Pe­ter Ray Blood

So­cial me­dia have been abuzz over spec­u­la­tion of who is the "King of So­ca," the main artistes be­ing Machel Mon­tano and Bun­ji Gar­lin. Mu­sic an­a­lyst Mea­gan Sylvester has stud­ied the ca­reers of both artistes as part of her stud­ies at UWI, St Au­gus­tine.

"The mu­sic-lis­ten­ing pub­lic seems to be pit­ting Machel Mon­tano against Bun­ji Gar­lin as they try to de­cide which is the new king of so­ca," said Sylvester.

"I find this ex­ceed­ing­ly re­gret­table be­cause it is wrong to throw out the ba­by with the bath­wa­ter. Machel Mon­tano has been in the mu­sic busi­ness for sev­er­al years and has made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the mu­si­cal land­scape of T&T.

"And, in ad­di­tion to that, has paved the way for many of the cur­rent so­ca artistes. And cred­it should be giv­en where cred­it is due.

"Bun­ji Gar­lin's me­te­oric rise re­flects a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors, in­clud­ing as­tute mar­ket­ing, skil­ful tal­ent and prop­er tim­ing. This is Bun­ji's time to shine, just as Machel shone when his time ar­rived.

"T&T is for­tu­nate to have two gift­ed sons who are shin­ing the light of so­ca on the world stage. In years to come the con­tri­bu­tion of these two gift­ed and tal­ent­ed artistes will lay the ground­work for so­ca artistes in the fu­ture."

The ti­tle of Sylvester's PhD stud­ies, at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of UWI, is So­ci­ol­o­gy of Mu­sic. She is fo­cus­ing on mu­sic and its iden­ti­ty, with re­gard to all of T&T's in­dige­nous mu­sic.

Born in St Ann's, Sylvester spent most of her life in Mara­cas, St Joseph, Tu­na­puna and St Au­gus­tine. She at­tend­ed St Xavier's Pri­vate School in St Joseph, St Joseph's Con­vent, St Joseph, and UWI.

She said: "I am from a mu­si­cal fam­i­ly so from a child I was con­nect­ed to mu­sic. Af­ter pi­ano tu­ition, I moved on to the play­ing the gui­tar. My fa­ther al­ways played jazz mu­sic in the house, plus I have an un­cle who is an ac­com­plished cu­a­trista and par­ran­dero, so I grew up on that. So, be­ing around live mu­sic my whole life was my main mo­ti­va­tor."

Sylvester ex­plained: "The prin­ci­pal fo­cus of my the­sis is rag­ga so­ca mu­sic, which is the hy­brid of Ja­maica's reg­gae and dance­hall (chant­i­ng lyrics) and T&T's so­ca mu­sic (rhythms). Look­ing at the lit­er­a­ture of our arts I re­alise that a lot had been writ­ten about ca­lyp­so, es­pe­cial­ly by Dr Gor­don Rohlehr and Dr Louis Reg­is, and there was a lot of in­for­ma­tion about rap­so, both by Bro Re­sis­tance him­self, and Mar­sha Pearce and oth­ers, es­pe­cial­ly on the con­tri­bu­tion of 3canal.

"There was, how­ev­er, a dearth of in­for­ma­tion on the sub-genre of 'rag­ga so­ca'. I want­ed to ex­plore this mu­sic."

Sylvester is a vir­tu­al en­cy­clopae­dia of knowl­edge as far as so­ca mu­sic, reg­gae and rap­so are con­cerned.

"Af­ter ex­am­in­ing who were the rag­ga so­ca artistes of T&T, I dis­cov­ered Bun­ji Gar­lin, Max­imus Dan, Gen­er­al Grant and KMC. I be­gan ex­plor­ing their mu­sic and their con­tri­bu­tion to this par­tic­u­lar sub-genre. This led me to want to write about it, as this is one of the in­dige­nous mu­sics of T&T."

The mu­sic of Black Stal­in and Shad­ow al­so had an im­pact on Sylvester. "This was so be­cause of their hard-hit­ting so­cial com­men­tary and the unique­ness of their mu­sic, how they per­formed, and the val­ues of their com­po­si­tions."

This young aca­d­e­m­ic claimed that she is in much de­mand, at home and abroad, to lec­ture on T&T cul­ture. On a light note, she said: "I think I may have to be­gin to take T&T flags when I go abroad, as peo­ple are ex­treme­ly cu­ri­ous about our coun­try and its in­dige­nous mu­sic. For in­stance, I got an in­vi­ta­tion from an aca­d­e­m­ic in Egypt to write an ar­ti­cle for the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ci­o­log­i­cal As­so­ci­a­tion E-Sym­po­sium. My ar­ti­cle on T&T mu­sic was pub­lished in De­cem­ber 2013."

Apart from so­ca, reg­gae and rap­so, Sylvester al­so has a deep affin­i­ty with jazz, no doubt in­stilled from her child­hood.

"There is a live­ly jazz mu­sic scene in ex­is­tence lo­cal­ly and I play a very ac­tive part in that as well. I at­tend all the shows as an avid con­nois­seur of the mu­sic, as well as oth­er in­dige­nous non-so­ca live mu­sic shows.

"As far as non-so­ca mu­sic is con­cerned, there is a thriv­ing post-Car­ni­val cir­cuit that is alive and throbs with en­er­gy and tal­ent. This is where you'd find artistes like Dayo Be­jide Jazz Project, co-or­di­nat­ed by the sons of the late Jah Jah Oga Onilu (Mod­upe and Ba­ba); Vaugnette Big­ford, Chan­tal Es­delle, John John Fran­cis, Sean Thomas, Gyazette, and Glen­da Col­lens & Medea.

"It is good to jux­ta­pose tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so and so­ca with the more mod­ern, non-so­ca ma­te­r­i­al live mu­sic of­fer­ings be­cause this pro­vides a sense of the wealth, length and breadth of mu­sic that em­anates from T&T."

MORE IN­FO

Mea­gan Sylvester holds a BSc in so­ci­ol­o­gy and gov­ern­ment and a post-grad­u­ate diplo­ma in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions. She has a Mas­ters of Phi­los­o­phy (MPhil) in So­ci­ol­o­gy of De­vel­op­ment with a spe­cial em­pha­sis in re­search, de­vel­op­ment and po­lit­i­cal econ­o­my of the Caribbean from UWI, St Au­gus­tine and Mona cam­pus­es, re­spec­tive­ly.

She is fin­ish­ing her PhD in so­ci­ol­o­gy with spe­cial em­pha­sis on mu­sic and iden­ti­ty in T&T at St Au­gus­tine.

Sylvester teach­es the so­ci­ol­o­gy of mu­sic and his­to­ry of the Caribbean.

To date, Sylvester has sev­er­al ar­ti­cles pub­lished on high­er ed­u­ca­tion in the Caribbean, de­vel­op­men­tal re­search op­tions for the Caribbean and mu­sic and iden­ti­ty in the Caribbean.

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