Learn more about calypso music and culture at a panel discussion this Thursday


The Subjects of Calypso: Gender, AIDS, and Hurricanes

Herman B Wells Library, E174

Thursday, April 19,  7:00 to 8:30 p.m.

Introduction: Delia Alexander, graduate student, Folklore & Ethnomusicology Department, IUB

Featured Speakers

David Lewis, graduate student, Folklore & Ethnomusicology Department, IUB, "Calypso, Soca and AIDS in Trinidad & Tobago"

Prof. Judah M. Cohen, Folklore & Ethnomusicology Department, IUB, "Winds to Words: Hurricane Marilyn and Calypso Discourse in the U.S. Virgin Islands"

Prof. Jennifer Thorington-Springer, English Department, IUPUI, "Roll It Gail: Allison Hinds, Female Empowerment, and Calypso in Barbados"


Presented in association with the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Library's exhibition, "Calypso Music in Postwar America: Photographs and Illustrations 1945-1960."  

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.