Electro house music is "jiving" in the US and Europe, and in popular dance halls DJs are scratching the soca, mixing the beat perfectly with hip-hop and techno in a time of global economic funk. "People needed a change from the Depression. So they want a faster pace," says DJ Super Slice, a Trinidadian-born American who mixes music at Washington, DC, hot spots, Karma and Slaviya. Today's soca feels right at home on the party scene. Slice says it fits with electronic drum machines and techno, a fast and heavy style that matches classic German electronica with an American urban vibe. Soca brings swagger to the floor.
The old soca? Well, it seemed the hardest thing to dance to since virgin sacrifice. And difficult to understand, as well. At one time, soca reminded of a musician who couldn't find the key to his own cadence. Slow it down, slow it down..bring it up, bring it up. Partygoers know the mash-up drill well.
Relief, at last
"I was surprised at the crop of soca this year," says Slice. "When I heard Kees and Machel and other artistes, I figured these guys are on to something. It's really international." Did anyone get a sense of déjà vu while feteing during the Carnival season? Maybe it was the music. It had turned groovier, and more palatable to the feet and ear. Folks outside the dancehall sphere might have picked up an Eastern Caribbean influence, while others would've analysed the fresh format as a Caribbean thing. A Caricom of cultures. A fusion of West Indian rhythms.
Not at all
"When Soca Monarch was introduced 18 years ago, we used to do this new stuff, and then went on to a hard-energy soca to match the step of the Carnival beat," said a recording engineer in Port-of-Spain who preferred to remain anonymous because he wasn't authorised by his company to comment. "Our industry is based on money and some people wanted to hype the hard sound. But Alison Hinds and Edwin Yearwood of Barbados, and Biggie Irie (UK-born Barbadian and 2007 International Groovy Soca Monarch - Nah Goin' Home,) took the chic sound everywhere." Couple those success stories to Kevin Lyttle's and every honcho in the business could have foreseen where the gravy train was heading. Remember, it was Vincentian Lyttle who steered the 2004 hit, Turn Me On, into a gold record and to world acclaim.
"Irie and others, too, started to make noise with their songs," the engineer said. "But didn't get much airplay. So, why is the music easier to take this year? I guess it had to swing back our way, the right place. Because there's no pressure on Barbados and the other islands. Trinidad services other Carnivals in the Diaspora. We have to provide the cue. "Look at Kees, the first time he entered a Soca Monarch competition he blows everybody away with Wotless. It was hardly surprising. Kees just does music. He flirts with rock and other genres." Slice concurs, alluding to three Kees songs in which the singer "incorporated synthesizer sounds," not as common a variation in soca as in the dance club.
"American house clubs, where people go for the raves at 120-147 BPM (beats per minute - the pace of music measured by the number of beats occurring in 60 seconds), are playing the new soca as it is," says Slice, who has been a DJ for 25 years and beat-matching for 15. "Raves are identified with white kids and white clubs. Most Caribbean and other people of colour would dance to Jay-Z and Beyoncé at 100 BPM. Not today, though. Soca speaks for itself. Americans, white and black, would ask 'Who sang that song? They're more informed. They research the music. Google is their best friend. That didn't happen before."
Now the children of hip-hop are becoming fluent in soca as well. Take it from the late Shel-Shock, who never accepted that soca and hip-hop made for strange bedfellows. In an interview with record engineer Robin Foster, Shel-Shock regarded soca and hip-hop to be similar in musical style. "Just the accent and phrasing are different," he said. Foster agrees, offering a plausible argument. "If Usher had sung Roll It' it'd be hip-hop. Yet it spins as soca for Alison Hinds." Still and all, Foster won't subscribe to Wayne Small's conviction that the soca sound dictates pace. Small, weekend mixmaster at Levels (Ariapita Ave and Taylor St in Woodbrook), trades on the local dancehall platform as DJ Joy Juice. He also serves as Rent-A-Amp Sound and Lighting Company's personal DJ.
Small says the change in the soca trend to house music, which courses through the feet at 118-130 BPM, has a great deal to do with Rhythm and Blues. "R&B hits run on the same speed," Small says, "so soca found it easier to run at that rate because of, for example, Rihanna's Only Girl, which is a club tune that you can mix with any of this year's soca hits and people will keep on partying. "In 2010, Party Hard by Donea'o, and Swappi's Na go Play received abundant airplay all year, because, after Carnival, soca takes a dive, so when you have that beat, it keeps a momentum going throughout the year," says Small.
"You could sit, wine, or tap your feet. The music takes you from a bar into a club. It actually makes you feel to dance. House music and Groovy Soca have the same family. The bass line and snare is the basic backbone of the whole structure." Indeed, most promoters concoct a beat and invite artistes to wrap themselves around it. Small has an easy talent for where the music is going and how to manipulate patrons on the dance floor. At UNC's "dollar fete" in January, he marveled at his superb mixing of new soca rhythms with Stereo Love, by Romanian musician/producer Edward Maya, and the
"thousands" that gravitated to the hybridisation without missing a beat astonished him. "Then I realised I could play club music with soca. Even dancehall artistes are renaming their works as house music. Total crossover. And that's where we are. "When I first heard Wotless after 20 seconds, I knew it would become a hit. The intro was not regular. Your foot start to listen and you begin to tap and pick up the vibe of the tune. It was the keyboard hook. So new wave! Same with 'Trini' - 120-122 BPM." Small boasts of playing Wotless three times a night without anybody complaining. He'd jam Groovy Soca for more than an hour and everybody would love this little night music, the way Mozart remains so popular today.
"It's the American influence not Eastern Caribbean. Lots of Trinis live abroad, so soca can definitely make it on the international scene," Small says. Julie Slater, 21, a graduate student at CW Post in Long Island, New York, follows Small's thread all the way to the pulse of her heritage. An American of Trinidadian parentage, she occasionally takes in club music with friends. Slater says she was bowled over by a roommate's inclusion of Machel Montano's music on her IPod.
"She didn't know where he came from, and I didn't know the song," Slater says. "That's telling. That showed me soca is starting to become more of a staple. It's been on the (cusp) of mainstream for quite some time, and it's a positive movement, bringing Trinidadian culture into the mix." Slater's longing, though, is for soca to never ever lose its originality. "I hear a lot of techno in the clubs, and not necessarily Caribbean culture and I sense a techno feel to some of the Machel songs that I hear. Maybe the world is ready to receive this new soca beat," Slater says. But, is Slater's world ready for lyrics such as these:
A man is a fish that eats every minute
Woman, give him de time he ask for
Or you're gonna find him next door
If you feed it
You won't regret it
Don't let him ask for de ting
Because you go cause your own problem
Or,
She wining like a spider
She come to misbehave
And,
Take waist and let it flow
When I meet you by the bar
I want to get your number
Well, all right then. Same strength on BET and MTV wavelengths.
