Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:27:38.022Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Beyond the Stars and Stripes: charting Van Dyke Parks' new world musical voyage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2009

DALE CARTER
DALE CARTER
Affiliation:
Department of English, Institute of Language, Literature and Culture, University of Aarhus, DK-8000, Aarhus C, Denmark E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During the early 1970s the American songwriter, musician and producer Van Dyke Parks completed work on a series of albums exploring the musical contours of the circum-Caribbean region and, through them, broader patterns and issues in twentieth-century US–Caribbean relations. Focusing on the connections between the United States and the (former) British colony of Trinidad and Tobago as articulated via the latter's calypso and steel band traditions, these recordings (two solo albums and two productions) not only explore the grammar, vocabulary and subject matter of a new world music before the phrase ‘world music’ was conceived; they also invite a range of scholarly interpretations. Drawing on a selection of theoretical concepts – notably cultural imperialism, the Black Atlantic, minstrelsy, and world music itself – this article offers a set of formalist and contextualist readings intended to rehearse Parks' Caribbean work as both a case study in (and a challenge to aspects of) the inter-disciplinary analysis of popular music.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , May 2009 , pp. 197 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Aho, W. 1987. ‘Steel band music in Trinidad and Tobago: the creation of a people's music’, Latin American Music Review, 8/1, pp. 26–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernard, H.R. 2006. Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, 4th edn (Lanham, MD, Rowman Altamira)Google Scholar
Bilby, K. 1985. ‘The Caribbean as a musical region’, in Caribbean Contours, ed. Mintz, S.W. and Price, S. (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press), pp. 181–218Google Scholar
Brown, E.D. 1990. ‘Carnival, calypso, and steelband in Trinidad’, The Black Perspective in Music, 18/1–2, pp. 81–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cantwell, R. 1996. When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge, Harvard University Press)Google Scholar
Carmody, R. 1999. ‘Pansie Cola's Parks’, available athttp://www.pansiecola.demon.co.uk/vandyke.html, accessed 16 August 2003Google Scholar
Chude-Sokei, L. 1996. ‘The Black Atlantic: Paul Gilroy and the fractured landscape of race’, American Quarterly, 48/4, pp. 740–745CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockrell, D. 1997. Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (New York, Cambridge University Press)Google Scholar
Cornyn, S. 2003. Unpublished personal interview, West Hollywood, 1 OctoberGoogle Scholar
Cowley, J. 1999. Liner notes to Calypso After Midnight! The Live Midnight Special Concert, Town Hall, New York City 1946, Rounder Records CD 116611841-2Google Scholar
Cowley, J. 2000. Liner notes to Lord Invader, Calypso in New York, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW CD 40454Google Scholar
DeWalt, K.M., DeWalt, B.R. and Wayland, C.B. 1998. ‘Participant observation’, in Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, ed. Bernard, H.R. (Walnut Creek, CA, AltaMira Press), pp. 259–299Google Scholar
Dudley, S. 2002. ‘Dropping the bomb: steelband performance and meaning in 1960s Trinidad’, Ethnomusicology, 46/1, pp. 135–164CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dudley, S. 2004. Carnival Music in Trinidad: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (New York, Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Eldridge, M. 2002. ‘There goes the transnational neighborhood: calypso buys a bungalow’, Callaloo, 25/2, pp. 620–638CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feld, S. 2000. ‘A sweet lullaby for world music’, Public Culture, 12/1, pp. 145–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, J., and Hayward, P. 1999. ‘Musical transport: Van Dyke Parks, Americana, and the applied Orientalism of Tokyo Rose’, in Widening the Horizon: Exoticism in Post-War Popular Music, ed. Hayward, P. (Sydney, John Libbey), pp. 145–167CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frith, S. 2000. ‘The discourse of world music’, in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, ed. Born, G. and Hesmondhalgh, D. (Berkeley, University of California Press), pp. 305–322Google Scholar
Gardner, L.C. 1960. Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press)Google Scholar
Gillett, C. 1998. ‘World music prophets’, Other, available athttp://www.developments.org.uk/articles/world-music-prophets/, accessed 15 May 2006Google Scholar
Gilroy, P. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London, Verso)Google Scholar
Goodwin, A., and Gore, J. 1990. ‘World beat and the cultural imperialism debate’, Socialist Review, 20/3, pp. 63–80Google Scholar
Green, D. 1971. The Containment of Latin America (Chicago, Quadrangle)Google Scholar
Guilbault, J. 2002. ‘The politics of calypso in a world of music industries’, in Popular Music Studies, ed. Hesmondhalgh, D. and Negus, K. (London, Arnold), pp. 191–204Google Scholar
Hill, D.R. 1998. ‘“I am happy just to be in this sweet land of liberty”: the New York City calypso craze of the 1930s and 1940s’, in Island Sounds in the Global City, ed. Allen, R. and Wilcken, L. (New York, Institute for Studies in American Music and the New York Folklore Society), pp. 74–92Google Scholar
Hill, E. 1972. The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre (Austin, University of Texas Press)Google Scholar
Holton, G.E.L. 2000. ‘Oil, race, and calypso in Trinidad and Tobago, 1909–1990’, in Latin American Popular Culture: An Introduction, ed. Beezlet, W.H. and Curcio-Nagy, L.A. (Wilmington, Delaware, Scholarly Resources), pp. 201–212Google Scholar
Hoskyns, B. 2005. Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the LA Canyons, 1967–1976 (London, Fourth Estate)Google Scholar
Kibbee, M. 2003. Unpublished personal interview, Beverly Hills, 20 OctoberGoogle Scholar
Laing, D. 1986. ‘The music industry and the “cultural imperialism” thesis’, Media, Culture and Society, 8/3, pp. 331–341Google Scholar
Lhamon, W.T. 1998. Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (Cambridge, Harvard University Press)Google Scholar
Liverpool, H.U. 1994. ‘Researching steelband and calypso music in the British Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands’, Black Music Research Journal, 14/2, pp. 179–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd, R. 1988. ‘One brief shining moment: the miraculous half decade when Warners was the heart of rock & roll’, L.A. Style, 4/6, pp. 148–153, 197, 240–242Google Scholar
Lott, E. 1991. ‘“The seeming counterfeit”: racial politics and early blackface minstrelsy’, American Quarterly, 43/2, pp. 223–254CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lott, E. 1993. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York, Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Lux, W.R. 1972. ‘Black Power in the Caribbean’, Journal of Black Studies, 3/2, pp. 207–225CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manuel, P., with Bilby, K., and Largey, M. 2006. Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (Philadelphia, Temple University Press)Google Scholar
Negus, K. 1996. Popular Music in Theory. An Introduction (London, Polity)Google Scholar
Neptune, H.R. 2007. Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occupation (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press)Google Scholar
Nizer, L. 1961. My Life in Court (New York, Doubleday)Google Scholar
Noblett, R. 1985. ‘The golden age of calypso’, Musical Traditions, 4, available athttp://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/calypso.htm, accessed 7 July 2003Google Scholar
Parks, V.D. 1971. ‘The Esso Trinidad Steelband’, The Guardian of Stateside Steelbands, 1/1, available athttp://www.vandykeparks.com/miscfiles/TGOSS.html, accessed 16 September 2003Google Scholar
Parks, V.D. 1998. ‘The Esso Trinidad “Tripoli” Steelband, Captain Huge Borde, “from oil to royalty”’, available athttp://www.songcycler.de/esso.html, accessed 11 June 2004Google Scholar
Parks, V.D. 2003. Unpublished personal interview, Los Angeles, 9 OctoberGoogle Scholar
Perez, L.A. Jr 1975. ‘Tourism in the West Indies’, Journal of Communication, 25/2, pp. 136–143CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regis, L. 1999. The Political Calypso: True Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago, 1962–1987 (Gainesville, University Press of Florida)Google Scholar
Reif, F. 2001. ‘The Esso Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band’, available athttp://www.songcycler.de/esso.html, accessed 16 July 2003Google Scholar
Roach, C. 1997. ‘Cultural imperialism and resistance in media theory and literary theory’, Media, Culture and Society, 19, pp. 47–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohlehr, G. 1985. ‘“Man talking to man”: calypso and social confrontation in Trinidad from 1970 to 1984’, Caribbean Quarterly, 31/2, pp. 1–13Google Scholar
Rohlehr, G. 1990. Calypso and Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad (Port-of-Spain, Gordon Rohlehr)Google Scholar
Rohlehr, G. 1998. ‘“We getting the Kaiso that we deserve”: calypso and the world music market’, The Drama Review, 42/3, pp. 82–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarlin, B. 1975. Turn It Up (I Can't Hear the Music): The Best of the New Singer/Songwriters (London, Coronet)Google Scholar
Silva, N., and Nelson, D. 2003. ‘Liberace and the Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band’, available athttp://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/stories/030304.liberace.html, accessed 14 August 2006Google Scholar
Stowe, D.W. 1998. ‘The politics of Café Society’, Journal of American History, 84/4, pp. 1,384–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuempfle, S. 1995. The Steelband Movement: The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press)Google Scholar
Stuempfle, S. 2004. ‘Documenting calypso in New York and the Atlantic world’, Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter, 2, pp. 1–4Google Scholar
Taylor, T.D. 1999. Global Pop: World Music, World Markets (London and New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Tomlinson, J. 2002. Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (London, Continuum)Google Scholar
Toynbee, J. 2002. ‘Mainstreaming, from hegemonic centre to global networks’, in Popular Music Studies, ed. Hesmondhalgh, D. and Negus, K. (London, Arnold), pp. 149–163Google Scholar
Waronker, L. 2003. Unpublished personal interview, Beverly Hills, 10 OctoberGoogle Scholar
White, L.A. 2001. ‘Reconsidering cultural imperialism theory’, Transnational Broadcasting Studies, 6, available athttp://www.openj-gate.org/include/redirect.asp?JCode=121787&Source=&type=J&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Etbsjournal%2Ecom%2FArchives%2FSpring01%2FArab%2Ehtml, accessed 22 September 2004Google Scholar
Wickham, A. 2004. Unpublished personal interview, London, 17 MayGoogle Scholar

Discography

The Esso Trinidad Steel Band, The Esso Trinidad Steel Band. Warner Brothers LP: WS 1917. 1971, produced by Van Dyke ParksGoogle Scholar
Mighty Sparrow, Hot and Sweet. Warner Brothers LP: BS 2771. 1974, produced by Van Dyke Parks and Andrew WickhamGoogle Scholar
Van Dyke Parks, Clang of the Yankee Reaper. Warner Brothers LP: WB 56161. 1975, produced by Andrew Wickham and Trevor LawrenceGoogle Scholar
Discover America. Warner Brothers LP: WB 26043. 1972, Produced by Durry Parks and Linda PerryGoogle Scholar