A study of calypso music from its early days to the latest victory songs of carnival. With discography, photos of leading calypsonians, and updated bibliography from original 1982 edition.

Roy Cape is a Trinidadian saxophonist active as a band musician for more than fifty years and as a bandleader for more than thirty. He is known throughout the islands and the Caribbean diasporas in North America and Europe. Part ethnography, part biography, and part Caribbean music history, Roy Cape is about the making of reputation and circulation, and about the meaning of labor and work ethics. An experiment in storytelling, it joins Roy's voice with that of ethnomusicologist Jocelyne Guilbault. The idea for the book emerged from an exchange they had while discussing Roy's journey as a performer and bandleader. In conversation, they began experimenting with voice, with who takes the lead, who says what, when, to whom, and why. Their book reflects that dynamic, combining first-person narrative, dialogue, and the polyphony of Roy's bandmates' voices. Listening to recordings and looking at old photographs elicited more recollections, which allowed Roy to expand on recurring themes and motifs. This congenial, candid book offers different ways of knowing Roy's labor of love—his sound and work through sound, his reputation and circulation as a renowned musician and bandleader in the world.

"A significant contribution to the field of calypso studies. . . . Few published works have taken this extensive a look at the political calypsos and what informs them."--Keith Q. Warner, George Mason University, author of Kaiso! The Trinidad Calypso Calypso, a traditional form of music in the Caribbean, began in Trinidad and Tobago as a subtle protest against British rule. Influenced by African and native Caribbean rhythms, the calypso (along with Jamaican reggae) defines the music of the region. Louis Regis examines the evolution of the political calypso from 1962 to 1987, the period of Trinidad/Tobago's independence from Britain, and presents the text of lyrics from this popular folk-urban musical form. Following the songs and their themes chronologically from 1962 forward, Regis discovers the social history, cultural attitudes, and political commentary embedded within the music. He discusses the uneasy alliance between the performer and the politician, the political moods and postures emphasized in the songs, and the national identity of the calypso. Drawing upon voluminous research, Regis's study brings to light little-known and unrecorded songs. With a concluding chapter on the calypso's artistic and performance elements, it will appeal both to specialists in ethnomusicology and to general readers who enjoy the calypso. Louis Regis, the author of Maestro: The True Master and Black Stalin: The Caribbean Man, is one of the West Indies' foremost authorities on the calypso. He teaches at Pleasantville Senior Comprehensive School in Trinidad.

An innovative analysis of how ideas of Indian identity negotiated within the Indian diaspora in Trinidad affect cultural identities "back home" in India.