Music of Barbados

Barbadian traditional folk songs are heavily influenced by the music of England. Many traditional songs concern events current at the time of their composition, such as the emancipation of the slaves of Barbados, and the coronations of Victoria, George V, and Elizabeth II; this song tradition dates back to 1650. The most influential Barbadian folk songs are associated with the island's lower-class labourers, who have held on to their folk heritage.

Some Barbadian songs and stories made their way back to England, most famously "Inckle the English Sailor" and "Yarico the Indian Maid", which became English plays and an opera by George Coleman with music by Samuel Arnold, and firsty performed in London in 1787.[6][7]

Contemporary Barbadian folk songs, especially through the pioneering albums of author and singer-songwriter Anthony Kellman, show a bold fusion of indigenous rhythms such as tuk and calypso with African, Latin, jazz, pop, and East Indian influences. Kellman's songs such as "Mountain" (from 2000 album "Wings of A Stranger"); "King Jaja" and "My Dog, Your Dog" (from 2005 album "Limestone"); and "If You See My Girl" and "Tuk, Tabla, and Fedounoum" (from 2009 album Blood Mates), exemplify his eclectic style. More than any of his contemporaries, Kellman, through his songs, poems, and novels, demonstrates what it means to be Barbadian through a hybrid mix of African and European cultural elements.[8]

Barbadian folk dances include a wide variety of styles, performed at Landship, holidays and other occasions. Dancers and other performers at the crop over festivals, for example, are popular and an iconic part of Barbadian culture, known for dancing in the costumes of sugarcane-cutters. The Landship movement features song and dance meant to imitate the passage of a Royal Navy ship through rough seas; Landship and other occasions also feature African-derived improvised and complexly-rhythmic dances, and British hornpipes, jigs, maypole dances and Marches.[3]

The Jean and Johnnie dance was an important part of Barbadian culture until it was banned in the 19th century. This was a popular fertility dance performed outdoors at plantation fairs and other festivals, and was functional in that it allowed women to show off to men, and more rarely, vice versa. The dance was eventually banned because the dance was associated with non-Christian African traditions.[3]

The Barbadian folk tradition is home to a great variety of musical instruments, imported from Africa, Great Britain or other Caribbean islands. The most central instrument group in Barbadian culture is the percussion instruments. These include numerous drums, among them the pump and the tum tum, made from a hollowed-out tree trunk, the side snare drum and a double-headed bass drum of tuk bands. Folk musicians also use gongs made from tree trunks, bones, rook jaw, triangle, cymbals, bottles filled with water, and xylophones. Rattles are also widespread, and include the pan-Antillean shak-shak and the calabash, de shot and rattle. More recently imported folk percussion instruments include the conga and bongo from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Cuba, and the tambourine.[3]

String and wind instruments play an important role in Barbadian folk culture, especially the bow-fiddle, banjo and acoustic guitar; more modern groups also use an electric and bass guitar. The shukster is a distinctive instrument, made by stretching a guitar string between two sides of a house. Traditional Barbadian wind instruments are largely metal, but in their folk origins, were made out of locally found materials. Barbadian villagers burned fingerholes, for example, on bamboo tubes, made trumpets out of conch shells and pipes from pumpkin vines. Many modern groups use harmonica, accordion, alto and tenor saxophone, trumpet and trombone.[3]

Though Western classical and other musics play an important role in Anglican church services on Barbados, religion and folk music are closely intertwined in the everyday lives of most Barbadians. The basis for religious folk music is the Anglican hymn, a kind of praise song mostly sung on Sundays, a day when Christian Barbadians come together with family members to sing and praise God to ask for strength for the next week's work.[9]

Pentecostal music has become a part of Barbadian religious and musical traditions since the 1920s. Music plays a role in Pentecostal ceremonies, and is provided by emotional and improvised performances accompanied tambourines. In addition to the Anglican and Pentecostal traditions, Rastafarian music has spread to the island in more recent years, along with African American musical forms, especially gospel, and the Spiritual Baptist religion, which derives from the Trinidadian Shango cult that spread to Barbados in the 1960s.[3] One of the more Internationally known religious music groups from Barbados are The Silvertones of Barbados.

A number of holidays, festivals and other celebrations play an integral role in Barbadian folk, and popular, music. Whitsuntide, Christmas, and Easter are important, each associated with their own musical traditions, as are distinctly Barbadian festivities like the crop over festival and the Landship movement.

The original crop over festival celebrated the end of the sugarcane harvest. These festivals were held in the great house of the plantations, and included both slaves and plantation managers. Celebrations included drinking competitions, feasting, song and dance, and climbing a greased pole. Musical accompaniment was provided by triangle, fiddle, drums and a guitar, played by slave entertainers. Crop over festivals continue to play a part of Barbadian culture, and always feature music by performers in sugarcane-cutting costumes, even though many modern performers are not themselves sugarcane-cutters.[10]

The Barbadian Landship movement is an informal entertainment organization which mocks, through mimicry and satire, the Royal Navy. Landship began in 1837, founded by an individual known variously as Moses Ward and Moses Wood, in Britton's Hall in Seamen's Village. The structure of the Landship organization mirrors the structure of the Royal Navy, with a "ship" which is connected to a "dock" (a wooden house similar to a chattel house), and leaders known as Lord High Admiral, Captain, Boatswain and other navy ranks. Each unit is named like a typical navy ship and may include actual names of British ships or places. Landship performances symbolize and reflect the passage of ships through rough seas. Parades, jigs, hornpipes, maypole dances and other music and dance types are a part of the Landship Society's celebrations. The Council of the Barbados Landship Association regulates the movement.[3][11]

Barbadian Christmas music is mostly based on church and concert hall performances, where typical North American Christmas carols are performed, such as "White Christmas" and "Silver Bells", alongside works by English composers like William Byrd, Henry Walford Davies and Thomas Tallis. In more recent years, calypso, reggae and other new elements have become a part of local Christmas traditions. As recently as the 1960s, Barbados was home to a distinctive practice, in which scrubbers travelled from house to house singing hymns and receiving rewards from households.[3]

Tuk bands are Barbadian musical ensembles, consisting of a bow-fiddle or pennywhistle flute, kittle triangle and a snare and double-headed bass drum. The kittle and bass drum provide the rhythm, while the flute gives the melody.[12] The drums are light-weight so they can be carried easily, and are made by both rural villagers and drummers using cured sheepskin and goatskin. Tuk bands are based on the British military's regimental bands, which played for many years for special occasions, like visiting royalty and coronations. The tuk sound has evolved over the years, as has the instrumentation, with the bow-fiddle used before being most commonly replaced by the pennywhistle flute.[3] Tuk bands are now most common in Landship events, but are still sometimes independent. On their own, tuk bands are generally accompanied by a range of iconic Barbadian characters, including "shaggy bears", "mother sally", "the steel donkey" and "green monkeys".[12] The upbeat modern sound of tuk ensembles are a distinctly Barbadian blend of African and British musics.[12][13]

Tea meetings are celebrations held in society lodges or school halls, and feature both solo and group performance, theatrical rhetoric and oratory, and other activities. After declining following World War I, tea meetings have recently been revived and have regained their widespread popularity. They are held at nighttime, beginning at 9:00 pm and continuing until midnight, when there is a two-hour break for food and drink before the tea meeting is resumed.[3]

Spouge is a style of Barbadian popular music created by Jackie Opel in the 1960s. It is primarily a fusion of Jamaican ska with Trinidadian calypso, but is also influenced by a wide variety of musics from the British Isles and United States, include sea shanties, hymns and spirituals. Spouge instrumentation originally consisted of cowbell, bass guitar, trap set and various other electronic and percussion instruments, later augmented by saxophone, trombone and trumpets.[16] Of these, the cowbell and the guitar are widely seen as the most integral part of the instrumentation, and are said to reflect the African origin of much of Barbadian music.[4]

Two different kinds of spouge were popular in the 1960s, raw spouge (Draytons Two style) and dragon spouge (Cassius Clay style). The spouge industry grew immensely by the end of the 1970s, and produced popular stars like The Escorts International, Blue Rhythm Combo, the Draytons Two and The Troubadours.[3] Recent years has seen a resurgence of interest in spouge among some quarters, with people like Desmond Weekes of the Draytons Two indicating that spouge should be encouraged because it is a national form that can reach international audiences and inspire the nation's pride in their cultural heritage.[4]

Jazz is a genre of music from the United States which reached Barbados by the end of the 1920s. The first major performer from the island was Lionel Gittens, who was followed by Percy Green, Maggie Goodridge and Clevie Gittens. These bandleaders played a variety of music, including swing, a kind of pop-jazz, Barbadian calypso and waltzes. With little recorded music on the island, radio broadcasts such as Willis Conover's Voice of America had a major influence. In 1937, riots over poverty and disenfranchisement occurred, and people like Clement Payne had risen to fame advocating reform. In that year, Payne was deported and riots broke out in Bridgetown, spreading throughout the island. The following year, the Barbados Labour Party was formed by C. A. Braithwaite and Grantley Adams.[17]

As political awareness among the black majority on the island spread, so did bebop, a kind of jazz which was associated, in the United States, with social activism and Afrocentrism. The first Barbadian bebop musician from the island was Keith Campbell, a pianist who had learned to play many styles while living in Trinidad during a time when American soldiers were stationed there, providing a ready market for bands that could play American music. Other musicians of this period included Ernie Small, a trumpeter and pianist, and bandleader St. Clare Jackman.[17]

In the 1950s, R&B and rock and roll became popular on the island, and many jazz bands found themselves pushed aside. A wave of Guyanese musicians also appeared on the island, including Colin Dyall, a saxophonist who later joined the Police Band, and the Ebe Gilkes Quartet. Though mainstream audiences were still listening to R&B and rock, modern jazz retained a small core of followers into the 1960s. The foundation of the Belair Jazz Club in Bridgetown in 1961 helped to keep this scene alive. With independence in 1966 came a focus on black Barbadian culture, and music like calypso, reggae and spouge, rather than the preoccupation with British standards of musical development. Calypso jazz arose during this period, pioneered by groups like the Schofield Pilgrim. The genre had developed by 1965, when original works like "Jouvert Morning" and "Calypso Lament" were composed. Artists like the pianist Adrian Clarke became popular during the 60s as well.[17]

In the early 1970s, jazz fan and critic Carl Moore launched a project to keep jazz alive on the island, while Zanda Alexander's performance in Bridgetown in 1972 is said to be the first Caribbean jazz festival. Oscar Peterson's 1976 performance in Trinidad also inspired Barbadian musicians, as did the radio program Jazz Jam, which was broadcast starting in the mid-70s on the Caribbean Broadcast Corporation. In 1983, however, the Belair Jazz Club closed, and was not replaced by any long-term clubs. Later in the 1980s, jazz declined greatly in popularity, though The National Cultural foundation organized the International Barbados/Caribbean Jazz Festival, which after a brief hiatus due to lack of sponsorship was resurrected by Gilbert Rowe of GMR international tours. Other performances were organized by a group called the Friends of Jazz. More jazz calypso fusion musicians appeared on the scene during this period, including Arturo Tappin, Nicholas Brancker, Andre Woodvine and Raf Robertson .[17]

Rock music is alive and well in Barbados, there have been several bands through the years that perform alternative, rock and even metal music. Most recently the Alt/Rock/Metal band Standing Penance formed in 2009. The band continues to operate in present-day and is the only act of this genre to be signed to an American record label.

• "Independence Day Military Parades". Class acts at Apes Hill. 15 December 2014. Retrieved 29 June 2015.
• "Independence Day Military Parades". All Info About Barbados. Archived from the original on 25 June 2006. Retrieved 6 June 2006.
• "Tuk band". All Info About Barbados. Archived from the original on 25 June 2006. Retrieved 6 June 2006.
• "The Barbados Landship". All Info About Barbados. Archived from the original on 25 June 2006. Retrieved 6 June 2006.
• Cameron, Sarah (1996). Caribbean Islands Handbook with the Bahamas. Passport Books. ISBN 0-8442-4907-6.
• De Ledesma, Charles; Georgia Popplewell (2000). "Put Water in the Brandy?". In Broughton, Simon; Ellingham, Mark; McConnachie, James; Duane, Orla (eds.). Rough Guide to World Music, Vol. 2: Latin & North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific. Rough Guides. pp. 507–526. ISBN 1-85828-636-0.
• "Calypso". Barbados Music. Barbados.org. Retrieved 3 December 2005.
• "Culture". Government of Barbados. Archived from the original on 5 October 2006. Retrieved 22 October 2006.
• David, Hinkson (26 March 2004). "Does spouge have a future? Part two". The Barbados Advocate.
• "Inkle and Yarico". Holders Barbados. Retrieved 4 June 2006.
• Pinckney, Warren R. Jr (Spring 1994). "Jazz in Barbados". American Music. Society for American Music. 12 (1): 58–88. doi:10.2307/3052491. JSTOR 3052491.
• Millington, Janice (1999). "Barbados". Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 2. Routledge. pp. 813–821. ISBN 0-8153-1865-0.
• "Barbados Cropover Road March Winners". Toronto-Lime. Archived from the original on 11 September 2006. Retrieved 22 October 2006.