Localize It: Rock, Cosmopolitanism, and the Nation in Trinidad

"Localize It": Rock, Cosmopolitanism, and the Nation in TrinidadAuthor(s): Timothy RommenSource: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Fall, 2007), pp. 371-401Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for EthnomusicologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20174543 .

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Vol. 51, No. 3 E?HNOMUSICOLOCiY Fall 2007

"Localize It": Rock, Cosmopolitanism, and the Nation in Trinidad

Timothy Rommen / University of Pennsylvania

"Radio Luxembourg": Are You Hearing Me?

Haven't you heard the word? We're packing up, we're moving to Luxembourg!

?jointpop

The

lyrics above constitute a bit of the chorus to the song "Radio Lux

embourg." Written by theTrinidadian rock band jointpop, the song signals not only their affinity with pirate radio in general, but also their attraction to the resistance associated with that specific station. Radio Luxembourg, the radio station famous for putting all kinds of things on the air that, under

ordinary circumstances, might never have been played, holds a special place in jointpop's imagination in large part because the band has been fighting their own (mostly losing) battle for airplay in Trinidad for quite some time now. Radio Luxembourg, then, signifies in a very real sense jointpop's own

struggle to be heard, and this not least because the Trinidadian rock scene remains marginal to the musical life of the nation-at-large?a musical life that

continues to be dominated by the sounds of soca, dancehall, r&b, hip hop, chutney-soca, and calypso. This marginal position is an important aspect of the scene that I will explore in greater detail in the following pages.

Another aspect of "Radio Luxembourg" bears mention here, for the song illustrates the band's willingness to look beyond the nation in order to recover

metaphors for life at home; it expresses a cosmopolitan perspective that I will explore in greater detail throughout this article. This self-consciously cosmopolitan perspective informs not only the lyrical themes toward which

jointpop orients itself, but also the musical models upon which the band builds its sound; this approach to sound and ideas is generally characteristic of theTrinidadian rock scene as a whole. That said, opinions differ widely as to

? 2007 by the Society for Ethnomusicology



372 Ethnomusicology Fall 2007

what identifying with rock music might mean (and sound like) in Trinidad. Is rock best conceptualized as participation in the global mainstream or should it serve as a vehicle for the promotion of local sounds and ideas? Is it possible effectively to combine both of these extremes? Or, most defiantly, are these

questions even relevant in the case of rock? According to this logic, music is local simply because it is considered as such by local artists and fans.

The substance of these questions is not all that new. Many pages have

already been written challenging us to think about cosmopolitanism from a wide range of perspectives and some of those pages have informed my own work in particularly helpful ways (including Appiah 2006; Bilby 1999; Guilbault 1993; Turino 2000). The answers that Trinidadian rock musicians are offering in response to these questions, furthermore, wrestle with local/

global dynamics that are understood as characteristic of cosmopolitanism in

general. On the one hand, musicians and fans are looking beyond the nation to shape their sound worlds and to identify, in classic cosmopolitan parlance, as citizens of the world. On the other hand, however, the musical style with

which they identify clears space within theTrinidadian national and cultural contexts they inhabit from day to day?clears space that affords them the freedom to rethink and, perhaps, even to reshape the face and sound of the nation. In this sense, both centrifugal and centripetal forces, each operating at different speeds and following different routes, but both engendered through identification with rock music, combine to offer a context within which to

think about the journeys that a cosmopolitan perspective can instantiate at

home. I am reminded here of Rex Nettleford's book Inward Stretch, Outward Reach: A Voice from the Caribbean (1993), and suggest that an inversion of the title might offer a useful way of approaching the rock scene in Trinidad. Bands like jointpop are, after all, engaged in an outward stretch and a con

comitant inward reach, and this is the process?the journey?I am interested in exploring here.

There is, however, an added dimension?a further dynamic?playing out in the Trinidadian rock scene, one that holds out the potential for address

ing the particularly fraught cultural politics within the nation through the

performance of rock music. And this not least because the ways through which rock musicians are able to circumvent the cultural politics attendant to local musical styles such as calypso and chutney, for example, suggest the possibility of reconfiguring the terms upon which cultural politics are

negotiated in Trinidad. In the pages that follow, I first trace the history of Trinidad's rock scene

in general, and then focus specific attention on the music and careers of

three bands?jointpop, Orange Sky, and Incert Coin?each of which handles the questions and issues raised above quite differently. In the process of de

veloping these three case studies, I will explore some of the ways that rock music functions in Trinidad by interrogating the significance of the scene's



Kommen: "Localize It" 3 73

demographics and by thinking about the claims (and shortcomings) of mul ticulturalism and about the cultural politics attendant to this Trinidadian context. I will then briefly explore the extent to which cosmopolitanism can

open some alternative spaces in the face of nationalist discourses of place and authenticity and draw some preliminary conclusions about rock music's localized place(s) in Trinidad.

Outward Stretch: Of Musicians and Media

The story I would like to tell begins in the late 1970s with the emergence of the first actively gigging rock bands in Trinidad. The scene had been taking shape before then among friends and in front of record players, of course, but the interface between private and public spheres really started when bands

began to take the stage. During that time, and continuing until the early 1990s, theTrinidadian government was not issuing radio and television licenses to

private companies and investors. This meant that programming on the three radio stations (610AM, 730AM, and 100FM) remained quite limited in some

respects. Local musics such as calypso and, a bit later on, soca, were played in

greater proportion to non-local musics during those years, especially when

compared to today's programming trends, with the result that rock music was not often heard over the airwaves in Trinidad.

An interesting by-product of the privatization of the telecommunications sector in the late 1980's and 90s has been the increasing marginalization of local musics in radio playlists. While several stations continue to promote soca, calypso, and chutney-soca, year-round, these have become increasingly less visible (audible) in the current media landscape, and this in part because

pop, r&b, hip-hop, and dancehall are filling much of the available airtime. One of the consequences of this state of affairs is that rock musicians, who have been striving to foreground their own, marginal sounds, have found that theirs is not an isolated struggle?all local musicians are working to counteract these market trends.

The soca artist Ronnie Mclntosh, contrasting the media's interactions

with local soca singers to its treatment of Jamaican musicians, had this to say in a 1999 interview with Joan Rampersad: "When you take your music to the

stations, for some reason, local entertainers have to be scanned by security, from there to an office, then someone has to listen to it first and then decide if to play it or not. But not so with the Jamaican artists, especially if they singing so-called soca. If we were to get the same amount of rotation as the

foreign artistes, we will do better" (Rampersad 1999:4). The rock musicians I am interested in thinking about in this essay share some of these frustrations, but are even more unlikely to find satisfaction than is Ronnie Mclntosh, and this not least because their chosen musical style is generally not considered local in the first place.



374 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2007

Returning for the moment to the 1970s and 80s, however, the closest that radio stations came to playing rock music was to spin some pop and r&b selections from the Billboard charts. One of the consequences of these

programming decisions was the lack of a market for rock albums at local record stores, which, by extension, meant that the practice of importing rock records for retail purposes was virtually unheard of during this period. The bottom line for rock musicians and fans in Trinidad was that the odd Rolling Stone magazine or the recording purchased while traveling abroad became

precious and important sources of information about the rock scene. Not

surprisingly, members of the upper-middle and upper classes were the most

likely travelers, and white Trinidadians, accordingly, accounted for a rather

high percentage of the early rock musicians in Trinidad. This early pattern of consumption and dissemination betrayed a class

based distinction that, nevertheless, continues to operate even in the con

temporary moment, albeit in a somewhat more moderated form. The cost

of instruments and rehearsal spaces or, for fans, ticket prices, cover charges,

and transportation costs, made (and continue to make) the rock music scene

somewhat more expensive to enjoy than other forms of musical entertainment

in Trinidad. Rock music, then, continues to be the purview of a predominantly middle class community of artists and fans. That said, it is today a much more

economically and ethnically diverse community than it was in the early 1970s. I will return to issues of class and ethnicity in the pages that follow.

The scene grew very slowly during these early years and bands restrict

ed their repertories almost exclusively to cover songs. From the late 1970s

through the middle of the 1980s there were fewer than ten nationally popular bands and these included acts like Last Supper, Dominion Status,The Playboys, Paradise, and the Nitedogs. Because very little original rock music was being written, virtually no bands spent the money and time to record their sound,

a fact that makes it difficult to talk about the music of these early years in

anything but the most general terms. Bands like the Nitedogs, who did manage to commit two original compositions to a 45rpm record in 1984 ("Vantage" and "Give It All Away"), were the exception rather than the rule.

While these bands were all somewhat active (playing several shows a

year), it wasn't until 1983 that a rock band gained widespread popularity in Trinidad. The band was called Touchdown and was modeled on the hard

rock image of the early and mid 1980s. They mastered a repertory of songs

ranging from Rush to Ozzie Ozbourne, from Van Halen to Twisted Sister, and made sure that they looked the part. By the late 1980s,Touchdown was the

marquee rock band in Trinidad and their shows became the standard by which other bands could measure their own performances. According to

Gary Hector, a veteran of the scene (and the founder of jointpop),"[Touch down] made real, real, real, money in Trinidad ... five white guys, long hair, it



Rommen: "Localize It" 375

had all the guitars and everything. Everybody looked good. They were real

good at what they do, you know? So they were well paid, the leader was a

real shrewd, shrewd business man ... They lick it up" (p.c. 11 September 2004,Trinidad). The commercial success ofTouchdown was paralleled in the media by the debut of a weekly, hour-long show called "Rock Concert" on

100FM in 1987?a sign that the fledgling market for rock music in Trinidad was beginning to prompt responses by the media. Mike Ross, another veteran of the scene, recalled the importance of "Rock Concert" as follows: "We used to huddle around the radio just to hear that show. It was like a ritual... We

learned a lot of what we knew about rock from checking out that show"

(p.c. 10 September 2004,Trinidad). In 1989 the government's position regarding telecommunications changed,

a change that moved toward privatization and prompted the issue of a host of new radio licenses during the next decade. The increase in radio stations, of

course, also led to more careful attention to market segmentation and niche

marketing within the industry and, not surprisingly, gradually contributed to

greater access to rock music within the nation. It was during the 1990s, then, that record stores, responding to market trends, began to import rock music.

Specialty stores such as Bees HiFi in Chaguanas even came to cater directly to the rock and heavy metal music scene. These changes fed back into the scene itself, contributing to an atmosphere within which rock music was able, for the first time, to flourish. The number of bands increased dramatically in the early to mid 1990s and rock bands found it easier to book concert venues, in part because the fan base was also growing dramatically. Perhaps the most

interesting development was that by the middle of the decade original mu sic had become much more prevalent among bands. Bands like Lucifix,The

Orange Peel Groove, and The Oddfellows Local set the standard for the scene

by playing and recording styles ranging from death metal to roots rock. Even as these bands continued to grow the fan base and expand the scene, a most

important development began to take shape. The year 1991 marks the advent of what might be the single most sig

nificant media influence on the rock scene in Trinidad: the entrance of cable into the market. It would take several more years for cable to reach a large

percentage of households but by roughly 1994, cable was pumping MTV and VH1 into Trinidad's homes. Perhaps most importantly, Internet access also became available to a great many customers during the mid to late 1990s, and it should come as no surprise that young musicians increasingly seized these opportunities to educate themselves. Cable and the Internet drastically changed the terms upon which rock music was learned, played, and consumed in Trinidad. Many musicians who had learned and performed rock prior to the early 1990s?artists who had been, by necessity, forced largely to imagine

what rock music was?felt that these new developments had irrevocably




changed the atmosphere within the scene. Gary Hector, for example, found the new approach to rock somewhat lacking in depth and the young bands too confident of what rock was supposed to be. And yet, these developments in Trinidad's telecommunications sector contributed to another increase in the size and strength of the rock scene. Bands like Incert Coin,The Astral Garden,

Bazodi,Boomslang,Tripped and Falling, Xen, Necropolis, Atheleny,Skid"Nevely, and Fever Dog, to name just a few, began to explore an even wider range of musical styles, adding punk, hard core, doom metal, grunge, and alternative to concert bills around the country.

This explosion of new bands in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s was matched by a series of important developments in the scene: the local scene became extensive enough to support an annual pop/rock competi tion at The Anchorage beginning in 1996; to witness the birth of a weekly local rock show on 95.1FM in 2001 (hosted by Mike Ross and featuring the

music of Trinidadian bands); to warrant the introduction of new concert series such as "Antipop" and "Circle of Rock" in 2002 and 2003 respectively; and to keep several studios busy recording demos, EPs,1 full-length albums, and music videos. These developments toward increased visibility and legiti macy, however, also created a backlash in the form of a movement toward a renewed Trinidadian underground scene. This movement came in direct

response to what was seen by some artists as a selling-out to business and

marketing on the part of many bands. Accordingly, a concert series, started

by Gary Hector of jointpop and called "The Filth and the Fury," ran weekly for several months in 2001 at Club Limits in Maraval. The scene, then, became

explicitly self-critical during the late 1990s and early 2000s, further energiz ing an already active community of artists and fans.

Inward Reach: Of Styles and Ethnicities

Having traced the outlines of rock's increasing presence in Trinidad, I will briefly explore some of the social dynamics attendant to the scene.

Two aspects of the scene are, in my view, of special significance here: (1) rock music functions in direct contradistinction to styles like calypso and

chutney by providing an alternative space that has not yet been claimed by an ethnic group; (2) this alternative space offers some sense of freedom and relief from the cultural politics attendant to these styles. Put otherwise, the

very foreignness of rock music makes it an especially powerful symbolic language in Trinidad.

A bit of context is necessary in order to clarify these ideas and there is perhaps no better place to begin than to think about the overall shape of Trinidadian society. According to the most recent census data available

(2000), there are some 1.2 million people living in Trinidad. Of these, roughly




38% are Afro-Creole and 40% are Indo-Trinidadian. Roughly 21% are mixed, less than 1% are white, and another fraction of a percent or so claim Chinese

heritage. Other ethnicities, including citizens of Syrian and Lebanese heritage, for example, are also represented but in such small numbers as to remain confined to the category "other" (Republic 2004:2-3). We should, of course,

keep in mind that these figures reflect people's self-identifications and are,

accordingly, undoubtedly subject to reporting anomalies. It is also important to remember that statistical representation does not necessarily reflect an ac curate measure of the relative importance of particular ethnic groups within Trinidadian society Chinese, Syrian, and Lebanese presence in Trinidad may be

statistically small, but their visibility in, say, the textiles industry and in other small business ventures is quite high. These figures do, nevertheless, offer us at least a general shape of contemporary Trinidadian society?a multi-ethnic and

complex shape with which each successive government since independence (1962) has necessarily had to contend in order to forge a sense of unity and vision for the nation. Dr. Eric Williams,Trinidad's first prime minister, knew

that he needed to find a way of uniting Trinidadians toward the common goal of nation-building and attempted to do so in a now-famous address in which he argued that:

There can be no Mother India for those whose ancestors came from India ...

there can be no Mother Africa for those of African origin, and the Trinidad and

Tobago society is living a lie and heading for trouble if it seeks to create the im

pression or to allow others to act under the delusion that Trinidad and Tobago is an African society. There can be no Mother England and no dual loyalties ...

There can be no Mother China, even if one could agree as to which China is the

Mother; and there can be no Mother Syria or Mother Lebanon. A nation, like an

individual, can have only one Mother. The only Mother we recognise is Mother

Trinidad and Tobago, and Mother cannot discriminate between her children

(Williams 1981:281).

This attempt at unifying rhetorically a society splintered along ethnic fault-lines nevertheless failed, and this in large part because the cultural pro ductions that were actually institutionalized by the government in subsequent years were, almost without fail, of Afro-Creole extraction. Thus, calypso, steel

pan, and carnival continued to perform into silence cultural forms such as

Tan-singing (idiosyncratic light-classical music developed with reference to North Indian models), tassa drumming (a festival drumming tradition espe cially important during Hosay), and chutney (Manuel 2000; Korom 2003). It wasn't until the late 1970s and early 1980s, in fact, that chutney began to find its way into the national imaginary in Trinidad. While Dr. Williams's address posited Mother Trinidad as the only mother for all Trinidadians, the terms of inclusion into the?ostensibly multicultural?nation did not change appreciably for Indo-Trinidadians. To recognize Mother Trinidad, thus, still




meant entering into what amounted to an Afro-Creole national culture. It

should come as no surprise that this state of affairs caused its fair share of discontent and concern within the Indo-Trinidadian community.

Added to this political dimension of inter-ethnic relations in Trinidad has been the increasing economic success of Indo-Trinidadians. The growth

of Indo-Trinidadian economic power has been traced elsewhere by schol ars such as Selwyn Ryan and John La Guerre, but suffice it to say here that Afro-Creoles found themselves economically increasingly outstripped by Indo-Trinidadians, whether in small business ventures or in terms of employ

ment/ability (Ryan 1991; Ryan and La Guerre 1993). By the mid-1980s, this

growing Indo-Trinidadian economic power had translated to political power and, in the 1990s, Indo-Trinidadians succeeded in turning the political tables on Afro-Creoles, electing Basdeo Panday (of the predominantly Indo-Trini dadian supported United National Congress party) prime minister in 1995

(Ryan 1996). Thus both groups have historically felt justified in claiming to

be variously dispossessed, displaced, and/or disregarded at the hands of the other (Yelvington 1993;Munasinghe 2001; Ryan 1999; Allanar 2005).

It is in this socio-political climate that musical styles came to carry an extra measure of weight as expressions of particular identities and subject positions within the nation. Ronald Radano and Philip Bohlman put this as

follows: "The power of musical ownership that is so essential to the racial

imagination has an extraordinary global presence. In the most universal sense,

the condition whose presence is the most global is that of authenticity, the assertion that a particular music is ineluctably bound to a given group or a

given place"(2000:36). Accordingly, styles such as calypso and soca continue to be tied to the Afro-Creole community in Trinidad whereas chutney and tan

singing are understood as authentically Indo-Trinidadian forms of expression. And while artists and fans did break through these categories of ownership to explore mixtures, or simply to sing or participate in a different style, this

was the exception rather than the rule and the musicians were often soundly

criticized for these breaches of artistic propriety. Two examples should suffice to illustrate my point here. In the early

1970s, Lord Shorty experimented extensively with Indo-Trinidadian elements in his early soca compositions but was largely unsuccessful in selling the prod uct either to Afro-Creoles or to Indo-Trinidadians. He was, in fact, harshly criti

cized for his "Om Shanti," a song that incorporated a beloved Hindu mantra

into a text in which Shorty expressed his desire "to unite the people as one." Afro-Creoles couldn't understand the need to incorporate Indo-Trinidadian

materials into an Afro-Creole performance space, and Indo-Trinidadians, for

their part, were irritated that their culture was being appropriated?even

championed?by an Afro-Creole artist. Once Shorty moved away from the

overt use of Indo-Trinidadian materials and focused instead on incorporating



Rommen: "Localize It" 3 79

soul, funk, and r&b into his soca sound, he found increasing success (Guilbault 1997; Rommen 2007). There are other factors involved in this story as well, but cultural politics most certainly play an important, constitutive role.

Consider another brief example: In the late 1980s and early 1990s con

troversy raged over Indo-Trinidadian artists, like Drupatee, who sang a hybrid style called chutney-soca. Chutney-soca eventually grew popular enough that its artists were included briefly in the Soca Monarch competition, an

arrangement that was not taken lightly by either the Afro-Creole or the Indo Trinidadian fans of soca and chutney-soca. Chutney-soca, thus, found itself at the heart of a controversy that eventually led to a convenient compromise. In order to satisfy both groups involved, a new category for competition, called

the"Chutney-Soca Monarchy," was created in 1996. This move, certainly made the job of judging the soca competition more clear-cut (a happy development for Afro-Creoles), but it also had the effect of furthering the legitimization and institutionalization of the "separate but equal" policies for which Indo Trinidadian leaders had been pushing (Edmondson 1999; Niranjana 2006).

It is against the backdrop of this context that rock music comes to func tion in direct contradistinction to calypso and chutney. It does so by providing an alternative space that has not yet been claimed and circumscribed by an

ethnic group (and is therefore distinct from the spaces occupied by chutney,

calypso, and soca) and which consequently offers some sense of freedom and relief from these inter-ethnic struggles. While local whites constitute a

significant demographic group within the scene, mixed, Chinese, Syrian, and Lebanese Trinidadians are also quite heavily represented. Indo-Trinidadians and Afro-Creoles are also participants in the scene, with Indo-Trinidadians out

numbering Afro-Creoles by a significant margin, but the proportions indicate

a very different pattern of ethnic representation within the rock scene than is the case in either soca or chutney; the proportions reveal a much higher level of participation in the rock scene by these minority groups. The three bands discussed in this chapter, for example, include members that are vari

ously mixed, Indo-Trinidadian, Afro-Creole, Chinese, Syrian and local white, and their fans reflect these patterns.

The ethnic diversity of the scene, however, is counterbalanced by a per vasive economic factor in that middle class backgrounds are very common

among both artists and fans. These are Trinidadians who, regardless of ethnicity, are able to afford to participate in the scene and who share (at least gener

ally) a certain economic standing within the nation. They are, in effect, able to afford their participation in the rock scene from both a material/financial and cultural point of view. Class thus becomes, a means of transcending (or

ameliorating) ethnicity, a rather unsurprising but important point to which I will return below.

What I find quite fascinating about this state of affairs is that it becomes




reasonable to argue that Dr. Williams' multicultural vision of a single Mother Trinidad is best exemplified socially in a musical scene that most would con

sider culturally non-local. My suggestion here is quite different from Robin

Balliger's, who has argued that the rock scene in Trinidad, far from providing a context for unity, is a perfect example of social fragmentation in that Indo

Trinidadians and local whites in particular are able to eschew the normative

expectations of their respective communities within Trinidadian social life

(Balliger 2001). While I agree that this is undoubtedly a part of the scene, I am interested in exploring the extent to which the rock scene may actually

provide for a different way of approaching unity, one that feeds back into the nation and, by extension, back into the cultural politics with which artists

and fans are wrestling. And this not least because a music that is considered

non-local by most Trinidadians, nevertheless offers the greatest freedom from

local claims upon style by ethnic groups, opening the scene to broad partici

pation and fostering a sense of unity not easily achieved within more ethni

cally entrenched musical styles. By looking beyond the nation, artists and fans are able to draw into the nation a range of musical practices that occupy a

position of such Otherness within Trinidad that they are consequently freed to explore new ground on home turf, as it were.

And yet, rock music remains a double-edged sword. Within the scene, artists and fans are bound by their shared sense of community. Outside of the

scene, however, the artists who perform rock are not generally considered

creative participants in the cultural life of the nation. This dilemma might be expressed as follows: On the one hand, rock musicians and their fans are

participating in a style that side-steps the inter-ethnic conflict in their coun

try?a style which actually allows them to exemplify Dr. Williams's Mother Trinidad. On the other hand, however, performing in and identifying with this

style means that they themselves step beyond the bounds of conventionally agreed-upon Trinidadian cultural productions. This is not, of course, how

the artists themselves see the situation, but rather a product of the general

perception of rock music within the nation-at-large.

This dilemma really touches ground when it is connected to the current

debate over local airplay in Trinidad. Trinidadian musicians have, for some

time now, been demanding of Trinidadian radio and television stations a for mula that would guarantee a fair percentage of airtime for local music relative to non-local materials (this is an initiative involving all musicians, without

regard to whether they are soca artists, chutney singers, or calypsonians). An

excerpt from an interview with Incert Coin printed in the Trinidad Guardian

newspaper, puts the rock musician's role in this struggle into perspective:

"Many reject rock as devil music and don't consider it local."As [Bernard] Abreau

reflects on this [kind of] thinking, he bitterly remembers marching in heavy rain last year with other artistes in support of 50 per cent local music on the




airwaves. "Yet still,TUCO will not look at my thing as Trinidad culture, he says. If Incert Coin was being played on the radio all day long they will still say that

is foreign thing." (Andrews 2002)

Even though Bernard is himself a local musician and although he marches in support of all local musicians, including soca and chutney artists, his own contributions to local music will, he fears, never be recognized as such by the media or the government. This dilemma is as old as rock music's presence in Trinidad. Even as early as the mid-1980s, people were recognizing rock as

marginal to?but also quite different from?the general musical culture in Trinidad. The following commentary, from a letter to the editor of the Trinidad Guardian about a recent Touchdown show, is particularly revealing in that it

places questions of ethnicity and style in direct relationship:

As soon as "Touchdown" started playing, one couldn't help but wonder why is

it that these guys are not heard much on our media?is it that they are white

or not black? Or is it that they are not into soca? ... This concert just goes to show that however some may try to "Socarise or Africanise" the music and

culture of all of Trinidad and Tobago, there will always be forces like myself who

will be utterly against them. (Rock Fan 1991, emphasis added)

While this comment certainly concerns itself with the question of local musi cians and airplay, it also illustrates the prevailing sense that the government was, in fact, quite happy to continue fostering Mother Trinidad as an Afro Creole cultural space. Rock, standing as it does, outside these specifically cultural politics, remains at once socially open and culturally closed and these in opposite directions. Anyone can participate (if they can afford it), but the vast majority of the nation refuses to recognize as culturally valid the music that is produced within theTrinidadian rock scene.

One final, but very significant, contextual point needs to be raised here, and it concerns the overarching influence of the carnival phenomenon in Trinidadian musical life. Carnival is so deeply entrenched in the entertain ment industry, in the nation's tourist economy, and in the multiple registers at which local artistry and musicianship are authorized and validated that it affects conceptions of the local in powerful ways. Carnival as spectacle, as

event, as a series of institutions and competitions, and as the means to fame and visibility drives not only the way that music is produced, but also the seasonal patterns of local media exposure, the touring schedules of artists like

Machel Montano and Destra (to name but two influential soca artists), and access to capital (in the form of sponsorships and government funding). As

such, the musical styles and ensembles associated with carnival (especially calypso, chutney-soca, soca, and steelpan) inhabit spaces in the Trinidadian social imaginary that can be described as being quintessentially local.

Rock music, operating as it does outside of carnival, is thus interpreted in terms of a lack?in terms of what it is not (i.e. not local, not part of carnival,




not invested in local patterns of musical production, etc). This carnival-driven context is part of the backdrop against which rock musicians like Bernard Abreau consciously choose to identify with all local musicians (in order to counter that series of perceptions), but it is also part of the reason why rock artists are unlikely to wax optimistic about the likelihood of their actions

contributing to a significant shift in the terms upon which rock music is evaluated within the nation. Having traced, if ever so briefly, some of the so cio-cultural ground upon which the rock scene in Trinidad has developed, I now turn to an exploration of three bands, each of which arrives at different answers to the overarching questions regarding rock's meanings for iden

tity in Trinidad. I do so in roughly chronological order, starting with a band

comprised of first generation rock musicians, moving on to an exploration

of the second wave of rock musicians, and, finally, turning my attention to a

relatively young band.

Port of Spain Style: Getting in Others' Faces with jointpop In 2003 the Trinidadian rock band, jointpop, staged a mock coup in

protest of the Trinidadian media's policies regarding local music. Dressed in military fatigues and blatantly conjuring images of the Muslimeen coup attempt led by YasinAbu Bakr in 1990, jointpop proceeded to lay down de

mands to the media in a videotaped press conference. Among the demands

were: (1) Play more local music; (2) expand your sense of what local music

might include (like, for example, rock music performed by local bands); and, (3) start supporting local artists at least as much as international acts

in terms of how you allocate your sponsorship funds. The press conference

was designed to shock, but was deliberately downplayed by the media. The circumstances facing local artists, moreover, have not changed appreciably since that time.

Still upset and still vocal, jointpop continues to fight for Trinidadian artists. But the band, led by front man Gary Hector, does so from a rather marginal position, even by the standards of the local rock scene. This is the case not least because the band deliberately maintains an ambiguous, even tenuous

relationship with the local rock scene, which it considers plagued by an

overly image-conscious, post-MTV form of mimicry. In this sense, we could

talk about jointpop as performing in a doubly-marginalized space: (1) they play rock music in Trinidad and (2) they are wary of identifying themselves with the direction that the rock scene is taking in Trinidad. And yet the band continues to perform, to mentor, to encourage, and to voice their opinions

to other artists and to the nation.

Gary's desire to make explicit his Trinidadian approach to rock music

grew in direct proportion to his increasing disillusionment with the local




rock scene in general?a disillusionment with roots that run deeper than

jointpop. In 1993-94, when Gary was performing with his previous band, The Oddfellows Local, cable television was introduced and rapidly found its way into Trinidadian households. Within very short order, Gary noticed a major shift in the rock scene. Recalling his feelings during that time, Gary has said that,

When we first started we only played these little holes, which after a couple

nights would become a "scene"... and it was just people really diggin' the music.

Then two and a half years into it, it just started to draw this massive, full American

style rock, MTV type thing. It actually coincided with cable reaching Trinidad.

I remember one summer holiday, all of a sudden you had all the plaid shirts, stage

diving (Balliger 2001:268).

His growing uneasiness with the rapid commercialization of the rock scene

in Trinidad led Gary to disband The Oddfellows Local at the beginning of

1995. Saying that he was not "carrying this band through this mud," he re

moved himself from the scene, (re)kindled a love of the great calypsonians, and decided musically to resist the direction taken by many of the youn ger bands in Trinidad (p.c. 11 September 2004,Trinidad). When he formed

jointpop in 1996, then, it was with the firm conviction that he would do rock music his way and, hopefully, influence the scene and the nation in the process.

The new band, which added saxophone, flute, and percussion to the basic rock ensemble of two guitars, bass, and drums, began its career with a period of extensive musical exploration and experimentation; this was also a period of withdrawal in which the band actively claimed a new space for rock in Trinidad (the band's debut album, entitled Port of Spain Style, documents this

quite well). During these years, the band, which was comprised exclusively of veteran musicians who had been active on the scene well before the arrival

of technologies like cable and satellite television, deliberately performed in

spaces quite removed from the local rock scene. In an interview with Robin

Balliger, Gary cut right to the heart of what he felt was wrong with the rock

scene, saying that,'Tt's cable, it's all fashion and cable" (Balliger 2001:269). And in direct response to this state of affairs, jointpop changed their approach to

performance. Gary remembers that time as follows: "I pulled myself out of the rock scene from where I just came and where I have strengths. I just did not want to take the band there. So what we started to do was we would go find a venue and book it for ourselves and run it in our own way ... [leaning forward, waiving a hand, and speaking slowly and loudly] No rock 'n rollers in sight" (p.c. 11 September 2004,Trinidad).

The strong convictions jointpop expressed resonated with a wide range of Trinidadian artists and the band found itself playing in front of very diverse crowds. As Gary recalled in an interview," [jointpop] linked and lined up with




Tanker, Rudder, and you would see Ras Shorty and the children at our shows.2 So it started getting into a whole culture thing. They understand we are a rock band but they understand that we are a rock band with a Trinidad thing. It got real super patriotic." (p.c. 11 September 2004,Trinidad) One of the reasons for the band's broad appeal was undoubtedly related to the musical direction that

Gary decided to explore, for the band's sound clearly reflects and reinforces the ideas and values they so vehemently defend. Thus, while many rock art ists in Trinidad now perform in a studied approximation of American English, jointpop generally places a Trinidadian dialect prominently into the mix. The band creates a sound that reflects its debt to artists like the Rolling Stones and The Smiths on the one hand and to calypsonians like Sparrow and Kitchener on the other. For example, Gary delivers melodic lines often reminiscent of old time calypso, sung in a style audibly indebted to Mick Jagger, and punctuated now and again by the vocables so often used by calypsonians (ba la bah di, bam ba de). In order to get a better sense of jointpop's sonic textures, I briefly explore their song,"Crack, Pitbull, and Gun."

A brief analysis of this piece will help clarify what I see as a dynamic interaction between rock and calypso in jointpop's work. The overall effect created by the instrumentation, arrangement, and execution of the song can

be described as a rock tune that is performed in and breathes with a calypso sensibility. This song is comprised of three formal sections that I will here refer to as verse, pre-chorus, and chorus. I have transcribed a short excerpt from each section below (see Figure 1). The excerpts represent the basic harmonic and melodic materials as well as the rhythmic ideas and sonic tex

tures that predominate in each section. In order to give a sense of the overall

structure of the song and of how the phrases I have transcribed relate to the

larger whole, I am including the lyrics of the song, rendering in boldface the

lyrics that correspond to the transcription.

No, No, No, why Trini so?

Yes they want it, but like they want it all.

Like they need it, but like they need it all

And now we have it, look we have it all.

Of all the things we can do without

And of all the things which you could buy

Crack, pitbull and gun Some very strange people, yuh put we on the run

You have me bawlin no, no, no, no

No, no, no, why Trini so?

And now they get it, and look they get it all.

Eh they regret it, oh yes, regret it all

And now the have it so they flaunt it, oh Trini have it all.




Of all the things we can do without

Yes of all the things which you could buy

The rhythmic materials utilized throughout the song are drawn in vari ous ways from both rock and calypso traditions. For example, throughout the chorus the drum kit explores the alternating closed and open hi-hat, straight quarter note textures so prevalent in calypso recordings (see Figure 1, cho

rus). And yet, the drums also invoke rock conventions, and this is particularly evident in the pre-chorus, where the drums play a pattern that includes the ride cymbal in a way that is not particularly characteristic of calypso drum

ming (see Figure 1, pre-chorus). The bass, for its part, picks up on a rhythmic pattern typical of soca, reinforcing the harmonic motion on beats three and four of each measure. This occurs in the second half of the verse phrases (see

Figure 1, verse) and throughout the entire chorus (see Figure l,chorus).3The acoustic guitar also contributes its voice to the soca feel of the chorus, dou

bling the bass guitar's rhythmic line. The pre-chorus is the most indebted to

rock conventions while portions of the verse and the entire chorus engender rhythmic associations with calypso and soca.

This calypso/rock sensibility is reinforced by the band's approach to

lyrics, for jointpop's lyrics are very often cast in a style not unlike calypso, addressing current news, dealing with social issues, and providing a humor ous but incisive take on the nation's politics. The lyrics to "Crack, Pitbull and Gun," thus participate in the aesthetic and ethic of calypsos, in this case

engaging in social commentary regarding recent consumer trends and the

consequences of buying into those trends.

"Crack, Pitbull and Gun" clearly illustrates the materials that jointpop ex

plores in the course of their creative process?a process that results in songs

that rest somewhere between rock and calypso. But jointpop works out this balance in a variety of ways. For example, their song "La Belle Rosette," is

performed in a much more straight-forward folk-rock mode that relies more

heavily on its lyrics?and on a guest performer?in order to localize it as

specifically Trinidadian. The lyrics, delivered in Trinidadian dialect, pay hom

age to Beryl McBurnie, the founder of the Little CaribTheatre in Woodbrook, Trinidad. McBurnie was one of Trinidad's most recognized and influential

figures in the arts during the twentieth century, and by singing about such an important local individual, jointpop forges a clear association with the cultural history of the nation, claiming that local space for themselves in the process of singing the song. This song also features a guest appearance byAtaklan,one of the pioneers of theTrinidadian style called rapso, whose voice and lyrical style are quite well known throughout Trinidad. This folk rock tune, thus, becomes marked as something quite local in the process of performance.




Figure 1. "Crack, Pitbull and Gun," jointpop, transcribed from recording on Exile, Baby (2002). jointpop/Gary Hector, ? Copyright 2002. Used with

permission.

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These kinds of lyrical and musical strategies set the band apart from

other artists in the rock scene, most of whom are writing songs along the

lines of mainstream rock bands and cultivating a sound and image to match.

Musical choices made by jointpop are, in some ways, reminiscent of what

Tejumola Olaniyan, writing about FelaAnikulapo-Kuti,has called the"cosmo




politan nativist" perspective (Olaniyan 2001). Closer to home, geographically, at least, Ken Bilby has highlighted the relationship between cosmopolitanism and indigenization?between artists' outward stretch and parallel inward reach?as it plays out in the popular music of Suriname, noting that:

Processes of indigenization, in the Surinamese context, do not represent defensive

reactions against the effects of globalization any more than coexisting tendencies

toward cosmopolitanism represent the surrender of local identities in the face of

the homogenizing pressures exerted by global capitalism. Rather, both kinds of

processes center on the active mediation of identities which, for all their fluid

ity and multidimensionality, grow out of, and remain rooted in, contexts (both national and transnational) that are specifically Surinamese (and remain so even

when they connect to larger identities based on shared experience, common

histories, or cultural overlap [e.g. "Black Atlantic,""Pan-African,""Caribbean," or

"Third World" identities]) (Bilby 1999:262-63).

This same logic is at work, at least to some degree, in the Trinidadian rock scene. This holds true especially in the case of jointpop and, to a lesser de

gree, in the music of Orange Sky. The rock scene in Trinidad is on somewhat different footing than are Surinamese kaseko artists, however, and this pri marily because all of them, jointpop included, are self-consciously identifying themselves with rock and defying Trinidadians to tell them why this shouldn't be understood as local music (i.e. they are at once rock musicians and local

musicians). Some bands use more local markers than others but all of them are committed to the idea that they are, first and foremost, rock artists.

Gary and jointpop have found a niche that falls somewhere between the mainstream of local music and the international tone adopted by many of their fellow rock bands. Neither fully local (as in calypso, chutney, soca,

etc.), nor really international (read, North American), the band is careful to maintain this liminal position in Trinidad's musical life. This marginality was, moreover, reinforced when, in 2000, jointpop took an extended trip to New

York, where they played at several nightclubs. Gary recalls that "up there [New York] we totally some strange thing for them. Down here in Trinidad for the normal people [the nation] we just a rock band. So in a sense we just hanging out in the middle of existence?nowhere?which is the concept of Exile, Baby! [the band's second album]"(p.c. 11 September 2004,Trinidad). This idea of exile within one's own country?both musically and culturally?is a theme that clarified for Gary the place of jointpop in Trinidad. It also helped him further to articulate the oppositional character of the musical project he had envisioned for the band.

"Tug of War": Going Global with Orange Sky

Orange Sky is probably the best-known local rock band in Trinidad, both

by virtue of its musicians' relatively long tenure on the scene, but also be




cause the band, after several years of attempting to break into the interna tional market, released its debut North American album, entitled Upstairs,

with the California-based label Granite Records in September of 2005. They have consequently been traveling extensively (to record, master, and tour) finding themselves away from Trinidad more often than home during 2005 and 2006. The band maintains some of the local roots ideals of bands like

jointpop while simultaneously tapping two other sounds?roots reggae and

hard-edged rock. The current band came into being in 1999, but the core members of the band have been playing in prominent groups such as Lucifix, The Orange Peel Groove, and Jaundis-I since the early 1990s. As such, the formation of Orange Sky was greeted with anticipation within the scene and it took virtually no time to establish the band as one of the elite rock outfits in Trinidad.

Nigel Rojas, the band's lead guitarist, principal songwriter, and lead singer, writes lyrics that might best be characterized as humorous and/or relational in nature. By contrast to the lyrical focus Nigel cultivates, however, the range of musical styles that the band has performed throughout their career is quite broad. The song entitled "Disconnected" illustrates both of these statements.

The lyrics of this song encapsulate the rather different character of Nigel's content vis-?-vis the themes that occupy Gary Hector, for Nigel's lyrics are

generally less topical in relation to local events and strive for more universally accessible themes?strategies that are more likely to create international

appeal.

Time and time again and this is just as I expected And I feel so disconnected from the one that I neglected Give me a sign, so I'll know what's right for both of us

Living a lie, if the wine we drink is poisonous After today you will see, my love, a different way stay with me.

Musically, however, the song includes a brass arrangement that fulfills a sup

portive role not dissimilar to its function within a contemporary calypso arrangement. Steel drums also deliberately mark the track in a very specific

way as Trinidadian. The chorus is delivered very much in a local mode while the verses are sung with more of a "Yankee" inflection, a technique that

Nigel consistently deploys throughout Orange Sky's repertory. The term "Yankee" in this context refers to the practice prevalent throughout the Caribbean?and this especially among radio deejays?of approximating a

North American dialect. It has very little to do with the regional connota tions that this word often suggests in the United States, offering instead another way of using language that is at once different from the local patois and not tied to colonial histories (i.e. the Queen's English). Nigel makes a

point of playing with these linguistic possibilities and does so principally through these types of juxtapositions. But this playful approach to Ian




guage is, as I will illustrate shortly, also carefully calculated to create a very

important effect. Another important style that the band uses quite often is the reggae rock

sound. Reggae rock has, in fact, become somewhat of a hallmark of Orange

Sky's style. The song entitled "Hard Slap" illustrates this quite well (see Figure 2). I have transcribed a portion of the chorus and, again, include the lyrics in order to situate the transcribed passage within the larger whole of the piece, placing the transcribed portion in boldface.

I see what you're trying, your ego is lying But the truth that will set us free, is here burning in me.

Don't let me buss a slap in your ass

'Cause you come to fight me down but I have my armor on now

Don't let me buss a slap in your ass

'Cause every time we meet is a skinnin' teeth you greet me with.

You looking for something, from nothing comes nothing And the truth that will set us free, is here burning in me.

"Hard Slap" is a good example of Orange Sky's use of reggae rock in

that it incorporates stylistic allusions to rock, ska, and reggae, all of which

combine to create a unique sound within the Trinidadian rock scene. The

transcription is inadequate to the task of representing the actual performed sound of the piece, for both Nigel's vocal delivery and the bass guitar line are

located in a temporal space that is noticeably behind the beat, a hallmark of

reggae aesthetics. The bass and guitar lines are heavily influenced by reggae, and the drums explore and combine both reggae and rock aesthetics. Rock

drumming is most evident in that snare hits predominate (instead of rim

shots); the hi-hat work, though, is very much influenced by reggae drumming. Counterbalancing this reggae rock sound are several markers that suggest Trinidadian musical and lyrical practices, including at least the fact that the

lyrics bear some of the characteristics of a picong (a biting but generally playful verbal jab at an opponent) and that the band makes very prominent use of a horn section, which references the way that brass instruments are

arranged for calypso. But these markers are more subtle here than they are

in, say, jointpop's work, providing a good example of how regional, as op posed to national, the band is attempting to sound. In other words, Orange Sky is Trinidadian, yes, but Nigel is positioning the band as being from the

Caribbean, thereby including the band, to use Bilby's words again, into "larger identities based on shared experience, common histories, or cultural over

lap" (Bilby 1999). Since it is the Caribbean that holds Nigel's imagination it is no coincidence that Nigel has chosen to work with these musical ideas; these local and regional interests are calculated to set up a venture into the international scene. Orange Sky recently took another step toward the goal




of mainstream success; in order to pursue and secure their contract with

Granite Records, the band added another rhythm guitarist to its core of four musicians and turned toward writing more hard-edged rock songs.

That Orange Sky is a versatile band emerges quite clearly from even the most cursory acquaintance with their discography, but it should also be clear that their approach to style is quite different from that of jointpop. Whereas

jointpop remains almost defiantly removed from the search for a mainstream,

Orange Sky enjoys tapping into sounds that carry a certain weight as popu lar music, whether regionally or in the North American market. The reggae rock sound continues to be a viable vehicle for popularity within the region, and the harder-edged sound of their most recent material is calculated quite deliberately to appeal to the North American market. According to Nigel, he

Figure 2: "Hard Slap," Orange Sky, transcribed from recording on The Birds

and the Bees (2002). Orange Sky/Nigel Rojas, ? Copyright 2002. Used with

permission.

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was hearing from executives in the United States that "a black rock band out

of the Caribbean could mash up the world right now. So, that's what I was

waiting on, we just, we sat down, we had a meeting and it was like ok, we

bringing in another guitarist to chunky this thing up a little more" (p.c., Nigel Rojas, 14 September 2004,Trinidad). Orange Sky's most recent work then

represents a very careful bit of marketing and illustrates the attention that the band has paid to market trends and to racial politics in North America.

Fully aware that they will be fitting into what amounts to little more than an exoticized niche in the market (at least initially), Orange Sky feels that their change in sound is worth the potential reward. Nigel's incorporation of both Trinidadian and Yankee dialects, as well as of regional styles such as reggae, ensures that Orange Sky will remain marked as Other within the North American music industry. All in all, this constitutes a very different

approach to making music than that of jointpop. Orange Sky's recognition of international markets and their concern with finding a niche within these

markets, suggest that they are much more closely aligned with paradigms attendant to the world music market than they are with rock markets, and this not least because the band is highly aware of their Otherness within the mainstream and quite intent on using that difference to their advantage. I should also point out that, in anticipation of their potential popularity on

the international market, Orange Sky has been named International Ambas sadors by Trinidad's Ministry of Tourism. This is an exceedingly interesting and somewhat ironic development in light of the fact that rock music is still not considered Trinidadian by most of the nation.

Smiling Still: Shaping the Local with Incert Coin

Incert Coin is one of the many heavy metal/grunge/nu-metal bands that have been flourishing in Trinidad since the beginning of the 1990s. Incert Coin is also one of the most distinguished and prolific bands in Trinidad, hav

ing already released four full-length albums and currently enjoying a modest amount of airplay on media outlets such as XM Satellite Radio. In contradis tinction to both jointpop and Orange Sky, the five-member band writes songs in a manner virtually indistinguishable from its North American counterparts, incorporating neither national nor regional sounds in any way. James Amo w's

Yankee passes as a North American accent and their music is forged in the same mold as Korn, Sound Garden, Metallica, and System of a Down. Formed around a core of musicians from the Chaguanas area?a town in the central

part of Trinidad and home to a primarily Indo-Trinidadian population as well as the majority of the country's Heavy Metal bands?the band released their

first, self-titled album in 1998. Since that time, the band has won the pop-rock competition at The Anchorage in 2002, played for the Decibel Showcase in




Los Angeles, and developed into an excellent live act. Their lyrics are on the dark side, growing out of personal experiences and infused with a dose of nihilism. The titles of some of their songs convey this approach well: "Murder,"

"Shaddup,""Hollow Grave,""Fight,""Bridge to Nowhere,""Forgotten,""Bitter,"

"Burn My House Down,""Meacide," and "Despair."

The song "Silence Wins" offers a good illustration of the textures and

sounds that predominate in this band's style. The excerpt I include here is transcribed from the first verse and initial chorus of the song (see Figure 3).

Notice the 6/8 meter, the ambiguity introduced by performing a 4/f4 drum

pattern (snare hits on beats 3, 1, and 5 across two measures) against the continued 6/8 play of the bass, guitar, and vocals during the chorus. The

alternating lyrical and aggressive sections (verse-chorus), which are primar ily delineated by sonic markers such as the addition and subtraction of the second guitar from the texture, singing vs. screaming the lyrics, and the

activity level of the drummer, are very typical of Incert Coin's sound (and of recent metal bands in general). The intensity generated by the seven-string electric guitars that the band uses is also important here. The seventh string is traditionally tuned to the B below the low E on a six-string, allowing for

very low and, consequently, very dark chord voicings (see, for instance, the

chord played by guitar 2 in mm 11-12), but Incert Coin keeps their seventh

string tuned to A (a step below the standard tuning) in order to achieve even

more bass-heavy textures. Notice also that the entire excerpt is based on one

repeating ostinato pattern that can be represented as v-III-iv-i. All of these

characteristics constitute hallmarks of Incert Coin's style. Scott Johnstone,

the band's principal songwriter and guitarist, characterizes the band's sound as "downbeat, which is straightforward, slow metal but with groove" (quoted in Andrews 2002). The lyrics from Incert Coin's song "Reborn" illustrate the

types of themes that tend to occupy the band:

Here's the surgery for the lost and loneliest ones

Run to you and when the world seems faded

And your heart is breaking A space and time where you can just close your eyes And let this wash away your fears

There's a cure for jaded ears.

Now it feels like we're being reborn

Now it feels like we're being reborn.

Having illustrated the lyrical and musical approach of the band, I will now focus on the fact that Incert Coin was, for several years, chief among

several bands who refused to participate in the pop rock competition at

The Anchorage. When the band finally did participate in the competition in

2002, it had amassed such huge popularity that it easily won the event. The

band had refused to compete prior to this because they took issue with the




Figure 3: "Silence Wins," Incert Coin, transcribed from recording on Futility

(2004). Incert Coin/James Amow and Scott Johnstone, ? Copyright 2004. Used with permission.

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rules of the competition; before 2002 the competition was focused almost

exclusively on cover songs, and Incert Coin flatly refused to compete under these conditions. James Amow, the band's lead singer, puts it as follows: "Music is an art form, I believe you cannot trivialize it. Like any other artform, it's

supposed to mean something and to have a competition where you're basi

cally promoting craft instead of art ... because that's what covering songs is, basically you're plagiarizing other people's music" (quoted in Andrews, 2002). As illustration of their commitment to their art, it was not until after the competition rules were changed, allowing original music to be performed and judged, that Incert Coin agreed to participate in the event. While the band would love to break into the international market, Incert Coin continues




to focus on its own music and is not particularly interested in whether or not the music is marketable. In this sense, they have more in common with

jointpop than with Orange Sky.

"Localize It": Rock, Cosmopolitanism, and the Nation

Each of the bands I have introduced here offers a different perspective from which to think about meaning and identity in Trinidad's rock scene?

each participates in an overarching discourse that is bound up in coming to terms with both national and individual identity. As different as these bands are from each other in terms of sound, approach, and even age, they,

nevertheless, remain univocal in their insistence that rock music is a legiti mate art form in Trinidad. In fact, they are all, to varying degrees, driven by the conviction that their artistic voices should be considered local by virtue of their citizenship. And this in spite of the fact that their collective call to "Localize It" will in all likelihood continue to fall on ears that are,by-and-large, conditioned to hear rock as anything but local.

Gary Hector reinforces this claim by infusing jointpop's music with local inflections and by indigenizing the band's sound (at least to a degree). Even

though jointpop is critical of the local rock scene, and especially of some of its younger artists, they still promote their vision of rock through their own

music and provide, through both lived example and by developing practi cal, alternative performance spaces like "The Filth and the Fury," a means for

younger Trinidadian bands to redress some of Gary's concerns and to identify themselves with jointpop's project. In one sense, Gary's years with joint

pop illustrate his deep understanding of the politics of representation?of what it means to fight for recognition (for rock bands in Trinidad and for Trinidadian artists in general). But Gary's time with jointpop also illustrates a willingness to draw attention to what he judged to be a serious breach of artistic integrity (albeit one that was also generated through a cosmopolitan perspective), thereby generating a discourse about what rock could/should mean in Trinidad. These strategies did, to some extent, change the rock scene

in Trinidad. Upwards of a dozen young bands debuted at and/or participated in "The Filth and the Fury" concert series, and many of these bands have

incorporated at least some of jointpop's approach and conviction into their own ideas about rock in Trinidad.

In addition to its role within the rock scene, jointpop simultaneously maintains a strong connection to and affinity for all local musicians (and this

regardless of style or genre)?a connection motivated out of a very strong

conviction that the nation should be supportive of the arts and a relation

ship explicitly enacted in the mock coup press conference to which I earlier referred. And while there is most certainly a political element in the band's




discourse about this issue?that is, it is driven by an impetus to improve the

atmosphere within which local artists work?the issue itself grows directly out of a perceived failure on the part of the nation to live up to its obligation to Trinidadian artists. The band's stances on both the state of rock music in Trinidad and the failure of the nation to support its artists are embodied in the music that Gary has written over the years and offer some insight into the indigenization for which he advocates. "Localize It" then, refers to an

acceptance of the cosmopolitan nature of rock music but with constant reference to an inward (nationalist) reach.

Orange Sky adopts a very different stance; the issue for them has very little to do with localizing rock from within Trinidad. Quite to the contrary, the goal is to infuse their music with just enough of the local to create an

audible connection to Trinidad that can then be marketed (and this includes

language, fashion, and the music itself) beyond the borders of the nation. As

Nigel says,"a black band from the Caribbean could mash up the world right now." The local is important, then, only to the degree that it facilitates the band's participation in the global mainstream?and this hinges on the degree to which the music affords listeners the opportunity to identify (localize) the band as Trinidadian or, better still, as Caribbean. This is not to say that

Orange Sky is unconcerned with the local scene or with the plight of local musicians. I merely take to its logical conclusion the line of argument that has contributed to the interesting shifts in the band's musical style.

While Nigel agrees with jointpop that rock should be considered local in

Trinidad, he believes the only way to achieve that is to "make it" in the main stream. There is ample support for his argument that artists and genres need to gain recognition internationally before they are recognized as important in

their own nation. Rumba, tango, and zouk are just three examples spanning the last century that illustrate this trend quite clearly and we could easily add

calypso and steelpan to that list as well (for more details on these styles, see Moore 1997; Guilbault 1993; Stuempfle 1995; and Savigliano 1995). These

examples, however, highlight some of the unique aspects of rock in Trinidad, both in terms of the genre itself and especially with respect to class. Both

tango and rumba, for instance, were rooted in lower class performance prac

tices and were, as such, marginalized by the elite. International approval (in the form of dance crazes in Europe and North America) led to a shift within

public (read elite) opinion in both Argentina and Cuba?a shift that found these musical practices re-evaluated in terms of their potential for local use and with respect to their value to national narratives of identity

Reggae can also be thought of in these terms, though its status and value for local use are still being actively negotiated, contributing to ongoing ten sions between the lower class and elites within Jamaica. Zouk, for its part, was articulated as a means of recovering Antillean identity in the face of French




national culture; through a direct appeal to world music markets, and thanks in

large part to the phenomenal international success of the band Kassav', zouk succeeded as a genre both at home and in France (Guilbault 1993). Each of these examples revolves around a local genre that found increased acceptance

only after its value was established beyond the borders of the nation. Rock in Trinidad, a genre initially articulated elsewhere and performed

in Trinidad by a predominantly middle class community of artists and fans,

highlights a different set of issues. On the most basic comparative level, in ternational success would legitimate the efforts of local artists, but whether such success would translate to national recognition of rock as a local genre remains an open question. But the place of rock within the nation is signifi cant not only in terms of the genre but also in terms of its relationship to class. This is a particularly complex issue in Trinidad because the middle class roots

of the community also trace along a somewhat shared stake in Trinidadian cultural politics. Put somewhat bluntly, participants in Trinidad's rock scene can afford to disidentify themselves from the cultural productions ordinarily associated with ethnically demarcated groups within the nation, and this in

spite of their own ethnic heritages?and this is the argument Balliger explores when discussing social fragmentation. This is an important distinction to draw not least because it points to the relatively privileged position that the rock community occupies within Trinidad. Thus very different issues are at stake in going abroad, the most salient of which seems to be the potential that international success holds for clearing additional space within Trinidad for debates centered on cultural politics. The success of a band like Orange Sky, for instance, might well draw attention to an as yet marginal scene and,

in the process provide a forum for exploring alternative ways of being Trini dadian beyond the borders of the scene itself?that is, within the nation.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that Nigel believes the best way to promote Trinidadian rock is to break into the global mainstream, but just

what that might mean for rock in Trinidad remains difficult to determine. That this success would impact local debates regarding cultural politics seems

likely and very significant. Whether it would legitimize rock as a local art

form seems rather less likely (especially when we remember the overarching role of the carnival phenomenon in Trinidad).

For their part, the members of Incert Coin challenge the need to answer

questions about whether rock is local in the first place. They play music that

they grew up listening to and work within a style that they love. At the mo

ment, the mainstream isn't interested in their sound anyway. At the Decibel

Showcase, they did talk to Jeff Blume of Warner Bros., but in an interview with Erline Andrews of the Trinidad Guardian, James Amow recalled that Blume said:




He likes the music, he would work with the band, but he's busy right now with

another band, Linkin Park. And because we're in Trinidad it would be real hard

for him to work with us, besides that, he doesn't hear anything that is hit material.

Record producers unfortunately always look for that one sound they could just

push on radio one time and make a million dollars. (Andrews 2002)

The dream of mainstream success is something that Incert Coin has filed away as a sweet bonus, were it ever to happen, but not something upon which

they choose to dwell. In similar fashion, the band sees no reason to localize

rock, if what is meant by "localize" somehow constitutes incorporating local

styles and idioms (indigenization). Rock is local, according to Incert Coin,

simply by virtue of the fact that there are gigging bands and appreciative fans in Trinidad. More specifically, rock music offers a context within which the band is able to express itself in a manner more compatible with their sense of identity than is possible in any of the other genres available to them. Scott

Johnstone puts it as follows: "[With Incert Coin] I had finally found my true outlet for what was boiling inside" (Johnstone). These are more modest goals than are those of jointpop and Orange Sky, but they represent one important strand in the discourse about rock in Trinidad and they reinforce the central

place that questions of identity occupy in that discourse. I suggest that these shared convictions about rock and the local among

bands that otherwise have very different ideas about what rock music is in/for Trinidad create a unique context for exploring a cosmopolitan perspective. When we consider the ways that rock music functions in Trinidad?as a marginal music that, on the one hand, groups all of these artists into a loose community and which, on the other hand, simultaneously admits to a great variety of approaches to meaning and identity within that

community?it becomes possible to think about the ways that the scene is

opening new ways of thinking about being Trinidadian, to see the outlines of a larger discourse about how rock fits into the socio-cultural framework ofTrinidad.

All three bands are making an explicitly cosmopolitan claim and doing so from within a specifically nationalist framework (albeit in very different

ways). The nation-state, in other words, still operates at the center of the discourse about rock music and identity. These bands are all, to varying de

grees, invested in a cosmopolitan project, and they are arguing for its validity by appealing to their own positionality within the nation-state. Perhaps we could think of their project as an attempt at what Kwame Anthony Appiah calls "partial cosmopolitanism" (Appiah 2006, xvii). But there is more to this

story?there is a second register at which cosmopolitanism is working in theTrinidadian rock scene. This second register revolves specifically around the relationship between rock and cultural politics in Trinidad. And this is




the case precisely because of the ways that cosmopolitanism brings into view our obligations to others. In this Trinidadian context?a context fraught with very complex and deep-seated cultural politics?it is the cosmopolitan perspective that can (and I think, does) offer a means of thinking beyond the smaller communities that make up the nation (Indo-Trinidadians, Afro

Creoles, Syrian, Chinese, etc.) in order to think the nation anew. Trinidadian rock bands are thus drawing on cosmopolitan approaches

in order to validate their choice of musical style (and musical companions) even as they use this musical style to clear space for more nuanced enact

ments of the nation itself, and this not least because the marginal nature of rock music in Trinidad places artists and their fans into a special relationship to one another. Thrown together and yet committed to very different beliefs about the music they love, the rock scene is marked by the ongoing debate about style that I have explored here in these three specific case studies. This debate is intriguing to me because the spaces within which rock music is

performed in Trinidad seem to offer possibilities for the relationship between

style and identity that are not (or, at least, not yet) possible in genres like soca and chutney, tied as they are to particular historical trajectories and cultural

politics. I am reminded here of Maureen Mahon's book on the Black Rock Coali

tion, in which she convincingly illustrates the contested cultural politics of race at stake in the performance of black rock in the United States (Mahon 2004). Black rockers, argues Mahon, are reclaiming rock as a black musical

practice and performing their conviction in spaces that have become config ured as largely white. What I hope to have illustrated here, however, is that the performance of rock in Trinidad actually distances the cultural politics of ethnicity to the point that rock musicians are able to clear a new space and rethink these very issues.

One important issue that emerges from this context can be framed as a question of access: At what point do these debates and explorations, thus far worked out in spaces of relative privilege (at least economically, if not also culturally), become open to broad participation? In the contemporary moment, however, the question of access is configured from the opposite perspective?when will rock become a mainstream genre in Trinidad? These

questions notwithstanding, rock music like that performed by jointpop, Or

ange Sky, and Incert Coin continues to be about the possibility of re-thinking (or of re-enacting) what it might or could mean (and sound like) to be Trini dadian. In this sense, rock music is always already local for it is being used to

imagine what national and individual identities can and should include. And this process continues thanks, in large part, to the continued marginality of the scene in Trinidad. Localize it, indeed.




Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College, Chicago, for the opportunity to participate as a Rockefeller Resident Fellow during 2004-2005. This grant

made possible the research for this article. Many friends and colleagues have also read earlier

drafts of this article and I especially thank Philip V Bohlman, Ken Bilby, Gage Averill, Shannon

Dudley, and Jocelyne Guilbault for their careful readings and invaluable suggestions along the

way. An earlier version of this essay was read at the National Conference of the Society for

Ethnomusicology (Hawaii 2006) and the discussions that followed were very helpful. Thanks

also to Gary Hector, Nigel Rojas, James Amow, Scott Johnstone, and Mike Ross, who were most

gracious with their time and ideas.

Notes

1 .An EP is a CD that contains more than one single but is too short to be considered an

album.

2. Andre Tanker, David Rudder, and Ras Shorty I are three leading figures in 1980s and 90s

calypso and soca music. Andre Tanker and David Rudder pushed the boundaries of calypso and soca in new directions, garnering their share of criticism over their artistic choices. Ras Shorty I, for his part, was one of the pioneers of soca in the mid 1970s and then turned to a more spiritual

approach to his music and coined a new genre that he called jamoo. Each of these artists, then, was an innovator in his own right and it is not surprising that they would have been attracted to what jointpop was doing at the time.

3. For a more detailed exploration of this rhythmic idea, see Shannon Dudley's article

"Judging 'By the Beat:' Calypso versus Soca" (1996).

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