Tag Archives | Tobago

Wake me up with Parang

Proud and playful Trinidadian parang is a joyful genre of Caribbean folk music.

Parang is a staple of the Christmas season in Trinidad, Tobago and Venezuela. When parang performers regularly start their singing before sunrise and sing LOUDLY to rouse their friends from their beds. This video from Lopinot, Trinidad, introduces us, gloriously, to Trinidadian parang standard, “Rio Manzanares.” (We LOVE this.) In All Around This World classes we give our all to another parang song, “Ola de la Mar.”

 

Trinidad, Tobago and You

All Around This World -- The Caribbean featuring Trinidad and Tobago

This week our online class takes us deep into the islands, to the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Like most of our other Caribbean island friends, Trinidad, which sits near its sister island Tobago in the southern Caribbean just northeast of Venezuela, was already inhabited before Columbus dropped by and told people there that they all of a sudden were living in Spanish territory. Trinidad’s first settlers, about, 5000 years ago, were Othroid people from the north coast of South America, then the Saladoid people, then the Barrancoid people. They were followed by Arawak and Carib people, who met their end shortly after Columbus and the Spanish encomienda system came to town. Trinidad remained Spanish colony until 1802 and a British colony until it became independent in 1962.

This week we’ll explore Trinidad’s multiethnic mix, especially enjoying music and culture created by descendants of enslaved Trinidadian Africans and South Asian indentured laborers who today intertwine to give Trinidad colorful, complex, Caribbean, life.

Hundreds of Steel Pan Drummers Playing at the Same Time is a Good Thing, Right?

Steelpan music is a ringing expression of joyful defiance in Trinidad and Tobago.

After the “Canboulay Riots” in the early 1880s in which Trinidadian and Tobagoan descendants of enslaved Africans protested colonial leaders’ attempts to restrict the celebration of Carnival, British authorities banned stick-fighting (“calinda“) and African percussion music. In 1937 they also banned the banging together of bamboo sticks.  Trinidadians and Tobagoans responded by using anything and everything else as percussion instruments — frying pans, dustbin lids and oil drums. This developed into the modern genre of  steelpan music — “steelpan” — which we see (in multiples) in this video, whose primary percussion instrument is the interior of a tuned steel drum.