If you always wanted to know the story, the history of Sokah Music that became known as Soca well here is an excerpt from an article written by Jocelyne Guilbault back in 1997 that tells the Story of the music genre’s birth and transition in the formative years (early ’70’s period).
The complete article is titled, “The Politics of Labelling Popular Musics in the English Caribbean” and as mentioned in the first paragraph, was written by Jocelyne Guilbault. I am pleased to publish part of this article today specifically because of the onslaught by many who want to discredit Garfield Blackman as the creator of music. As I have said to many, and in so many different situations, the music has changed but it was Lord Shorty who created the foundation that the music genre was built on. From the early days of Cloak and Dagger to Indrani, Endless Vibrations and in 1976 Soul of Calypso one can hear the changes taking place in the music even with Lord Shorty. Clearly there was fusion of different styles of music but the naming of the genre and the foundation for the music was all as a result of the work done by Lord Shorty!
Read the article and take note how Shorty took the accent of the East Indian music and placed it on the drum set pattern to create the ‘New Sound’ that was eventually accepted, used throughout the Caribbean and claimed by many! However, if you are smart enough and follow the music trail you will see all roads initially led to and from Trinidad and the musical genius known as Garfield Blackman!
From Trinidad, the term “sokah” (later spelled “soca”) was coined by Ras Shorty I (Garfield Blackman, formerly called Lord Shorty) around 1973, following his musical experiments in mixing East Indian elements with calypso.3 In an interview reported by Roy Boyke, published in the 1979 Carnival magazine, Ras Shorty I described the circumstances which prompted him to put forward a new music label and a new sound.
I was trying to find some thing because the talk was that calypso was dying and reggae was the thing. I thought the musicians in the country had a right to get together and use their minds to renew or improve calypso somewhat. Everybody was putting it down… Calypso was dying a natural death. And to come up with a new name and a new form in calypsoul was what Sparrow was trying to do all along. Sparrow tried to add a lot of things to calypso and it didn’t work. I felt it needed something brand new to hit everybody like a thunderbolt… I came up with the name soca. I invented soca. And I never spelt it s-o-c-a. It was s-o-k-a-h to reflect the East Indian influence.(quoted by Ahyoung, 1981: 98)
If one of Ras Shorty I’s goals in creating sokah was indeed to “renew or improve calypso,” another was to unite the East Indian and the African.4 Through music, he believed, he could help fight “racialism” among East Indians and Africans. In his view, “the fusion of the music can do that. ” (personal interview, 6 February 1997). Another of his goals was to attract young people to listen to Trinidadians’ own music. Around that time, he remarked that youth preferred to listen to reggae and, furthermore, had come to believe that, to accomplish anything, one had to go to America. In creating a new sound, his aim was to fight this tendency by leading Trinidadians to believe in themselves and to support their own musicians and music.
The term “sokah,” Ras Shorty I explained, comes from the combination of two syllables: “The ‘so’ comes from calypso. And the ‘kah,’ to show the East Indian thing in the rhythm, right?… I selected the syllable ‘kah ‘ because it represents the first letter of the Indian alphabet” (personal interview, 6 February 1997). Interestingly, Mungal Patasar, a Trinidadian musician trained in Indian classical music, noted that the selection of the syllable “kah” by Ras Shorty I had been particularly appropriate to symbolize the influence of Indian rhythm since, by being the first letter of the alphabet, it signals the start of a movement and, in addition, “kah” is the first syllable of the name of the beat “Kaherwa”. It could be concluded that, even if admittedly unaware of these meanings at the time, Ras Shorty I intuitively chose the right syllable to convey not only the inclusion of the East Indian influence, but that of rhythm in particular, in his music fusion.
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