Trinidad Calypso as Postmodernism in the Diaspora: Linking Rhythms, Lyrics, and the Ancestral Spirits

This paper examines how the Trinidad calypso has sought to maintain its relevance both to its society and within the global musical environment. Through an examination of its general rhythmic, lyrical, and African-based religious tenets, the discussion seeks to answer the question of how this primarily African-based musical genre has sought to reach out to the wider world while maintaining a relationship with its source community. Against this background, I examine one of calypso’s more discernable contemporary phenomena: a returning of the art form to its African roots through the incorporation by its artists and performers of a more pronounced level of African ancestral religiosity within the genre.