“Calypso is the most important music in the world,” says musician Jesse Ryan of the music originating in the twin island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. We talk via screens as I interview him for this article.
We are both in Toronto, and share common origins and ideas. We agree that calypso shares an ancestral musical and cultural thread with all diasporic cultures that originated in Africa and spread throughout the world – to Cuba, to the French- and English-speaking Caribbean and to Brazil – via the chattel slavery system. We both recognize that calypso as a form, speaks to and about power, culture, social dynamics and the evolution of a people. Ryan surprises me however when he says, “Because of its sheer popularity between the 40s and the 70s, it deeply influenced other forms; in the U.S. in the 50s and 60s, it rivalled rock ’n’ roll. Every club had regular calypso-themed events.”