Reviews for Carnival Music in Trinidad: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture

The average rating for Carnival Music in Trinidad: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-04-04 00:00:00 Shane Walter This book mainly covers calypso music and steeldrum music, along with derivative genres and related traditions. Dudley also provides a fascinating look at the carnival tradition itself in Trinidad. However, this book was a bit of a slog for me. First of all, calypso is not personally appealing to me, in a subjective aesthetic sense. Second of all, and more importantly, I felt like Dudley's approach to musical analysis was in this book was rather elementary and aimed at less sophisticated listeners. I think that, even taking into account the brevity and survey style of the book, he could have gone farther in examining the musical features.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-02-04 00:00:00 Hal Hall Another short title in the Global Music series. This book had a good balance between discussion of the music and the social/political context. I was interested in the political content of calypso music, since the standard examples we are exposed to in the US are silly rather than political (Yes, we have no bananas. . .). In addition to calypso, the book also discusses steelbands and various forms of soca.