Learn more about calypso music by visiting “Calypso Music in Postwar America,” an exhibition on display at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Library from January 2007 through April 2007 and attend educational and cultural programs that complement the showing.

Calypso music, which comes from the island of Trinidad, can be traced to the arrival of African slaves on the sugar plantations of the island. Like some Africans enslaved in America, the Africans on the sugar plantations were not permitted to talk to each other so they would sing songs as a means of communicating, mocking the slave owners, and often sending messages covertly to keep the slave masters unaware. 

Over the years, calypso music evolved into a unique form of musical storytelling that blended with the tradition of carnival.  It also became a popular art form that was exported to America and the world in the 1950s and 1960s.

The public is invited to an opening reception on January 19, 2007, 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, Grand Hall. Tour the exhibit while enjoying live calypso music and Caribbean food.

The Calypso Music in Postwar America Exhibit and programming is brought to you by the following co-sponsors: NMBCC Library, Lilly Library, Multi-cultural Initiatives, African American and African Diaspora Studies, Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Folklore & Ethnomusicology, and the Black Film Center Archives.