Discordant Beats of Pleasure Amidst Everyday Violence: The Cultural Work of Party Music in Trinidad

In spaces of violence, scholars and activists have typically addressed music as sites of resistance. In postcolonial Caribbean, the focus of most studies unsurprisingly has thus been placed on the work music has done for the oppressed or conversely on the ways the (neo)colonial regimes have used music to increase their control over the masses. Until recently, few publications have addressed the music that has been performed to fortify and gather people together in times of hardship. In this case, what is at stake is not so much a matter of “us and dem” or of resistance, but rather the ways in which the “us” is mobilized to strengthen senses of belonging and networks of solidarity. Amidst the escalating everyday violence since the mid-1990s, party music in Trinidad continues to thrive. Instead of dismissing such music as merely a source of escapism or hedonism, I want to examine what makes it so compelling and what it does for people. This paper is based on in-depth study of soca music making and numerous ethnographic interviews with Trinidadian soca artists and fans over the past fifteen years