Music WI: The "Caribbean Invasion"

Geekhis Khan

I recently acquired a compilation CD of old Calypso music from the 50's/60's and found something interesting in the liner notes: for a brief period in the late 50's/early 60's Trinidadian Calypso music and other Island sounds were all the rage in the States. Harry Belefonte, the only name still widely remembered from the time, was even outselling Elvis! One of the songs on the disk even (prematurely) declares the end of Rock & Roll and the ascension of Calypso!

Of course not long after that the Limbo's mega-popularity faded away and Calypso proved a passing fad in the north. Soon four mop-haired boys out of Liverpool hit the scene and Rock evolved into an all-new sound that supplanted Jazz as "America's music" in the ears of the world.

But WI Calypso hadn't proven so short-lived? What if, say, Elvis had taken a ride on the bandwagon (like he flirted with surf in Blue Hawaii) or then-popular surf music had mixed in island sounds? Could American music have seen Beatnik Jazz/Cali surf/Delta blues/Rockabilly sounds blend with Cuban and Trinidadian beats and rhythms to become the new "American sound" rather than the pop-blues sounds of OTL's "British Invasion"?
 

Roberto

While Calypso and Ska are only tenuously related, one could make a case that the "Jamaica sound" took hold in the States as well. Ska, dub, and rocksteady all had huge musical influences in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and only later morphed into Reggae and other offshoots.
 

Metalicon

Simple, have the record companies pump more money into the Caribbean sound. It's all about money in music business marketing, after all, would Miley Cyrus be popular if it wasn't for that fact?
 

Geekhis Khan

Thanks for the input, all!

Any ideas of any musical butterflies? Would Brit-Blues-Rock take hold in the states or would a more pan-American sound arrise?
 

Metalicon

The Pan-American sound would have to be popularized by Brits before it gets really popular in the United States. Same thing as Robert Johnson for example. Unless you have a very radical attitude change of attitude in America, Brit-Blues comes first.
 
Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

I don't think there's enough versatility in the Calypso sound. Maybe combine it with other trends like Bossa Nova for a stronger invasion.
 

Geekhis Khan

Emperor Norton I said:
I don't think there's enough versatility in the Calypso sound. Maybe combine it with other trends like Bossa Nova for a stronger invasion.
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I was assuming it as part of a larger pan-Caribbean movement, Calypso, Ska, Cuban, Bossa Nova...all had brief moments of popularity OTL, but never made the huge leap out of fad popularity. Basically have the Caribbean sounds become entrenched into the US music scene the way Britpop did OTL.

And Metalicon, I must disagree that being British is necessary for US popularity. Other than the British Invasion I can't think of any times when British music became the de-facto American sound. Jazz, Swing, Motown, Surf, Rockabilly/Honky Tonk...none of these began in the UK yet all were the default sound on the airwaves for their respective eras. Not to mention patent racism never stopped the popularity of Jazz or Motown (or early Rock) when all those movements had black roots and black performers.
 

blackmath

Very interesting thread!

It's odd that the Pan-Caribbean sound never made a big splash in the United States. We can hear influences of this in several punk bands from the late seventies, namely the Clash, but also the Slits and the Specials and a few others. Reggae and ska seemed to be much more popular in England than the US, which again is quite strange. Perhaps this is due to the very large West Indian population in England, namely West London where a lot of young English kids would hear this incredible music, love it and be inspired by it.

Perhaps it was just too "different" for a lot of people to get into and, as touched on by another poster, was not varied enough to get really big. Remember, delta blues never got big until the English bands started playing their songs in the United States in the 60s. This is why you had people like Albert King, a gifted blues guitarist play the Filmore, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker reviving their careers and Otis Redding play to his first "white" audience at the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967. Before the English blues rock bands started talking about their love for the Delta Blues, most Americans, especially north of the Mason-Dixon line were unaware of its existence. Before that time, the only Black music that people heard was from Motown artists, Ray Charles, the Ronettes and James Brown - all incredible artists in their own right but it was such a small fraction of the depth and breadth of American Black music at the time.

Another way to look at it is by the 70s reggae as we know it was coming out of England and Jamaica and Bob Marley and the Wailers were signed to Island Records, rock/heavy metal was the biggest form of music in the US, soon to be replaced by (ugh) disco :( People rejected the serious political songs of the 60s and wanted songs about fast cars, fast women, stairways to heaven and during the disco years, lyrical content of songs took a backseat to instrumentation.

We could perhaps point to early rap music as the manifestation of the Pan-Caribbean sound in the US. The first rappers were of Jamaican decent (MC Kool Herc, Melle Mel et. al) and they simply carried on a tradition of "toasting" - basically talking during breaks in a song to either promote themselves or hype the DJ. It was out of this that rap as we know it came into being. Hosting massive block parties was also a part of Jamaican culture that transferred to the US (namely the Bronx) and it is here where rap music was born.

So, perhaps in the end the music that reggae, ska, bossa nova and dub influenced was truly it's greatest contribution to American culture, albeit a sad state of affairs. Some of the greatest music ever made was made in the Caribbean and does not get enough credit for shaping the popular music of the last 30 years.
 
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Thande

Thande

Donor
Caribbean music was big here, but it was also pretty niche compard to a lot of other musical crazes. Basically limited to West Indians plus a relatively small number of white enthusiasts, the kind of people who like indie bands in other contexts.
 

Metalicon

Geekhis Khan said:
I was assuming it as part of a larger pan-Caribbean movement, Calypso, Ska, Cuban, Bossa Nova...all had brief moments of popularity OTL, but never made the huge leap out of fad popularity. Basically have the Caribbean sounds become entrenched into the US music scene the way Britpop did OTL.

And Metalicon, I must disagree that being British is necessary for US popularity. Other than the British Invasion I can't think of any times when British music became the de-facto American sound. Jazz, Swing, Motown, Surf, Rockabilly/Honky Tonk...none of these began in the UK yet all were the default sound on the airwaves for their respective eras. Not to mention patent racism never stopped the popularity of Jazz or Motown (or early Rock) when all those movements had black roots and black performers.
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I never said being British was necessary for all black or Latin-based popular music forms to get big in the U.S., but as blackmath said, the English rock movement of the 60's opened up some huge doors for black bluesmen like John Lee Hooker, B.B. King etc...

It is true that Motown, for example, did not need that particular assistance from the UK, but most of its audience were Americans that were either black or open-minded white.

As far as Jazz and Early Rock becoming popular, both had to be recreated and watered-down by white musicians before they were accepted in mainstream America.

Not trying to give you a hard time or anything, I'm just saying that Pan-American, like other forms, would have to go through certain processes before fame is achieved in mainstream America.
 

Geekhis Khan

Metalicon said:
I never said being British was necessary for all black or Latin-based popular music forms to get big in the U.S., but as blackmath said, the English rock movement of the 60's opened up some huge doors for black bluesmen like John Lee Hooker, B.B. King etc...

It is true that Motown, for example, did not need that particular assistance from the UK, but most of its audience were Americans that were either black or open-minded white.

As far as Jazz and Early Rock becoming popular, both had to be recreated and watered-down by white musicians before they were accepted in mainstream America.

Not trying to give you a hard time or anything, I'm just saying that Pan-American, like other forms, would have to go through certain processes before fame is achieved in mainstream America.
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That's a very fair statement and actually jives with my thoughts. Sorry if I misinterpreted your earlier post.

Actually, what I proposed (or intended to propose) was exactly that kind of "process", being adopted, recreated, and possibly "watered down" by mainstream musicians for mainstream audiences. No reason it couldn't filter through domestic Elvis-style musicians rather than outside Beatles-style, IMO.

@Arafeel: interesting book! Looks like the title's misleading, though.
 

Arafeel

Well he is doing his masters on Norwegian jazz identity, as fare as i can know i talks about why some groups and sounds "mad it", why some did not, and why some are "remembered" and other not. I know it talks about Harry Belefonte to a degree.
 
TimeJockey

TimeJockey

Actually, various streams of jazz and blues got quite a wide reception in both the Northern and Southern US without needing to be filtered through the UK. The "jump blues" style popularized in the 1940's, for example, was in part an outgrowth of 1930's boogie-woogie (urban blues) and swing. The Dixieland revival of the 50's and 60's saw Dixieland jazz become one of the most commercially popular musical styles nationwide. Around the same time, distinctive electric blues styles developed in Chicago, Detroit (both well north of the Mason-Dixon line), Memphis and St. Louis. Their audiences were not confined to black listeners. Sun Records was recording B.B. King and Howlin' Wolf before Elvis Presley came on the scene, although after Sun's owner Sam Phillips discovered and signed Presley, the label began recording more rock 'n roll than blues. But that rock was influenced far more directly by homegrown American blues than by anything coming from the UK or Europe, as witness Presley himself with his distinctive bluesy style.

At this point (50's and 60's), a number of white artists began recording with blues- and jazz-rooted material as their musical base and bringing those influences to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. At the same time, black blues artists from the US were finding steadily increasing interest in the UK and Europe, thereby propagating their style over there, where it influenced a whole generation of UK bands whose music subsequently turned out to be a big hit in the US and a huge influence on even more American music... but the original and direct influence of American blues and jazz had never been on hiatus.
 
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