Philip Garcia, the Lord Executor to improve the
Calypso by singing eight line ‘double-tone’ calypsos
in highly rhetorical English.The initial result of this
confrontation between tradition and innovation,
was that the newcomers were forced to flee Port-
of- Spain because they could not endure the
fierceness of the old-time picong in Creole French.
(Rohlehr Scuffling of Islands 375)

8. Tradition
refashioned
 Thus calinda litanies coexisted besides rhymed
couplets, quatrains and octaves and in time,
combinations of these structures would constitute
the fundamental forms that the majority of ‘ballad’
or narrative calypsos assumed form the 1930’s to
the 1950’s.
 The Sans Humanite or Oratorical mode which has
been a contested innovation during the first decade
of the twentieth century, became a highly revered
traditional structure during the next two decades.
Though it was superseded by narrative/ballad
calypsos in the 1920s and 1930s, it retained its place
in what one might tem ‘a calypso memory-bank’,
and still informs minor-key compositions into the
twenty-first century. (Rohlehr Scuffling of Islands
376)

9. Calenda to
SingleTone
 According to Elder, the negro singers held on to the
litany couplet form with which they were familiar
but they were soon influenced by the European
type ode or oratical calypsos of the white middle
class singers, especially those of Lord Executor.
(Ahyoung 58)
 The type of ballad form that resulted, the “single-
tone calypso” consisted of the form AA, BB.
(Ahyoung 58)

10. DoubleUp
 The single-tone ballad calypso discussed earlier
was even further developed, as more and more
lines were doubled, or new lines inserted between
repeated lines.This practice gave rise to the
Double-Tone ballad calypso. It consisted of eight
lines arranged in the sequence AA, BB, CC, DD)
(Ahyoung 68-69)

11. Influence #1
 Belasco transmitted and refashioned songs from
different islands, which he used as the basis for his
own compositions. Calypsonians were doing the
same thing from early in the century.
 He…composed many Paseos (Pasillos), the music
and lyrics of aVenezuelan dance very popular
during the early twentieth century when there was
a significantVenezuelan migrant presence in
Trinidad. (Calypso and Society Rohlehr 85)

12. Influence #2
 Apart from the influence of vaudeville and the
broad folk heritage of the Caribbean, there was the
particular impact of Jazz on the instrumentation of
calypso accompaniment. From as early as 1922
Trinidad’s journalists had been complaining that
Jazz had displaced the old-time Quadrille and
Lancers as the most popular music with the
younger folk. Recordings of calypso music from the
1930’s reflect the influence of boogie-woogie piano,
the rigidity of jazz-type bass lines and more than a
hint of New Orleans style instrumentation. A jazz
straight-jacket was forcibly imposed on the fluid
prosodoy of Calypso which, with its history of Latin-
style syncopation and its roots in calinda, bel air
and bamboula, had only recently sorted out the
intricacies of transition from French Creole to
English prosody. (Rohelhr A Scuffling 378 )

13. JazzTinge
 With the participation of the middle class in the
canboulay activities, there arose the small wind
orchestra, comprised of trombone, cornet, clarinet,
and saxophone.The wind ensemble was soon to be
influenced by the jazz vogue of the 1920s.The rise
of the string and wind orchestra created a
corresponding gradual decline in the tambour-
bambour bands (Elder 1966:115; Hill 1972: 56)
(Ahyoung 60)
 Others tried to improve calypso melodies by
proposing to use English or American melodies
such as vaudeville tunes instead.And to change the
words to suit the selected themes-hoping that
calypso would gradually adapt itself to these so
called more aesthetically (or ideologically) pleasing
sources (Guilbault 46).
 In 1934, Atilla and Lion were facilitated by
Portuguese businessman…to make recordings for
Decca and the American Record Company.
(Liverpool 211)

14. Young
Brigade
 Young Brigade of the 1950s..The Mighty
Sparrow…”Jean and
Dinah”…Melody..Terror…(Ahyoung 73-74)
 Chalkdust…Shadow…(Ahyoung 74)
 (Sparrow) He was recognized and condemned as a
major force in the reinvention of Calypso between
the mid-fifties and the sixties. He was accused of
mixing the now traditional sounds and styles of the
thirties and forties with pop songs, sentimental
ballads of the Nat Cole, Brook Benton, Billy
Eckstein vintage and the immensely popular Latin
rhythms of bolero, cha cha cha, samba and
meringue that ruled the house parties and public
dances in the age of the great dance
orchestras….(Rohlehr A Scuffling 387)
 Young Brigade of the 1940s..Pandering to the
U.S.A, soldier’s tastes and salacious details, the
young cavalcade unleashed a cavalcade of torrid
and harmonious pornography. (Liverpool 64)

15. The Ballad –
Verse and
refrain
 The most common calypso form-type used during
this period seems to be the ballad.The singers of
theYoung Brigade started off repeating the
opening phrases of the calypso to create the ‘single
and double tone’ ballad types. However, this
practice gradually disappeared, since the new
singers had mastered the art of composing in the
ballad form.The most typical ballad form consisted
of four eight-line stanzas and chorus, though some
contained more verses when the earlier four-line
stanza quatrain was used. (Ahyoung 82)
 One calypso could be based on a ballad with a
kalinda-type refrain, e.g., in the calypso “Ten to
One is Murder” the kalinda… (Ahyoung 80)
 Along with the wave of nationalism, calypsonians
began recoding their songs in vernacular English
instead of the British English imposed inTrinidad by
the colonial powers. (Guilbault 58)

16. Types
 Road March
 Pan
 Message

17. Road March
 Ideally, the Road March has a very catchy tune,
with a chorus that the revellers can sing in toto or in
part (Warner 20).

18. PanCalypso
 During this time there were developments in the Road
March ensemble…the steelband grew and developed
to international fame. Although it did not replace the
brass bands entirely, it surpassed them and became
the more typical brass bands entirely, it surpassed
them and became the more typical carnival ensemble.
(Ahyoung 82)
 Pan calypsos, as Kitchener soon realized, required an
expansion of the conventional Calypso with its
sixteen-bar stanza and eight-bar chorus, which is one
of the structures into which the ballad Calypso had
settled since the 1930’s. (Rohlehr A Scuffling 397)
 But by the time Kitchener returned in 1963, the
extended chorus had become a convention in its own
right, to which Kitchener quickly accommodated his
own compositions. By 1972 Kitchener was saying:
“My way of composing just happens to suit the
steelbands; before, I composed the Road March with
the public in mind, but today I compose the Road
March with the steelband in mind.” (Rohlehr A
Scuffling 398)

19. Message/Soc
ial
Commentary
 … Kitchener had arrived at a series of templates for
structuring different types of calypso…Kitchener
held that a calypso composed for the steelband
needed to carry either twenty-four or thirty-two
bars in both stanza and chorus. A ‘message’
calypso, that is, a slow didactic ballad of the
Chalkdust, Stalin or Pretender type, need an
expanded structure of thirty-two bars in both
stanza and chorus. Such expansiveness gave the
singer “time to relate what you want to relate” A
party calypso, on the other hand, required no more
than eight bars each for stanza and chorus.
Verbally, such a calypso had much less to say.
(Rohlehr A Scuffling of 399)

20. Soca joins in
 …Lord Shorty, by his claim, sought to find the “soul
of calypso” and thus coined the term
“Soca…(Warner 21)
 The new beat masterly arranged by EdWatson,
who promptly claimed the “invention” to be partly
his…(Warner 21)

21. More Info
 Caribbean Composers’ Handbook – StefanWalcott
– Amazon.com – $7.99 US
 www.stefanwalcott.com
 An Aural History of Calypso 1 –YouTube.com –
StefanWalcott Channel
 An Aural History of Calypso 2 –YouTube.com –
StefanWalcott Channel

22. References
 Ahyoung, S. E. "Soca fever! change in the calypso
music tradition ofTrinidad andTobago, 1970-1980."
1981.
 Guilbault, J. Governing sound : the cultural politics
ofTrinidad'sCarnival musics. Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 2007.
 Rohlehr, G. A scuffling of islands : essays on
calypso. San Juan,Trinidad andTobago, Lexicon
Trinidad Ltd, 1994.
 --- Calypso and society in pre-independence
Trinidad. Port of Spain, 1990.
 Warner, K.TheTrinidadianCalypso. Kingston; Port
of Spain Heinemann, 1983.