Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T22:27:28.215Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Wit and popular music: the calypso and the blues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Cynthia Mahabir
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Calypso is an art form that laughs at pain. That's the way we deal with our blues. We begin to heal ourselves immediately, through our culture and our music.' (David Rudder, Trinidad, New York Times, 31 March 1991)

When you see me laughin', I'm laughin' to keep from cryin', but the laughter of these songs, implicit or overt, as often as not absorbs the tears.' (Langston Hughes 1966, p. 97)

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , January 1996 , pp. 55 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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

Baker, Houston A. Jr 1984. Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature (Chicago)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barlow, William. 1989. ‘Looking Up at Down’ (Philadelphia)Google Scholar
Berger, Peter L. 1969. A Rumour of Angels (New York)Google Scholar
Crowley, Daniel J. 1990. Record Reviews of ‘Calypso Pioneers: 1912–1937’ and ‘Where was Butler? A calypso documentary from Trinidad’, Latin American Music Review, 11, 109–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellison, Ralph. 1964. ‘Richard Wright's Blues’, in Shadow and Act, ed. (New York), p. 79Google Scholar
Epstein, Dena J. 1977. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals (Urbana)Google Scholar
Feinberg, Leonard. 1967. Introduction to Satire (Iowa City, Iowa)Google Scholar
Fine, Gary Alan. 1983. ‘Sociological approaches to the study of humor’, in Handbook of Humor Research, ed. McGhee, P. and Goldstein, J.H. (New York)Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1960. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (trans. by Strachey, James) (New York)Google Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis Jr 1988. The Signifying Monkey (New York)Google Scholar
Haralambos, Michael. 1970. ‘Soul music and blues: their meaning and significance in northern United States black ghettoes’, in Afro-American Anthropology, ed. Whitten, Norman E. and Szwed, John (New York), p. 374Google Scholar
Hill, Carl. 1993. The Soul of Wit (Lincoln, Nebraska)Google Scholar
Huggins, Nathan I. 1988. ‘Here to stay’, The Nation, 10 10, pp. 316–20Google Scholar
Hughes, Langston. 1941. ‘Songs called the blues’, Phylon, 2/2, pp. 143–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Interview with David Rudder. 1988. Trinidad and Tobago Review, 10/5, pp. 12–13Google Scholar
James, C.L.R. 1962. ‘The Mighty Sparrow’, Party Politics in the West Indies, pp. 164–75Google Scholar
Jones, LeRoi. 1964. Dutchman (New York)Google Scholar
Koestler, Arthur. 1964. The Act of Creation (New York)Google Scholar
Lynch, Acklyn R. 1983. ‘Calypso in the Caribbean’, SAGALA, 3Google Scholar
Matza, David. 1969. Becoming Deviant (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey)Google Scholar
Murray, Albert. 1976. Stomping the Blues (New York)Google Scholar
Naipaul, V.S. 1962. The Middle Passage (London)Google Scholar
Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1952. The Irony of American History (New York)Google Scholar
Odum, Howard W. 1911. ‘Folk song and folk poetry as found in the secular songs of the southern Negroes’, Journal of American Folklore, 24, pp. 255–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Odum, Howard W. and Johnson, Guy B. 1977. Negro Workaday Songs (New York)Google Scholar
Oliver, Paul. 1977. Blues Off the Record (New York)Google Scholar
Oliver, Paul. 1984. Blues Off the Record (New York)Google Scholar
Ottley, Rudolph. 1992. Women in Calypso, Part 1 (Trinidad)Google Scholar
Quevedo, Raymond. 1983. Atilla's Kaiso (St. Augustine, Trinidad)Google Scholar
Roffeni, Alessandro. 1973. IL Blues (Milano)Google Scholar
Rohlehr, Gordon. 1972a. ‘Forty Years of Calypso’, Tapia, 2/3Google Scholar
Rohlehr, Gordon. 1972b. ‘The folk in Caribbean literature’, Tapia, 2/1, 2, 3Google Scholar
Rohlehr, Gordon. 1985. ‘“Man talking to man”: calypso and social confrontation in Trinidad, 1970 to 1984’, Caribbean Quarterly, 31/2, pp. 1–13Google Scholar
Rohlehr, Gordon. 1991. Calypso and Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad (Carapachaima, Trinidad)Google Scholar
Rohlehr, Gordon. 1992. The Shape of that Hurt and Other Essays (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad)Google Scholar
Rose, Margaret A. 1979. Parody/Meta-Fiction (London)Google Scholar
Sackheim, Eric. 1969. The Blues Line (New York)Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven)Google Scholar
Tracy, Steven C. 1988. Langston Hughes and the Blues (Chicago)Google Scholar
Warner, Keith. 1982. Kaiso! (Washington D.C.)Google Scholar