Technology Constructing Culture: Tracking Soca's First "Post-"

Curwen Best
2001 Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism  
The Caribbean has for a while now faced the challenge of its academic criticism keeping pace with cutting edge developments in popular culture. At the end of the twentieth century culture reveals itself as an important entry point for gaining a fuller understanding of Caribbean society. Like economic data, cultural data is similarly loaded with information that can reveal the present and future condition of the Caribbean. But many of the recent texts that engage the subject of calypso in the
more » ... ibbean hardly give sufficient focus to the dynamic musical and technological shifts in calypsos dance music, soca, during the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, recent works have stayed away from the very important subject of the present evolution of calypso into other hardcore styles, such as ringbang. In effect, this important cultural indicator has not come in for serious scrutiny, and this absence of discourse represents a gap in the regions knowledge about the transformation of its calypso culture in the late twentieth century. Some of the major works published in this field stay clear of soca and post-soca developments, for example, Peter Manuel et al., Caribbean Currents; John Small Axe 9,
doi:10.1353/smx.2001.0001 fatcat:src3cxrwfnhttnrh57vssdcuxe