Pao­lo Ker­na­han

For the most part I ab­hor so­ca mu­sic, so it is nat­ur­al to as­sume that this would dis­qual­i­fy my cri­tique of the art form in its present in­car­na­tion as bi­ased. This was not al­ways so. You may find this hard to be­lieve but Shad­ow for me has al­ways rep­re­sent­ed the best that so­ca and ca­lyp­so have to of­fer. This year he seems to have missed the mark but there are many songs record­ed by this liv­ing leg­end that re­main on a loop in our minds. If you were not moved by "Are you feel­in' de feel­in' .....are you get­ting' de symp­tom?" then the doc­tors were right, you are a para­plegic. I of­ten rem­i­nisce about paus­ing to catch­ing my breath on some thrown-to­geth­er bleach­ers of ques­tion­able en­gi­neer­ing at the side of the road on a balmy Car­ni­val Mon­day night.

Amid the fad­ing echoes of the ar­madas of mu­sic trucks, the last of the strag­glers pa­rade weak­ly in front of my small group, their en­er­gy sapped by a fright­ful cock­tail of un­remit­ting sun and "bare­ly le­gal" booze. A mu­sic truck be­gins to play "if yuh clothes tear up, or you shoe burse up ........." Im­me­di­ate­ly I feel pos­sessed by some benev­o­lent spir­it com­pelling me to join these ghosts of Mon­day night mas as they grind their shoes down to the stitch­ing. "Every ba­day! Could din­go­lay! Din­go­lay ay ay ay. As I al­lowed to my­self to be swayed by the rhythm, like a child giv­ing in to the un­der­tow in the surf at Mara­cas beach, there was some­thing burn­ing in my chest, a feel­ing that I be­long to a coun­try with some­thing so spe­cial, some­thing so pro­found in our hearts that no oth­er na­tion in the world could ap­prox­i­mate the depth of our peo­ple.

With the evo­lu­tion (re­gres­sion?) of so­ca mu­sic, the dom­i­nant "hus­tle" of this land, this is now no coun­try for old men. I am be­gin­ning to ac­cept that per­haps my in­abil­i­ty to ap­pre­ci­ate mod­ern so­ca mu­sic is a func­tion of age­ing. Read­ing com­ments on the Face­book and the twit­ters it is clear that Tri­nis are wild for this new mu­sic. Now there are some catchy num­bers this year. Er­phaaaaan Alves' In Your Eyes is a love­ly tune with just enough pace to keep the "bumpers" bounc­ing but slow enough that you can guf­faw at the cheesy lyrics yet swoon over the har­mon­ics of what is ob­vi­ous­ly a heav­i­ly pro­duced track. The prob­lem with the song, how­ev­er, is that Er­phaaaaan and three oth­ers bought their "rid­dim" in the same shop. So you have Er­phaaaaan, Machel Mon­tal­ban, Ker­win Du bois and Na­dia Bat­son all rid­ing the An­til­lean rid­dim. It was to be ex­pect­ed that lo­cal artistes would even­tu­al­ly trav­el this path; a well worn tra­di­tion in Ja­maica.

Machel, for his part, is go­ing with heavy sat­u­ra­tion for the Car­ni­val sea­son, threat­en­ing to re­lease some 15 tracks which will cer­tain­ly en­sure to­tal dom­i­na­tion of the air­waves giv­en pre­vail­ing pat­terns of air­play. He has found the recipe for suc­cess and is a peren­ni­al favourite at the fetes (which isn't say­ing much be­cause par­ty go­ers would just as soon jump to the sound of fire­crack­ers). I have to hand it to him, he is the con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­al. Years of ex­pe­ri­ence com­mand­ing large crowds has made Machel the most sought af­ter and tal­ent­ed on­stage per­former in the coun­try. At the age of 37 Machel has prob­a­bly made peace with the fact that his mu­sic will nev­er tru­ly achieve the in­ter­na­tion­al ac­cep­tance that most of us keep jaw­ing about; and noth­ing is wrong with that.

Bun­ji Gar­lin I think is one of the most tal­ent­ed lyri­cists in the coun­try to­day; un­for­tu­nate­ly he has yet to shed his 'dub mu­sic' in­flu­ence and for the most part con­tin­ues to sound like a wannabe dance­hall artiste. 'Born ready' by Mr Gar­lin is very thin on ac­tu­al mu­sic, in fact, I am prob­a­bly in dan­ger of a mu­sic copy­right in­fringe­ment be­cause when my com­put­er hard dri­ve be­gins to warm up, the noise it makes is very sim­i­lar to that so­ca record­ing. Ben­jai was able to get his hands on a love­ly tune last year, Tri­ni, (the rea­son that it res­onat­ed so deeply is be­cause it was so heav­i­ly sam­pled. There is noth­ing from this en­ter­tain­er this year that thrills in the way Tri­ni did. Cassie who struck a chord with Tong Ting in 2011, (which in my opin­ion was ab­solute rub­bish) has tru­ly em­bar­rassed him­self this year.

Patrice Roberts is eas­i­ly the most tal­ent­ed fe­male so­ca singer in the coun­try. I sus­pect that owed to her mod­est pro­por­tions, she does not gar­ner the at­ten­tion of her more volup­tuous con­tem­po­raries. Her voice seems im­pris­oned by the weak com­po­si­tions that she has to work with and I dare say she may want to con­sid­er ex­plor­ing some oth­er av­enues, per­haps with some­one like Kees Dif­fer­en­tial, an­oth­er bril­liant singer caged by mar­ket de­mand. Her track Slow Wine show­cas­es her vo­cal prowess, but the 'mu­sic' for the most part sounds like R2-D2 cussin' C-3PO. De­stra Gar­cia, an old stager in the so­ca are­na, main­tains her sonorous pres­ence in the crowd­ed land­scape with a track called At­ti­tude. It is well pro­duced and makes the best of her mod­est vo­cal range, though it is not like­ly to see the light of day be­yond Ash Wednes­day.

If you are lis­ten­ing to the ra­dio all day, say for ex­am­ple if you are trapped in an over­turned car fol­low­ing an aw­ful ac­ci­dent and you can­not move your arms to call for help or turn off the ra­dio, you will still prob­a­bly not hear much of De­stra's 2012 of­fer­ings. An­oth­er track ti­tled Wukkin is a de­light­ful romp with few sur­pris­es; talk of "put it on you and put it on me and twiss up yuh wase and wuk it ba­by!" Okay, so this crap isn't Chaucer, but when yuh winin' so hard on a woman that your zip­per dis­in­te­grates and your pants but­ton could burn like a don­key eye, the on­ly lyrics that mat­ter are the rum soaked ones that you are able to muster at the end of the night. What is en­cour­ag­ing, though, is that many of the artistes this year have slowed it down con­sid­er­ably; De­stra's ef­forts among oth­ers demon­strate this sea change. While we are not com­plete­ly out of the "speed met­al" pace of so­ca mu­sic that ex­horts you to jump up and down un­til you get a pro­lapsed anus, the shift to a more "sane" rhythm and beat can­not be ig­nored.

A great deal of the mu­sic pro­duced by our artistes this year is a vast im­prove­ment over 2011. Even Gar­lic Sauce by the very randy All Rounder was a short-lived de­light. No doubt there is still a whole lot of bull­shit out there but, there is def­i­nite­ly some good mu­sic worth a lis­ten. We have a lot of 'flags' and 'rags' in our fu­ture but the op­tions avail­able are more var­ied. The ca­lyp­so art form, as we once loved it, is dead. It ex­ists now on­ly as a ve­hi­cle for poor­ly craft­ed po­lit­i­cal vit­ri­ol that can scarce­ly sur­vive past the di­manche gras stage. So­ca, for bet­ter or worse, is the undis­put­ed fu­ture of our mu­sic cul­ture.