In our online classes this season we met the Trinidadian stick-fighting sport of Calinda. One of the songs we sing in our Caribbean season of songs, the Trinidadiaan folk song Bo Calinda, may possibly refer to this martial art, which, much like Brazilian capoeira, is always performed with musical accompaniment. It also could be a song about a beautiful girl — or a girl with a “beautiful mouth” — in Spanish, “boca linda.” Whatever the subject of the song, when we sing it in class we do the hokey pokey. CHEERS!
Tag Archives | Calinda
A Sticky Situation in Trinidad
When we visited Trinidad in class we got “stuck” on Trinidadian Calinda.
Calinda is a martial art, cultural dance and accompanying form of percussive music that arose in the early 18th century among Africans enslaved in Trinidad and Tobago. As you taste in this video, in the competition, fighters/dancers challenge each other with long sticks while community members chant and cheer them on. Though inspired by actual fighting techniques in the African Congo, today one will most likely encounter Trindidadian Calinda as a joyfully musical sporting event, full of acrobatic dancing and trance-like chants, during Trinidad & Tobago’s brilliant Carnival.
