Jocelyne Guilbault.  Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of
Trinidad's Carnival Musics.  Chicago  University of Chicago Press,
2007.  Plates, illustrations. xii + 343 pp.  $29.95 (paper), ISBN
978-0-226-31060-2.

Reviewed by Stephen Stuempfle (Indiana University)
Published on H-Caribbean (February, 2009)
Commissioned by Clare Newstead

Contesting Calypso, Soca, and Nationhood in Trinidad

Over the past two decades, numerous books have been published on
calypso--Trinidad's pre-Lenten Carnival music. Encompassing a range
of literary, musicological, anthropological, and historical
perspectives, this scholarship has been particularly strong on the
emergence of the modern calypso form around 1900 and its development
through Trinidad and Tobago's independence from Britain in 1962.
Jocelyne Guilbault's new book is a most welcome addition to this
literature, given her focus on Carnival music from the
postindependence years to the present. An ethnomusicologist,
Guilbault previously studied the music of St. Lucia and was the lead
author (with Gage Averill, Édouard Benoit, and Gregory Rabess) of an
important book on zouk in the Francophone Caribbean, _Zouk: World
Music in the West Indies_ (1993). Her ethnographic and musicological
skills, along with her knowledge of local and global dimensions of
Caribbean music industries, make her well qualified to tackle the
complexities of postcolonial calypso and its musical offshoots,
including soca (a dance music with a prominent bass line and dense
electronic texture), chutney soca (a synthesis of soca and
Indo-Trinidadian musical elements), ragga soca (soca influenced by
Jamaican dancehall), and rapso (a blend of chanted poetry, calypso,
and other musical styles). Guilbault's primary objective is to
examine how calypso has been constructed as the national music of
Trinidad and how its postcolonial offshoots have challenged this
construction and expressed alternative understandings of nationhood
and belonging. She is particularly concerned with "governing
sound"--how various discourses and practices (or "technologies") have
shaped perceptions and uses of music, and how music enables distinct
ways of thinking and acting.

In her first two chapters, Guilbault presents an examination of
preindependence calypso, based almost entirely on secondary sources.
Though she employs a Foucauldian analytical vocabulary, these
chapters do not offer any major new insights on the politics of
calypso during the colonial era. In the book's following six
chapters, however, Guilbault draws on more than ten years of
fieldwork, including interviews with many prominent musicians and
promoters, to develop an impressive account of the myriad ways in
which power has been exercised in recent decades in the production
and consumption of Carnival music in Trinidad.

Guilbault notes that, after independence, "calypso became an
important site in which to articulate received notions of modernity,
authenticity, originality, and 'cultural' independence" (pp.135-136).
She discusses how calypso has been shaped by nationalist promotion,
by a relatively undercapitalized music industry, and by competitions
during the Carnival season, which are essential venues for developing
calypso careers but also have a constraining effect on artistic
expression. In addition, she addresses music arrangers, who have had
a profound impact on the calypso tradition but, to date, have
received insufficient scholarly attention. Among the best parts of
this book, in fact, are profiles of Frankie Francis, who expanded the
use of written musical arrangements after World War II and was a key
figure in the sound of calypso recordings around the time of
independence, and Art de Coteau, who dominated arranging during the
late 1960s and 1970s and attempted to maintain a calypso style free
of non-Trinidadian influences.

Guilbault also effectively employs this biographical perspective with
descriptions of several well-known, but quite different,
calypsonians. She begins with the veteran Black Stalin, who is widely
viewed as a quintessential calypsonian, given his Afro-Trinidadian
working-class background, an emphasis on social commentary in his
lyrics, and a musical style firmly rooted in "traditional" calypso.
She then examines four other calypsonians whose gender, ethnicity,
and/or class destabilizes this conventional calypso persona: Calypso
Rose (an Afro-Trinidadian woman), Denyse Plummer (a "Trinidad
white"), Crazy (a Chinese Creole), and De Mighty Trini (a "Syrian,"
though actually of Lebanese descent). Though all four artists faced
substantial challenges in breaking into the calypso scene, their
success helped to redefine who could sing calypso and be emblematic
of the Trinidadian nation.

At a more structural level, the calypso tradition was destabilized by
the rise of soca, chutney soca, ragga soca, and rapso. Guilbault
explores "how the new Carnival musics, making audible the presence of
heterogeneous constituencies, have redefined the terrain on which
national culture is debated" (p. 169). These calypso offshoots
introduced new instruments and other musical elements, created more
space for a variety of artists, expanded audiences, and (with the
exception of rapso) more fully affirmed dance and pleasure as part of
musical experience. Moreover, the soca forms are part of a music
industry that extends beyond Trinidad to include much of the
anglophone Caribbean and diasporic communities in North America and
Britain. While the Calypso Monarch competition is restricted to
Trinidadian residents, the International Soca Monarch competition is
open to performers from anywhere.

Though soca emerged in the 1970s, Guilbault's discussion focuses on
the 1990s, when a fast-tempo, highly synthesized type of soca became
quite distinct from "traditional" calypso and when chutney soca and
ragga soca gained considerable public prominence. She attributes
these developments in part to the neoliberal economic environment of
the decade, during which the Trinidadian government increasingly
emphasized the commercial value of popular arts and a variety of
entrepreneurs were able to expand the infrastructure for artistic
expression. Again, Guilbault's arguments are enhanced by sketches of
individuals, including Machel Montano, who, with his mother as his
manager, forged a financially successful international soca career;
Rikki Jai, who became a leading figure in chutney soca; and George
Singh, who established the Chutney Soca Monarch competition in 1996.

Though she is attentive to diverse musical trends and individual
artists, Guilbault does not attempt to offer a general history of
calypso and soca since independence. Such a book remains much needed
in Caribbean music studies. Guilbault, however, does provide a
well-researched and perceptive account of how the Carnival music
industry has evolved and of how the politics of inclusion in music
making and listening are interrelated with vigorous debates in
Trinidad about art, tradition, and national identity. This book is
strongly recommended to anyone interested in Caribbean studies,
musicology, media studies, and the politics of culture.

Citation: Stephen Stuempfle. Review of Guilbault, Jocelyne,
_Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of Trinidad's Carnival
Musics_. H-Caribbean, H-Net Reviews. February, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23624

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