Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

There was rag­ga so­ca–a blend of so­ca and dance­hall mu­sic. An ex­per­i­men­tal reg­gae­ton so­ca ar­rived when Bar­ba­di­an so­ca artiste Ru­pert "Ru­pee" Clarke gave us Tempt­ed To Touch in 2004. It re­turned in 2007 when Amer­i­can/Bermu­di­an reg­gae singer Col­in "Col­lie Bud­dz" Harp­er sang the catchy hit Ma­maci­ta.

We em­braced the R&B type so­ca in the ear­ly 2000's, lat­er to be called groovy so­ca. The beat of this fu­sion was much slow­er than up­tem­po so­ca, more melo­di­ous and sweet. This form of so­ca has stood the test of time and is still quite pop­u­lar.We have since in­cor­po­rat­ed pop, tech­no and oth­er forms of con­tem­po­rary or trend­ing beats to our so­ca sounds.

All these beats en­cap­su­late the move­ment, spir­it and cul­ture of our di­verse peo­ple.Late­ly so­ca has seen an­oth­er in­flu­ence–the bor­row­ing of African in­flu­enced and in­spired beats, be­ing de­scribed as Afroso­ca.

Pro­duc­ers have been in­cor­po­rat­ing the sound more fre­quent­ly since 2013. So­ca star Machel Mon­tano sought the help of Gram­my Award-win­ning South African male choral group La­dy­smith Black Mam­bazo when he col­lab­o­rat­ed with Ker­win Dubois on the mon­ster hit Pos­sessed.

The song picked up af­ter the Car­ni­val sea­son that year. The group which sings in the vo­cal styles of Isi­cathamiya (which is an a cap­pel­la singing style that orig­i­nat­ed with South African Zu­lus) com­fort­ably and cre­ative­ly blend­ed in­to the so­ca genre, bring­ing a unique South African feel to is­land mu­sic.

The merg­ing or col­lab­o­ra­tion of these two gen­res con­tin­ued in 2014, again with Machel Mon­tano. This time he teamed up with Niger­ian singer and song­writer, Ene­ti­mi Al­fred Odon aka Timaya, when a remix was done of Shake Up Yuh Bum Bum, the crossover hit by the founder of South South hip-hop group, Dem Ma­ma Sol­diers.

The Mon­tano song was well re­ceived and Timaya was even a fea­tured artiste at the an­nu­al Machel Mon­day event that year.

The Afro beats con­tin­ued through one of this coun­try's ris­ing so­ca stars, Olatun­ji Year­wood, when his 2015 of­fer­ing–Ola–stirred pa­trons at fetes and was on ma­jor ro­ta­tion on var­i­ous ra­dio fre­quen­cies. The well-knit­ted pro­duc­tion paid trib­ute to the rhyth­mic danc­ing of an African beau­ty, and won the 2015 Groovy So­ca Monarch ti­tle.

He stuck with what worked and for the 2016 Car­ni­val sea­son, re­leased Oh Yay. This was an­oth­er trib­ute to the hip-mov­ing charms of the African woman. Even though this track did not give him an­oth­er ti­tle, the beat put to­geth­er by Stadic and Weety Beatz is still a crowd-pleas­er even months af­ter the Car­ni­val sea­son end­ed.

With re­gion­al car­ni­vals com­ing up, the T&T Guardian thought it would be a good idea to find out from pro­duc­ers what the trend­ing beat is.We found rank­ing in at num­ber one is none oth­er than the Afro beat.

Yes, it seems Afroso­ca will cer­tain­ly make its name in so­ca mu­sic for some time. But is the beat re­al­ly new? It may not be, ac­cord­ing to some pro­duc­ers.

Gospel singer and song­writer Isaac Black­man, who has al­ways in­cor­po­rat­ed African beats in­to his pro­duc­tions, said what is be­ing called Afroso­ca does not make sense to him be­cause Afro-Trinida­di­ans are Africans and the sound that we cre­at­ed is from the same ori­gin as African mu­sic.

"It is per­cus­sive mu­sic that comes from the African drums.

The on­ly dif­fer­ence is the ac­cent be­tween us and a singer from the African con­ti­nent who sings in Eng­lish. But the rhyth­mic struc­ture and the pulse are very close be­cause the ori­gin of so­ca mu­sic came from African mu­sic," he said.He said just lis­ten­ing to ca­lyp­so mu­sic shows the sound is very sim­i­lar. He sin­gled out vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian the Mighty Shad­ow, say­ing his ear­ly mu­sic showed this. "Just lis­ten to the mu­sic in Din­go­lay," he urged.

Black­man said the out­side world does a great job at pack­ag­ing our own mu­sic and sell­ing it back to us be­cause we­don't know the his­to­ry of our mu­sic.But in the same breath he said he was hap­py we were fi­nal­ly em­brac­ing our mu­sic.

Disk Jock­ey and pro­duc­er of the very pop­u­lar 2016 RR rid­dim Derek "Slaugh­ter" Pereira echoed Black­man's sen­ti­ments. Pereira, who re­cent­ly grad­u­at­ed from UTT where he stud­ied mu­sic tech­nol­o­gy, gave a more the­o­ret­i­cal in­sight in­to the beats of so­ca. He agreed that there was no such thing as a "new" wave of mu­sic be­ing clas­si­fied as afroso­ca. He be­lieved ca­lyp­so mu­sic came from the African in­flu­ence left in the Caribbean af­ter slav­ery. Ca­lyp­so which evolved in­to so­ca al­ways car­ried African beats.

He said so­ca, dance­hall, what was called dub mu­sic and reg­gae all have the same syn­co­pa­tion. "They all came from the same ori­gin.

What we saw was the mesh­ing of gen­res, but the ori­gin re­mained the same. That's why a dance hall song can eas­i­ly be mixed with a so­ca or reg­gae–be­cause they all come from one ori­gin," he ex­plained.

"I can play you some old maxi taxi dub or so­ca right now, and then play some of these cur­rent songs from African artistes, and you would re­alise, they are ex­act­ly the same. None of this is new and that is a fact."

He said al­though we live on dif­fer­ent sides of the world, when we hear some­thing that seems to be a new sound or a trend­ing beat, it re­al­ly isn't: "Some of these beats we are now fa­mil­iar with have been ex­ist­ing for some­times five to sev­en years al­ready in oth­er parts of the world."

He said the mu­sic in­dus­try in Africa has re­alised a coun­try on this side of the world has a sim­i­lar sound in its na­tive mu­sic and has just cap­i­talised on that.

Pereira said African artistes like Timaya, Run­town, Flavour and oth­ers have all ze­roed in on the ac­tion.

"Even if you lis­ten to Justin Bieber's Sor­ry, you can hear so­ca in it, as well as a hint of dance­hall and reg­gae­ton."He said you can­not re­al­ly clas­si­fy what is trend­ing mu­sic as most is a re­cur­rence of what was there be­fore. Rather, the beats we hear are heav­i­ly syn­co­pat­ed to give that ad­di­tion­al rhythm that we look for­ward to in mu­sic as Caribbean peo­ple.