Music of the Carribean Island

 I am a very big music person. I love listening to music and also learning about new music, I think music is my love language lol! I am very excited about this blog because it gives me a chance to be creative and learn about a different culture and their music. I’m glad I was able to learn about many cultures and their music in this class, because half of the cultures we discussed, I have never heard of, so taking this class was interesting and I enjoyed it. Although we discussed many cultures in class, it was hard trying to think of a culture we didn’t mention, but as I kept thinking, two of the artists I listen to have a Caribbean background, so it was only right I chose to do Carribean Music. There are many Caribbean genres, but I am focusing on three which are Barbados, Reggae, and Calypso.

Barbados is a Caribbean Island country located in The North Atlantic Ocean which hosts a population over 200,000 people. I always thought Barbados had a specific language they speak, but they do speak English and 66.4% of Barbados are Christians. As I did more research, I came across meals they eat there, because I love food lol and according to this article, they have many popular foods they eat in Barbados. A typical meal consists of a fish or meat dish cooked with herbs and spices, salads and hot side dishes. Another popular meal is a dish of cornmeal and okra, which is served with fried flying fish with spicy gravy is the national dish of Barbados. One last thing I wanted to mention about Barbados before I start talking about their music is the sports that are popular there. I am an athlete, so of course I had to include sports in this blog. The three popular sports in Barbados are cricket, basketball, and football. Many players played on the west indies cricket team which started in 1933. The only team that qualified for the 2006 commonwealth games from the Caribbeans was basketball. According to this article, basketball is very successful in Barbados. Now that you have an insight and a little background about this place, we can move on to the music they listen to and popular artists that are well known who have a Caribbean background. The music they listen to the most is Afro beats and Dancehall, which has been popular in the Caribbeans for a very long time. A popular artist who is well known, she was born and raised in Barbados, she’s a very successful artist right now, and her name is Rhianna. Rhianna is not only an artist, but she is the CEO of one of the most popular beauty lines in the world, which is called Savage X Fenty. Rhianna became the first Barbadian artist to win a Grammy award with her huge success on the song called “Umbrella” that came out in 2008. As stated by this article Rhianna has up to 9 Grammy awards, 7 MTV awards, 33 Grammy nominations, 12 Billboard music awards, world’s richest female artist with her network being $600 million by 2020. The list of her accomplishments just goes on and on. A song that I really loved was called “Man Down”, which was recorded in 2011 and her music video was also shot in her hometown Barbados. She has not released an album since 2016, but a couple months ago she made a post on social media stating that she will be getting back in the studio soon, so I’m sure everyone is looking forward to hearing some new music from the successful Barbadian artist herself. 

The next style of music I will be discussing next is Reggae music. This style of music originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. Reggae employs a four-beat rhythm managed by drums, bass guitar, electric guitar, and the scraper, which is a corrugated stick that is rubbed by a plain stick. Reggae’s biggest star right now is Bob Marley. I love everything about Bob Marley, from him as an artist, his hair, his clothing, and I love how invested he is with his culture’s music. Bob Marley was brought up a Christian as a child but as time went by, he converted to Rastafarian. As a Rastafarian Bob Marley grew his hair out into dreadlocks and smoked marijuana because they believed it was a sacred herb that brought enlightenment. Jamaica’s Rastafarian worshiped the Ethiopian leader as a living God, which was taken as a second home for Rastas.

The last style of Carribean music I will be talking about is called Calypso music. Calypso originated from a West African genre called Kaiso. This style of music is very popular in the Caribbeans and it has a fun beat with deep lyrics. In class we listened to a lot of songs that had a call and response, and so does this style of music. They mentioned that call and response singing is very traditional, and it makes it fun to sing and dance along to. In this article, they describe Calypso music as “freedom”, it’s a way to be yourself and just let the music move you. It also stated that Trinidad’s enslaved population used this style of music to spread information and mock their ancestors, which gave them a voice during hard times. I have never heard of this style of music, so learning about it and learning about different artists was really fun and interesting. I was interested in knowing the background of Carribean music because my teammate/roommate plays it every morning and I asked her why she listens to so much Carribean music and she said because it gets her hype and ready to start her day. I’ve always loved Jamaican music and how I know that is because every time I hear it I instantly dance. I am actually going to Jamaica for my college graduation trip and hearing their music is one reason I am excited about that trip

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