Word: ports
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Trinidad has no concert hall and no symphony orchestra, and few visiting artists ever get to Port-of-Spain, its capital, just off the coast of Venezuela. But Trinidadians may well be the world's most musical people. Out of prosaic newspaper headlines they created calypso songs, and out of such unmusical items as oil drums and automobile brake drums they created the world's newest musical combo, the steelband (pronounced steelbon in Trinidad). Both were invented with sure instinct for novelty and self-expression by Trinidad's Negro population...
Giant Mandolin. At 4 a.m. one day last week, the streets of Port-of-Spain were quiet, but an occasional lighted window showed dark figures stirring. At 5, donkey carts laden with coconuts were moving towards the market, passing sidewalks packed with quiet crowds. Finally, a clock chimed 6, and, as if unleashed, the crowds ran and danced out into the streets. Trinidad's Carnival was under...
...steelband grew in the distance. It was a sweet thrumming that, as it grew closer, began to resemble a giant mandolin playing a pretty tune. It was accompanied by an insistent clanging, like a syncopated firebell. Within a few minutes no fewer than 139 steelbands burst onto Port-of-Spain's streets, gathering prancing followers as they went. The marchers strode, sensuously, with bent knees and swinging hips, sometimes six or eight clasped together in a veering line, sometimes a single marcher so excited by the music that he leaped out into an eccentric solo dance. For two days...
...create a rich polyrhythmic effect; onlookers, unable to resist the compelling beat, would pound anything that would make noise. But by the early '30s bamboo was on its way out-the police had found that the sticks were too likely to be used as weapons. Then Port-of-Spain musicians turned to garbage-can tops and biscuit tins. Someone-maybe"Spree" Simon or Aulrick Springer or "Totee" Lewis-decided to outline the parts of the tin top which had different pitches. He dented a line across, dividing the pan into segments, and found he had two different notes...
...past years calypsonians staged nightlong "wars," attempting to outrhyme and outwit each other verse for verse, never repeating themselves as they improvised. Last week Port-of-Spain chose a Calypso King in a more sedate and less spontaneous contest. His professional name was The Mighty Sparrow. His song: Yankees Gone, hymning the imminent closing of the U.S. naval base. Excerpt...