Historically, trends in popular music are gradual processes moving in small increments, so that, for example, the demise of big-band music of the 1940s, the era of Glen Miller, Woody Herman, Count Basie, etc, was a slow decline, gradually giving way to the small groups and combos that would dominate the music scene 20 years later as rock-and-roll was born. In the Caribbean, too, in recent years, the shift from calypso into soca, pioneered by Lord Shorty in Trinidad, was at first scorned by some musicians (one prominent band leader, Art DeCouteau, originally refused to play it) and it was a few years before the change really took. The other aspect to popular music shifts is that many people in the society, born and bred into the existing form, remain oblivious to the changes until, seemingly overnight, they become aware, to their horror, that their kind of music is no longer the popular music of the day. It is as if we have been taken by surprise, and to a degree we have been.
Indeed, I’m writing today to warn you that one of those changes has begun in popular music, so brace yourself. What is developing (there are some North American hits from it already; Trinidad Carnival socas this year are full of it) is the recording of songs largely by electronic means, instead of the traditional band with a range of musical instruments making a recording through microphones and line inputs, into a recording console. Mind you, the shift is in its infancy, and like men singing falsetto it may not dominate, but judging by how folks are embracing it in North America and the Caribbean, we may well be watching the rise of something that consumers will be wailing about in a couple of years.
In the new music, the singer is generally the only non-electronic sound on the recording; everything else, including drums, is electronic. Before we start complaining, it’s useful to understand the reason for this shift because, to a significant degree, it is a natural evolution. Natural, because in the past couple of decades, the trend in popular music has been to
