Grooovy… Soca?
We must admit that we were more than a little intrigued after the launching of Banks Groovy Soca Monarch competition earlier this week. After all, who doesn’t like a little competition that promises to produce great, sweet music?
We envision, like back in the early 2000s… But we digress. Ok, so we must confess that our soca knowledge is mainly consumerish, garnished with the little tidbits that come our way now and again. By this we mean that we judge the music on whether we like it or not. It’s like bananas. We don’t like speckled bananas so we don’t buy them (no offence to fans of speckled bananas) and thus it is with music: it must fulfil our criteria.
Therefore we know soca. We have jumped and waved to it and discovered (some) our ‘rubber waists’ but it was to just plain old soca: the local ones which appeared around Mashramani time and the others, mainly Trinidadian and Barbadian which have a bit more staying power. When it’s good, it’s good. When it’s not, well…
Anyway, Banks promises ‘groovy soca’ as opposed to ‘power soca’. What is groovy soca? Why is it groovy? As it turned out it is the (just a little) slower and ‘sweeter’ sister of ordinary ‘power’ soca. As opposed to jump and wave, it has more depth and apparently more staying power too.
Ok, given that most of the soca songs produced for Mash here usually get put back in the hat immediately after, the question is does local soca still have its groove? When was the last time you heard a local soca song being played anywhere and being played regularly? The new competition plans to tackle this via promotions and so on.
We like soca. The promised “top vocal talent” stirred our blood and intriguing was the “rich, underexposed talent”. And led us to this: the question of who would be able to rise up and conquer ‘groovy’. Some sprang to mind like:
Vanilla? Hmm…a perennial runner-up who is strictly jump, jump, jump and her (forgettable) lyrics are mostly more of the same recycled stuff…but change can happen, right?
Big Red? Possibility…but who has heard squeak from her in recent times?
Adrian Dutchin? Someone said he has peaked but he is arguably the best soca performer that has come out of these shores. Can he get better?
Hey, what about this year’s soca monarch ‘Bonesman’? …erm…Who? Someone said ‘Bonesman’ can’t be left out since he is the reigning soca monarch but like Big Red…the squeak? Ditto.
Shelly G? Does she think she is bigger than the game now given her soca monarch fiasco? Someone said recycled; another catchy. (This particular writer must insert this: I love Shelly G, “Swing It” was great and she is the best!).
And it stopped there. Who else? Where are the others? Maybe they’re the rich, underexposed but it underlines the fact that we’ve barely managed to produce anyone of note (soca-wise at least). It’s Mash and dash. The rabbit gets back in the hat, the smoke dissipates and we go back to Peter Ram, Machel, Shurwayne and Alison Hinds.
The reasons have been highlighted so many times.
Anyway, we welcome this new competition, fervently hope that it unearths some new, ferocious talent with staying power and starts local soca on the road to getting its groove back.
We’ll be listening. (thescene@stabroeknews.com)
