A bow to Trinidad

Anyone who writes will attest that one direction leads to another.  In my So it go notebook, for instance, there is this one direction that deals with the origin of the word “soca” and the reminder is there for me because the explanation we frequently hear is that when Lord Shorty combined calypso and American “soul” music in this new rhythm with higher tempos and more emphasis on drum track in the recording, he named it soca from that “soul” American influence and from the calypso origin.  I was always dubious about that explanation; for one, it seemed too pat, and also I didn’t hear a lot of “soul” in Shorty’s new genre.  As it turns out, although Lord Shorty has passed on, he addressed this matter in an interview with an American musicologist.  Here, in Shorty’s words from that interview, is the explanation. “The so comes from calypso and ka is to show the Indian influence – ka is the first consonant of the Indian alphabet.”  Maybe he had said that to other interviewers, I never saw it. That chat with the American was the first time I heard that explanation.  It’s puzzling that that perfectly logical clarification had not surfaced before.