Why soca is still music

I am visiting my younger sister and get down to talking music with my niece. Conversation goes thus: “Hey little person, have you heard Major Lazer’s new song?” “I’m not a little person, maasi (it’s Punjabi for aunt). What do you want?” she asks in her characteristic dry, bored voice when I annoy her.

“Major Lazer and DJ Snake dude (I do the hand movement like a rapper). You heard it? How can you not have heard it?’ I feign astonishment. That irritates her a bit more.

“Ye…s” she answered, emphatic on the ‘s’.

“So you don’t like it?” “Really maasi. Have you heard it?” Her tone is now growing more sarcastic, almost as if she is surprised by my ignorance.

“I wouldn’t be asking you if I hadn’t, would I? That wouldn’t make sense!” I retorted.

She gives me the cut eye and does the scoffing mouth.

“Have you heard those lyrics? They are just basically singing the same thing! I don’t like it. It has no lyrics.” I’m taken aback.

“Listen to it,” she continues, “They’re just singing that ‘focus fire a gun…’ line. The entire song is just really that line.” Well now I shut up. She is right.

I was too taken aback to discuss genres with her at that point because I was then motivated to call some music which of course she knew and then threw in Lana Del Rey on the off-side. She counter- attacked with some Jim Reeves’ lyrics, after which we all broke down laughing.

Three weeks ago, on another visit to my sister’s, my cousin tells me to pull up Machel’s new song ‘Human’. She is sure the little one will like it, because she (my cousin) likes Machel’s music. She is amused that my niece doesn’t know who Machel Montano is and wants to introduce her to his music.

‘Human’ begins.

“What is THAT ! Take it off! Take it off! You LIKE that? I don’t even like the voice!” My niece’s voice began to raise, indignant, almost horrified that we would consider listening to that and furthermore thinking that she would like it. But the two incidents set me thinking about the eightyear old’s reaction to the musical forms. In both cases the examples were songs that catered primarily to the dance floor – driving rhythms and minimal lyrics.

Her musical preference was obviously for songs with stronger lyrics and, as far as my observation goes, more dynamic changes in the musical structures like Shawn Mendes’ ‘Stitches’ and One Directions’ ‘Drag Me Down’, two of her current favourites. She hasn’t as yet consciously begun to think about different musical genres and their respective functions.

Two weeks ago Loop News interviewed Machel Montano. One of the questions presented was whether he thought that power soca was dying.

For someone who is constantly re-making his music, Machel’s answer should come as no surprise to audiences: “Everything is in flux, everything is changing… nothing is really dying. Things are being born, things are being renewed, re-used…so you have to accept what is, resist nothing and go with the flow.” This is a powerful and an insightful comment.

In the soca world, which falls into the general category of popular music, it’s very easy to fall into formulaic music-making. Some producers speak about how boring and mind-numbing it is to do soca mixes but ‘that’s where the money is’. Popular music by definition is almost always tied to economics and it is usually difficult to escape the formulas that work. But there were artistes who pushed the boundaries, changed the trajectory and began new movements starting with Ras Shorty I and his early soca and Drupatee Ramgoonai and Chutney Soca Though the initial changes may have been small — a little rhythm here, a new melody there — it was nevertheless the small changes and usages that brought about the big changes in the current carnival music industry that we now have. The danger that Carnival has now presented however, is the notion of the ‘national’.

Truth is, ‘national’ is a whole lot bigger than Carnival allows us to imagine. This requires further discussion. In the interim however, congrats to Machel for once again pushing boundaries and reminding us that the ‘death’ of a musical form really depends on how you look at it. sharda.

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