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What if the rhythm of an island could reshape global music? In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Jessica Swanston Baker who both brings her rich family heritage and academic expertise to trace the roots and evolution of wylers, its integral role in Carnival, and reveal how Caribbean music has profoundly influenced the global soundscape.
Journey with us as we explore the dynamic evolution of Caribbean Christmas sports, with a special focus on the historical and cultural transformations in St. Kitts and Nevis. Dr. Swanston Baker sheds light on the technological advancements of the 1980s that propelled the development of wylers music, setting the stage for its contemporary form and challenging societal norms with its rapid tempo. Finally, we discuss the broader impact of globalization on Caribbean music in the 1990s and 2000s. Learn how affordable music technology enabled a new generation of musicians to bypass traditional pathways, reshaping the local and global music scenes. We also dive into the personal stories of navigating family history through ethnomusicology, highlighting the significance of tempo and poetic expression in Caribbean culture.
Jessica Swanston Baker is an ethnomusicologist specializing in contemporary popular music of the Circum-Caribbean. Her work centers on the intricate relationships between tempo, aesthetics, colonial legacies, and the intersections of race and gender in the region and its diaspora. Her book, Island Time: Speed and the Archipelago from St. Kitts and Nevis (University of Chicago Press, 2024), traces the sonic history and ethnographic present of wylers, a fast-paced style of music from St. Kitts and Nevis, examining how it reflects broader histories of colonization, Black femininity, and West Indian performance practices. Professor Baker earned a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from Bucknell University.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture hosted by me, alexandria Miller.
Strictly Facts teaches thehistory, politics and activism
of the Caribbean and connectsthese themes to contemporary
music and popular culture.
Hello, hello, we are back withanother episode.
(00:22):
I am Alexandria and, as always,I'm tremendously excited to
continue learning and sharingthe stories that make our
Caribbean community and diasporabeautiful and unique,
especially in today's episode,where we are focusing on one of
my favorite things in the world,as you all likely know music.
As a region, we havecontributed so so many music
(00:45):
genres to the world andinfluenced the creation of so
many others.
Today, we are discussing onegenre that you may or may not
have heard of whilers.
But before we jump in, I willintroduce our lovely guest
joining me today, dr JessicaSwanston-Baker, assistant
Professor of Music at theUniversity of Chicago and the
(01:06):
author of Island Time Speed andthe Archipelago from St Kitts
and Nevis, which is due out byUniversity of Chicago Press this
October.
So, dr Swanson-Baker, it is sogreat to have you.
Why don't you kick us off alittle bit with you telling us,
of course, where is near anddear to you in the Caribbean and
what inspired your passion forCaribbean music and
(01:28):
ethnomusicology?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yes, thank you, alexandria, so much for having
me.
Thanks for the invitation.
It's always like such apleasure to be able to talk
about the Caribbean, to talkabout music, because I, like you
, feel so connected to theregion through the sounds that
come from it and, yes, big up tothe Caribbean as being, like,
disproportionately responsiblefor the sounds that we know of
(01:51):
globally as popular music.
So I like to think of myself asa Caribbeanist, as a
musicologist, because I think abig part of my whole spiel is
the fact that the Caribbean as aregion is just like this
infinitely entangled space whereour ability to know anything
about one part of it, one genre,is so dependent on our ability
(02:12):
to think with the rest of thespace, um, and that's why I
think of the archipelago as such, like a useful geographical
form for that um, and that's youheard that in the title of my
book.
That's one of the centralthemes of my work.
But maybe more important thanlike the theory or the
archipelago, is the fact that mymom and my dad, respectively,
are from St Kitts and Nevis and,as far as I understand,
(02:35):
generations before them alsowere from these two islands and
Anguilla and other small islandsof the Leeward.
So I think of myself as adaughter of the leeward
archipelago, what I know aboutmyself and my family, thinking
about my grandfather.
(02:55):
He was a Calypsonian andinstrumentalist.
Most of my uncles also playedmusic.
My father was a gigging studiobassist and vocalist for decades
.
In New York City, where I'mfrom, my cousins all sing.
I'm a singer, and so myrelationship to the Caribbean in
music is kind of one and thesame.
I know myself as a Caribbeanperson or as a petition division
descendant because of beingsteeped in the music that comes
(03:19):
from that space.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I always love hearing what our impetuses were for
beginning our careers inacademia, right, I think
sometimes there's thatimpression that, you know,
scholars just go to a place andare outsiders, which are some
people's stories from theCaribbean, of the Caribbean
(03:42):
diaspora.
It's beautiful for all thesethings to come full circle,
which we are definitely going totalk about a little bit more
later on in our discussion.
But before we get too far aheadof ourselves, why don't we
start off with the history ofwhilers, right?
As I said, I don't know howmany people are familiar with
whilers as one of our genres ofthe region, especially native to
(04:05):
St Kitts and Nevis, so couldyou tell us a little bit about
how it came to be and itsorigins and things to that
nature?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Sure, I realize that your first question.
You asked me about how I cameto ethnomusicology.
Would it be worth me talkingabout that a little bit more?
Sure, sure, okay.
So I said that my family wasreally musical and part of that
was also my parents being ratherintense about musical training.
I started piano at three.
When I got to high school Irealized that it was voice that
(04:33):
I was mostly interested in anddecided to do a bachelor's
degree in vocal performance.
But I ended up in a small musicdepartment that believed very
intensely that the music worksinging and studying was Western
classical music.
And when I talk to myundergraduates now it feels like
(04:53):
this was like centuries ago,that that would be the case,
that there would be spaces thatwould not see Black musical
traditions as legitimate music.
But I'm telling you that in theearly 2000s that was still very
much the case for me.
And so I came toethnomusicology.
I feel like a lot ofethnomusicologists and perhaps
like the field altogether as akind of haven for folks who
(05:16):
wanted to think seriously aboutmusics outside of the Western
canon.
And so I think ofethnomusicology as a because of
ethnography, our ability tothink with people, to not
necessarily have to rely onarchives, which I think in my
experience I'm curious aboutyour experience too, alexandria
that like sometimes thatarchives are kind of scant or
(05:38):
because they, if there arearchives, are gonna be colonial
archives mostly, and so it'sstill this process of like
reading through the lines forthe thing that you're actually
getting at.
But ethoneucology, I found, wasa field that was interested in
talking to folks.
I was interested in alternativemethodologies of how we might
get at information and that,just like very much appealed to
(05:58):
me, and so I found myself as anethoneucologist because it was a
space that I could do thethings that I wanted to do.
Now to your second question.
You asked about just thehistory of Wyler's.
Wyler's is a form of carnivalmusic that's how I would
describe it in the most abridgedform from St Kitts and Nevis
(06:28):
this.
I think it's most easilyidentifiable by its upbeat tempo
, a really consistent like heavy, deep kick drum that you would
hear as much as you would feelit, because it is largely
happening in very highlyamplified spaces.
It's like speakers stacked uponspeakers upon speakers, um, and
I think there's always asynthesized metallic kind of
ping pong-y sound.
I've been writing and thinkingabout Wyler's for a decade now
(06:50):
and I still haven't come up witha better term to describe this
sound.
And because producers are kindof protective of the specific
mixture of synthesized soundsthat they're using, I haven't
gotten anybody to tell mespecifically like what button is
they pressed or what sound itis that they're using.
But to me it's a sound thatsounds like iron.
(07:12):
It sounds like metal which, ifwe think about other Caribbean
genres the idea of an iron band,the idea of scrap metal in like
Antigua, in Trinidad, that itis a kind of distinctly
Caribbean sound but there's aparticular timbre of it and a
tempo of it that happens inwilders.
That for me is a reallydistinctive factor, thinking
(07:34):
about how the genre came to be,of course, complicated and I
think one could trace severaldifferent lines backwards.
I'm so hopeful that my work ishelpful to people of doing that
project, of maybe tracing itsomewhere else other than I have
, but I think of Wyler's firstas a jam band music.
So in the Caribbean, think of ajam band kind of as like an
(07:56):
improvisatory sort of band, notnecessarily playing original
music, but they can be, butsomething that feels maybe less
formal than some of what, likesome of my interlocutors called
the pretty shirt bands.
Right, these tourist bands orbands that were, you know,
everyone had on the same floralshirt and we, you know, did a
(08:19):
kind of like I don't knowrobotic, but you know what I
mean.
So I think of wilders, um, ascoming also out of out of the
jam band tradition that also wasplaying like catchy jump up
music that was really firstintended to incite carnival
feeling, feeling of gettingloose, releasing energy, and to
make audiences go wild.
I'm thinking here mostly of theearly 1990s, um, but also in
(08:42):
the late 1980s we had jam bands.
We had, you know, like morekind of electric dance bands
that were coming around Beforethis.
We have a history of like largebrass bands in the small island
Caribbean that were takingpopular hits from around the
world and putting them into newarrangements that sounded fiery
in a local kind of way.
So we can see that kind oftrajectory and the going wild
(09:06):
part that we get in the 90s andthe 2000s really comes from the
fact that this music again iscarnival music.
I like to call it popular music, but to the extent that
carnival is so central to somany societies in the Caribbean.
So for those of you who haven'tbeen to a carnival A you should
find one.
There's so many fantastic onesin the region and in the
(09:27):
diaspora.
But if you're thinking aboutbeing on the road that's the
context for carnival on the road, for eight, nine, 10, 12 hours
you're jamming, you'll be behinda band, those same stack
speakers that we're talkingabout are rattling your body.
Let's say you start out in aJube context at, let's say, 3 or
4 am by, let's say, 10, 11 am.
(09:51):
You've been on the road for along time and this is when the
kind of energy starts to shift.
You might think of this as atrance-like state for some
people, or just being in a zonewhere things start to take a
turn.
I think for those of us whoenjoy carnival, this turn can be
something that's kind ofeuphoric.
But for audiences or folks onthe periphery, perhaps an older
(10:12):
generation of folks, this can bekind of a scary moment where
people are really moved by music, where they feel like folks are
susceptible to the things thata band might be saying.
And so if you were chippingalong at first, and then now the
rhythm changes and there's adistillation of what was
happening musically fromsomething that's kind of maybe
vibey to something that feels alot more intense.
(10:35):
And this, to me, is whatwireless is.
It's a distillation of the kindof gooey, energetic core of
what soca and carnival musicoffers.
We can think of this and likeother traditions like, this is
the vamp.
This is kind of the breaksection if we're thinking about
like salsa.
Right, it's just like.
(10:55):
This is the good, heavy part,and I think Wilder's is about
condensing that and making thatthe entirety of the thing.
Again, we can see an example ofthis from videos like bands like
14 Minus in the early 1990s.
There is a YouTube channel Idon't know if there's a way to
put this in show notes orsomething, but there's a YouTube
(11:17):
channel by someone named DaddyPlay SKN and he does such a
wonderful job of archivingvideos of early 90s and through
the 2000s of these small islandbands.
And you can see in one videothat I like very much and that I
write about in my book, whereyou see this band after several
(11:39):
hours the rhythm kind of changes.
You just have someone chantingand the drums and these kind of
weird sounds.
It becomes really sparse andthen you hear somebody say are
you rougher than them?
Then push them Rougher thanthem, jam them, wind your waist
and you just sing that over andover again and as much as that
is in.
Maybe some sense is nonsensicalif you can imagine yourself
(12:02):
being in the moment.
It's really provocative, um,and I guess for some audience is
kind of scary about whathappens when you tell people
push or jam, and they take itliterally and not necessarily
metaphorically.
So I talk about that as a kindof distillation, it's a
condensation, just for the sakeof kind of thinking about it
metaphorically.
And taking 12 hours on the roadand Wilders becomes a
(12:26):
condensation of just the mostkind of energetic part, and I
think that Wilders over history,we might think of it as a
condensation of a lot of otherthings, kind of the most
energetic or forceful moment ofother kinds of practices.
So another line of history thatwe might follow, or at least
that I follow, is Christmassports, and the word sport here
(12:50):
refers to a more general use ofthe term to mean something like
to do something for the sake ofentertainment, to do something
for sport, and so Christmassports were various practices
that emerged and developed inthe window of time when enslaved
Africans and Europeanindentured servants were able to
have an extended period ofleisure relatively extended of
course, during the dayssurrounding Christmas and the
(13:12):
New Year, and so a lot of thesepractices participated in
different forms of likeridiculing the upper classes,
which is standard Caribbeanbangs.
Participating in roving bands.
I listened to your fascinatingepisode with Danielle Brown,
which you talked about Parang.
So think of something similarChristmas time, people mobile on
(13:34):
the street playing music, manyforms of recitation.
This would be when, like youknow, a play would be memorized
and then recited throughout in akind of dramatized way.
Different kinds of oratoricalperformances uh, string bands
were very popular and then 500drum ensembles, which in saint
(13:56):
pitts and other parts of theleewards would just be called
big drum.
It's worth noting that big drumis a term that comes up also in
a lot of places in theCaribbean, but does refer to
different ensembles depending onwhere you are.
And so, looking throughouthistory, folks have been
lamenting the loss of Christmassports since, like the 1940s and
(14:16):
1950s.
This, to me, the lamentation ofthe loss, is as integral to
Christmas sports as the actualsports themselves, which is kind
of an interesting idea about,like, what kind of rituals we
consider when we think about aperformance practice.
But particularly in 1950s, wehave folks talking about how
clowns and masquerades therewere different performances of
(14:40):
whatever iterations of cowboysand Indians.
This is a time when in theUnited States we have like a lot
of cowboy hero story moviesthat are being pumped into the
Caribbean, so we see how peopleare receiving this through
Christmas sports, the creationof different types of troops,
and we're losing this, accordingto the folks who are lamenting
(15:02):
in the 50s because of certainkinds of political uplift
regimes that were so central tothe push to independence and
statehood.
And so if Europe or Britain isdeciding that these small
islands that are not really thatuseful to them anymore are
(15:22):
going to be self-governing insome way, it's also dependent on
kind of creating a public thatthey feel is worthy of
self-governance.
And a lot of this is happeninginternally where the elites,
folks who have perhaps left andgotten education elsewhere or
just who believe themselves tobe like the kind of thinker who
(15:45):
can lead, these are folks whoare really vocal about the idea
that some of the Christmassports, especially the, you know
the particularly like what's agood word, I want to say a
vulgar, maybe the vulgar ones ofthe Christmas sports should be
the ones that are left in thepast and that, if we think about
, christmas sports be the onesthat are left in the past and
that if we think about Christmassports we should be thinking
(16:07):
about this in terms of apotential national product.
And so another condensation, Ibelieve, happens there, where
the practices of like listeningthrough the slats of another
person's house and then turningthe gossip that you know from
their business into a song, ormaking real bad fun of the
elites, those kinds of practicesare kind of sort of left behind
(16:31):
and the other ones areamplified, the ones that can
become a kind of nationalproduct.
So we see by the 1970s that pipeand drum bands, big drum and
masquerades become moreprominent in the Christmas
sports than the other ones.
By the 1980s, when we have thetourism product that's necessary
.
This is when we have anotherkind of condensation where
(16:54):
something like a big drumperformance that would be like
maybe all day of, like a bandroving around, and a relatively
short portion of it would belike the energetic, gooey part,
like I was talking about on theroad, that at some point kind of
became the bulk of it, likethis fancy, flying feathers,
intense kind of performancebecame really emblematic of St
(17:18):
Kitts and Nevis.
And so I think that if we mightthink about Wyler's as a
product of Christmas sports,wyler's as a product of carnival
, but Wyler's also a product of1980s technological innovations,
which meant that folks hadsynthesizers to be able to
translate what it is that theywere hearing into their own kind
of personal sound, and we mightunderstand how, like, a
(17:41):
condensation of these differentthings comes through in the
music that we're hearing in the2000s, which is my personal
favorite era of Wilder's music.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
I really appreciate you setting that scene for us,
obviously for us to more deeplyunderstand the history of
Wilder's, but also theconnections or interlocutors
that you raised right.
We are now obviously you tied toDr Brown talking about Parang.
You know, while we all have ourown carnivals, we all also have
(18:14):
our own individual histories andframeworks and things that
these come from right, and sothat's one thing that I think is
always so powerful for me interms of studying music it's
that Caribbean music is ourhistory in a lot of ways, and I
really appreciate the way thatyou were able to not only share
with us the history of Wyler'sand its formation and evolution,
(18:35):
but also you know the evolutionof St Kitts and Nevis and all
of the political movements, andyou know resistance strategies
as well, and I will be sure todefinitely link Daddy Play SKN
in our Strictly Fact syllabus.
So don't worry about that, forour listeners, you will see that
on our website.
You raised a point that also,obviously, is the focal point of
(19:00):
your book as well, and it'sthis idea that the tempo, or you
know, there's this perceptionof Wyler's being crazy, being
fearful potentially, as you wereraising right, but also it
being fast, right.
Where did this notion of itbeing too fast come from, and
how does this idea of Wyler'sbeing too fast compare with, you
(19:23):
know, some of the other verynumerous Caribbean music genres
that we know and love today?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, thinking about this question, there's also so
many ways to answer it, um, soone of the things that's
important to know is thateveryone was just saying it when
I went to St Kitts, when I wasdoing what I call the field work
of course, I've been to StKitts so many times in other
parts of my life, but when I wasasking these pointed questions
(19:51):
in the context of thedissertation and research, it
just kept coming up that what Iwanted to talk about, marla, is
that folks, the first thing thatfolks went to talk about was
the fact that the music was toofast, and that's why it occurred
to me that perhaps being toofast wasn't just about the
actual sound of the music,although let's agree that the
music is incredibly fast, thatthat is a feature of it and that
(20:14):
a feature of petition and thevision women walking up is that
it's like intense and energetic.
I think there is something kindof proprietary about the energy
and speed of folks in St Kittsand Movers, um, but I think one
of the reasons why the music wasseen too fast was, like I was
saying about this condensedmoment, this wilders.
The word wilders comes from thefact that the music makes
(20:37):
people go wild and wild out, um,and it comes from both sides.
It comes from folks who wantthat and who, you know, enjoy
that because they're young andthat's what you do, you know, at
17, at three o'clock in themorning, but also from, I think,
an older generation ofconcerned citizens who recognize
that the emergence of wildersor the diffusion of wilders was
(21:00):
also coinciding with anunprecedented uptick, that the
emergence of Wyler's or thediffusion of Wyler's was also
coinciding with an unprecedenteduptake in violent crime in St
Kitts and in this.
This is at a moment in, I think,global politics where there are
different I'm thinking hereabout neoliberalism, like kind
(21:23):
of an open economy idea wherethere's just more movement, I
think, in and through St Kittsand Nevis for different kinds of
people.
I think St Kitts and Nevis inthe 1990s is newly drawn into
like a global drug trade.
I think there's a differentkind of public view of St Kitts
(21:45):
and Nevis as something, as aplace that folks like literally
never heard of before, tosomewhere that's on a global map
, but on a global map because of, maybe, the underworld, of what
we think of as globalization,and I think that was terrifying
to citizens in St Kitts andNevis and folks in St Kitts and
Nevis who were used to thinkingof this place as slower, as a
(22:08):
sanctuary, as a kind of haven,as a small place as compared to
bigger islands.
So I think that's one way thatwe might one reason why the
music became fast.
It became kind ofrepresentative of the actual
feeling of things changing,which I think of as a feeling of
speed.
But musically speaking it wasalso too fast because the folks
(22:30):
creating it weren't necessarilyproper musicians.
And so I mentioned earlier that, like music technology of the
80s that became affordable andeasily accessible in the 80s and
early 90s, we have synthesizers, we have drum machines, which
means you can buy a keyboardthat is going to have preset
sounds in it.
(22:50):
And interestingly, a lot ofthese keyboards that were
initially circulating in likeWestern markets they were preset
with like world music sounds.
They had Brazilian drums andcongas and you know different
kinds of iron sounds, trianglesand steel pan sounds, so the
sounds that were already in theCaribbean.
(23:11):
But now they were easilyharnessed and accessible to just
regular Dianian people, whichwas kind of new, new, and so it
made it so that folks who didn'thave to go through the same
kind of hoops that oldermusicians had to.
When I talked to musicians whowere really prominent in the 50s
(23:31):
and 60s, they were talkingabout the fact that not only did
you have to maybe order aninstrument from somewhere far
away and wait the six months forit to come on a ship, um, after
you had spent a year saving upthe money to get the instrument,
um, you also like say you didhave the wherewithal to form a
band.
You can just play anywhere.
You had to prove to the partypromoter or the chair of the
(23:56):
whatever social committee thatyou were a respectable enough
band to be playing at theirevent.
This is a long-term process,but by the 2000s a young person
could have a keyboard and acassette or whatever in their
room, make 12 rhythm and getspeakers from whoever and be
(24:16):
playing it at full blastwhatever they wanted to on a
basketball court at a whatevertime of night.
And so this idea that you couldbe visible and audible without
going through these particulargates, I think also felt like
some younger musicians or werebypassing, you know, the normal
temporality of musicianship andI think that also made musicians
(24:38):
, older musicians feel like themusic was way too fast.
And finally, I think theseconversations always in the
Caribbean I don't want to sayalways, but I do kind of think
always.
I think maybe it's Alexandria,you might have someone who
thinks about women in the regionand music.
I think that even where womenaren't audible or visible,
(25:00):
there's always this conceptionof proper womanhood and proper
femininity.
That seems to be like the strawturning the drain for a lot of
these discourses, and so a lotof the discourse that I was
hearing about the music beingtoo fast, like even if it didn't
stop at talking about women,there were always times where
(25:20):
we'd touch on fast girl, fastwomen, sexual immorality.
You know that you're walking uptoo fast, too hard, too much of
your bum is visible, you'rejiggling in ways that are not
becoming, you know, arespectable person, respectable
woman and the idea ofrespectable motherhood.
You know I went to a high schoolreunion for one of my aunts and
(25:46):
you know it was maybe like a30th high school reunion and
like one of the main topics ofconversation was still about how
in St Kitts and Nevis, how it'sbecause of bad mothering that
there is crime, like all of theproblems of the nation can be
really pinned on mothers whoaren't doing it well enough, and
(26:07):
whenever there were women inthe dance in a jam on the road,
it was always indicative of thefact that she was not otherwise
taking care of herresponsibilities toward children
that she currently had orchildren she should have been
having you, you know or forbuilding whatever kind of wealth
or home that she should beparticipating in as a feminine
(26:31):
member of society.
And so the idea of too fast inthe English language throughout,
like the English-speaking world, the idea that girls or women
who are too fast are ones whoare doing things that men are
only allowed to do, was also, Ithink, a really important
contributing factor to why themusic was perceived as too fast.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
That's a really interesting point, I think, one
that even parallels some of thework on Jamaican music right,
thinking especially on studieson dance hall, carolyn Cooper's
work on dance hall, especiallyin Slackness, donna Hope several
others Shout out to mycommittee member, donna Hope but
(27:15):
yeah, that's a very interestingpoint to think that, you know,
even when women are not alwayscentral or as especially like
creators of the music or of thegenre right, just our mere
presence and performance is onethat is always sort of put down
or demeaned, in a sense, andeven something that I'm looking
(27:36):
at in my own work on reggae.
So that's a really, you know,interesting point, I think, one
that I would love to learn andstudy more about in terms of how
it pervades in St Kittsneo-colonial resistance
strategies in a sense, but alsothose who may be of the earlier
generation are sort of alsobuying into these ideas that
(28:08):
have been put in place by ourcolonial.
I don't even like saying forfathers or whatever, um, but yes
them, um.
You know how that also evenaffects this idea of the tempo
and your analysis of of Wyler'stoday, and you know its history.
(28:31):
How did you get to this sort ofthese conclusions about Wyler's
being too fast and it beingseen in, you know these various
ways, from the musicianship toBlack women's sexuality.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I think this is where the ethnography portion of my
project, I guess, shines throughthe most.
Let's say, if I had to critiquemy own work, it would be that
it's like not always obviousthat so much of what I'm coming
to is because this is whatpeople were telling me and that
may be maybe a conversationabout what it's like to do
(29:08):
research with, like your familyand in the place where you're
from, which seems super enticingbut has its own kind of
methodological kind of obstacles.
I really came to it because it'swhat people were saying.
It just kept coming up and thefact that it kept coming up in
so many different contexts thatI do like just saying too fast
(29:30):
or focusing on the speed of athing, of a way somebody is
moving a particular song of,when people are describing a
song, talking about it just interms of its speed, talking to
musicians outside of St Kittsand Ligets, talking to people
from other parts of theCaribbean, and when I would say
(29:52):
I'm interested in the conditionof visual music, be like, oh
that fast stuff, that stuff istoo fast.
I can't even dance to that,gosh, I'd be out of breath.
I don't know how y'all do it,you know, know it's, it's just
like became so central.
And what's interesting, I feellike about a lot of the way that
Caribbean people talk, ifyou'll allow me to generalize
(30:12):
about Caribbean people, is thatit's just so poetic and kind of
archipelagic.
It's like the metaphors justrun so deep in a way.
And this is I'm not forgettinghis name and you will know
repeating island I write so muchabout.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
No, is that Benitez?
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yes, benitez Roth, thank you, okay.
So I write so much about him,I'm embarrassed, okay.
But so the repeating island.
The idea, of course, is that,like, we can see all these
things from the Caribbean inother parts of the Caribbean,
but always in a different way.
So if in Cuba it's the way thatthe wrought iron on a fence is
(30:55):
curved, we'll see it in the waythat someone moves her hips in
Guadalupe and, like you know, itobviously takes a certain kind
of eye or, in my argument, acertain kind of ear to be able
to pick that up.
But I really felt, like in StKitts and Nevis, that when I'm
talking to people or when I'mwatching performances, when I go
to a queen show, you know, whenI hear people gossiping that
(31:16):
speed and tempo was just socentral to the way that folk
were able to categorize behaviorwithout explicitly castigating
it.
To suggest that was too fastwas already pointing to social
norms and the ways that it wasoutside of it.
I think, because this projectfor me is also about my family,
it's about my grandfather, it'sabout my father I don't know if
(31:39):
I mentioned my grandfather thatI came to ethnomusicology
because it was also a space thatI was able to do the
legitimizing work that my fathervery explicitly asked me to do
about his father who was, like Isaid, a califsonian and an
instrumentalist.
When Roger Abrams and Alan Lomax, who were folklorists, were in
(32:01):
the Caribbean in 1962, they wererecording in different islands
and when they got to Nevis theyrecorded a few hours or maybe a
few songs of my grandfathersinging.
Later these recordings ended upon some anthologies and there
was a whole repatriation projectwhere descendants of Lomax and
(32:24):
others who were part of hisfoundation went to the different
islands that they visited togive back copies of these
recordings.
Many, you know many peopledidn't even know the recordings
existed.
It's only kind of through loreLike they'd heard at some point.
You know, daddy was recorded,daddy has albums and it, you
know, we find out 30 years laterthat the albums are these field
(32:45):
recordings.
Anyway, they received thesefield recordings in Nevis.
My uncle was in Nevis at thetime.
He receives them, sends themback to my dad in the way that
Caribbean folk do.
You know, this is in a suitcasewith a bunch of other stuff, a
lot of tamarind jam and, youknow like maybe a fruit,
clandestine mangoes.
Okay, so there's an envelopewith these recordings and they
(33:06):
were contextualized in terms of,like Alan Lomax and Roger
Abrams project.
But my father really wanted morecontext in terms of us, our
family, in terms of theCaribbean, in terms of St Kitts
and Nevis, and so he was like,yeah, you seem into all of this
research stuff.
This is on your plate, jessica,and I've taken that really
(33:29):
seriously.
Actually, of course, I've hadto translate my questions about
daddy into questions about theCaribbean region and about small
islands and big islands, andwhat is history and what is the
utility of music, and how do wethink about tempo and what is
the utility of music and how dowe think about tempo and what
are the methodologies that workwhen thinking about people who
(33:52):
know you, who know your historybut see you as outside of it, et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But yes, these have beenquestions about my family.
I think I lost the thread of myquestion.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
No worries, we were talking about how you got to
these conclusions in terms ofmusician strip and sexuality.
But I mean, what you weresaying definitely even brought
me to my next point.
Going into St Kitts and Nevisand you know, doing these
recordings, as you noted, rightthem becoming part of archives
(34:35):
abroad without even theknowledge, you know the
knowledge and potentially evenpermission.
You know all of that stuff alsogets muddled right when
sometimes scholars are goinginto places.
But what it was like for youand your family to even find out
about that was, you know.
One of my following questionsand I guess to pivot from and
sort of continue on that point,what advice do you have for any
(34:57):
of us from the region, you know,hoping to write the stories of
our families and of ourancestors in ways that are
meaningful, ancestors in waysthat are meaningful, and you
know, especially in your case,to not necessarily challenge but
maybe better expound the workthat has been done before.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I was thinking a lot about this, about, like, what
kind of advice I would give andyou know, of course, advice
always comes from this place ofwhat you wish you had done
better, or at least for me itdoes.
Um, I will say one thing thathas been surprising to me, and
is how quickly all of the kindof archival spaces, whatever
(35:37):
they may be, whether it be likeone woman on Facebook who posts
very often or, you know, anational archive how quickly
these things do actually change.
I think it's maybe easy to saythat I checked in this one place
for something and it wasn'tthere, or I didn't find what I
wanted, and now I have to moveon, but I'm finding that in the
Caribbean, really broadly, thatfolks are very quickly
(36:01):
recognizing the importance, theutility, the relevance of, like
their family trove of things ofcassette tapes, of pictures and
it's becoming even morecommonplace to be posting those
things or to recognize that theycould be donated to a national
(36:22):
archive.
And so I think that maybe partof this is recognizing that
whatever story you're writingand telling is a living thing.
It's a living, breathing,ongoing kind of story.
There is no definitive historyof you or me, or Wyler's or
Reggae right.
There is a story that we cantell and that the archives are
(36:44):
changing and the stories arechanging too.
So in one way, this is aboutnot giving up because you may go
back to a place and find thatthere's new information, but
also being perhaps not sotethered to the idea that there
is one way to talk about thething that you're interested in.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Beautiful, thank you, I mean I think I will take that
into account for my ownresearch.
No-transcript or patriarchalperspective, one-sided
(37:34):
perspective in some regards.
So I take that for myself butalso hope that it is helpful for
several of our listeners.
We have gone from whilers towriting in, I think, a beautiful
and organic way, but I dodefinitely, in addition to Daddy
Play SKN, I definitely do wantto give our listeners some more
(37:58):
ways to check out and listen toWyler's music.
It's something that I enjoydoing and compiling playlists
and things of all the songs thatwe discuss here on Strictly
Facts.
So what are some of yourfavorite Wyler songs?
Or you know videos, albums etc.
That you could share with usthat I will add to our Strictly
(38:20):
Facts syllabus.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Okay, so, in addition to Daddy Play again, this is
fantastic, really greatrepository of like a kind of era
of like home video, which younot aren't getting a lot of
other places um, and St Kittsand Nevis at least this was the
case, you know, over the lastseveral decades is that you kind
of have a band and this is yourband.
You sort of stick to it.
(38:42):
I believe that me and my cousinare New Vibes fans.
This is kind of we have anallegiance to New Vibes.
So I think my first pick forquintessential whilers, even
though it's not the fastest, isPeople's Sugar, which is a song
from the 2001, 2002 season byNew Vibes.
(39:04):
This is one song that a lot ofmy interlocutors who you know
were in their late teens, early20s, in the 2000s and early
2000s, just remembered this juveso vividly and talked about it
with like such detail and kindof reverence.
Like this is what wilders andcarnival can be, and also it's
(39:26):
from it's from an album calledSugar.
I'm really interested in theway that Sugar does this very
interesting reinvention in StKitts and Beavis right, like
we're thinking about the verysource of enslavement that's
metamorphosized into, you know,the fuel that is behind the
emblematic energy and speed thatwe think of when we think of
(39:47):
contemporary music.
So, people sugar, and then theSmall Axe Band, which also the
fantastic band I am under Brad'shead, but Small Axe Band also
quintessential Wilders.
I like their album from 2013.
It's called World Tour and Ithink the album does a really
good job of showing how thebands that make wilders are also
(40:11):
making a lot of other kinds ofmusic.
I think there's a song on therecalled Zouk.
There's some that have like aLatin flair and that is part of
being, I think, from a smallisland, but being from the
Caribbean in general, which isthe idea that you are really
familiar with other kinds ofstyles.
You feel like these stylesbelong to you or are in you in
some way and can come through inthe music.
(40:32):
So even the idea that any onegenre is from one place, which
is another point that DanielleBrown made on that really
fantastic episode that yourlisteners should listen to if
they haven't already.
Yeah, I think they do a goodjob on that album and I really
love it.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Perfect.
Well, I will, as I said, besure to add that to our Strictly
Backed syllabus and check itout for myself.
I always enjoy.
You know exploring, as we'vetalked about today right,
exploring our music from acrossthe region, and you know noting
the similarities and differencesin the sounds that we create.
And so for my final question,there are so many ways that I
(41:10):
think we can study and documentmusic.
There have been people who youknow analyze lyrics and
performances, aesthetics, youknow what somebody might be like
wearing in a music video,things of that nature.
I've certainly done that in myown work as an ethnomusicologist
.
What do you think studyingtempo adds to our analysis of
(41:31):
Caribbean music?
And especially in our growingdigital world of remixes and
cross-genre collaborations andthings like that, how can we use
tempo to either maintain ortrack the evolution of Caribbean
music genres going forward?
Speaker 2 (41:49):
I love this question.
It's a really great question.
Thank you for asking it, notbecause I have like a
particularly good answer even,but just because I think that
tempo is kind of somethingdifferent than the traditional
metrics that we use torecategorize music, you know,
and when we're able to usedifferent metrics we get
(42:09):
different answers.
And, as someone studying thesmall island Caribbean, that's
always kind of the kind ofundergirding question is like
well, what can I study thatallows me to take this place
seriously?
And I study all of Caribbeanmusic.
Unfortunately, speaking, Ishould probably be talking about
reggae, right, I should betalking about Marley.
(42:29):
I should be talking about steelpan.
I should be talking aboutcalypso.
These are like very legitimateand important genres.
I should be talking about salsa.
I should be talking about sun.
I should be thinking about Cuba.
But what questions can I ask totake this space seriously?
And I think tempo is a metricthat allows me to think
(42:50):
differently about how we'rethinking, about what is
influential, where things aregoing and coming from and how
people in the Caribbean definethemselves sonically, where
there is the repeating islandtiming effect, where it's not
exactly the same, but you couldtrace whatever is happening
(43:11):
probably to somewhere else, ifyou wanted to.
As with most places in theCaribbean, there's no kind of
origin story.
We did not invent pan, we arenot the progenitors of reggae or
dub, which revolutionizes allof global pop music, but what
the folks in St Kitts and Nevisfeel like they do have is a kind
of lock on tempo, on creatingan experience of speed, on
(43:36):
pushing the tempo, on being ableto perform in such a way that,
like you, can keep it at a hightempo for a long time.
These are the things that theyimagine as proprietary, and I
think that, yeah, our ability totalk about different kinds of
spaces by looking at differentkinds of metrics is really
important to our ability to tella really fulsome story about
(43:58):
the region altogether.
And I think another thing thatwas important for me is that
when I was first starting tothink about tempo and speed, all
the literature is thinkingabout Europe and the United
States.
When we think about acceleration, moving forward, being at the
forefront, technologicalinnovation, nobody's thinking
(44:19):
about the Caribbean for real.
It's about accelerationists,it's about cybernetic.
It's a conversation that isrelated to the Caribbean for
sure.
Um and uh Louis, uh Chudes,soke's work on, like black music
and technology, I think does afantastic job of making it clear
(44:41):
that the that there is a bridgebetween like technological,
accelerationist kind ofdiscourse and Caribbean music.
But it occurred to me that theidea of having to innovate
quickly and often, of having tokind of anticipate trends, that
that is also a decidedly smallisland attribute.
(45:02):
It's necessary.
People live on islands and havemoved through islands
pre-colonially until up till now, and probably forevermore, in a
context knowing that theirability to have resources that
they need is dependent on amoving throughout, that things
are coming from elsewhere,they're going elsewhere.
There's this archipelagic ideaand so being innovative,
(45:27):
changing things up and beinglike responsive to like what's
happening in the world climate,wise, politically and these are
(45:49):
also the things that make upacceleration, that make up tempo
and speed, and that this is notjust the like European people,
white people, the US, they don'thave an ownership on these
ideas.
And when I was able to thinkabout it like that, it also led
me to see how something likeWyler's is related to genres
like Detroit and Chicago, housemusic that's also coming around,
you know, within the 1980s,young like black youth with a
keyboard and a cassette player,thinking of how they can like
(46:09):
change the thing around.
I'm thinking about New Orleansbounce music to think about like
an extended kind of circlingCaribbean also is coming from
this idea about tempo pushing ita little bit.
Um, I'm thinking also aboutregional hip-hop genres that are
also that like, if we thinkabout tempo, other kinds of
things come into the fore andthen it sort of has to shift the
(46:31):
whole thing in a way that Ijust think is really beautiful.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
I am so excited for the book to drop, personally, um
, and so I thank you so much, drSwanson Baker, for joining us
for this episode.
Um cannot plug enough foreverybody to get Island Time
Speed and the Archipelago fromSt Kitts and Nevis when it is
out in two weeks, because thisis coming out just a few weeks
(46:56):
before the book, and sodefinitely be sure to grab a
copy.
The link will always be in theshow notes in our Strictly Facts
syllabus.
And again, dr Sw, again drswanson baker, thank you so much
for sharing a bit about whilerswith us.
I didn't want us to give awaytoo much because I definitely
want everybody to check out thebook when it comes out.
Um, but, as always, umtremendous episode on music, on
(47:20):
the various caribbean musicsthat we, you know, pivot and
shape and change and just createas a region and for our
listeners.
I hope you enjoyed learning alittle bit about St Kitts and
Nevis, about Wyler's and, ofcourse, about Dr Swanson Baker's
history and writing experiencesas well.
And, as always, little more.
(47:42):
Thanks for tuning in to Stfacts.
Visit strictly facts podcastcomfor more information from each
episode.
Follow us at strictly facts podon instagram and facebook and
at strictly facts.
Pd on twitter.
Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture hosted by me, alexandria Miller.
Strictly Facts teaches thehistory, politics and activism
of the Caribbean and connectsthese themes to contemporary
music and popular culture.
Hello, hello, we are back withanother episode.
(00:22):
I am Alexandria and, as always,I'm tremendously excited to
continue learning and sharingthe stories that make our
Caribbean community and diasporabeautiful and unique,
especially in today's episode,where we are focusing on one of
my favorite things in the world,as you all likely know music.
As a region, we havecontributed so so many music
(00:45):
genres to the world andinfluenced the creation of so
many others.
Today, we are discussing onegenre that you may or may not
have heard of whilers.
But before we jump in, I willintroduce our lovely guest
joining me today, dr JessicaSwanston-Baker, assistant
Professor of Music at theUniversity of Chicago and the
(01:06):
author of Island Time Speed andthe Archipelago from St Kitts
and Nevis, which is due out byUniversity of Chicago Press this
October.
So, dr Swanson-Baker, it is sogreat to have you.
Why don't you kick us off alittle bit with you telling us,
of course, where is near anddear to you in the Caribbean and
what inspired your passion forCaribbean music and
(01:28):
ethnomusicology?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yes, thank you, alexandria, so much for having
me.
Thanks for the invitation.
It's always like such apleasure to be able to talk
about the Caribbean, to talkabout music, because I, like you
, feel so connected to theregion through the sounds that
come from it and, yes, big up tothe Caribbean as being, like,
disproportionately responsiblefor the sounds that we know of
(01:51):
globally as popular music.
So I like to think of myself asa Caribbeanist, as a
musicologist, because I think abig part of my whole spiel is
the fact that the Caribbean as aregion is just like this
infinitely entangled space whereour ability to know anything
about one part of it, one genre,is so dependent on our ability
(02:12):
to think with the rest of thespace, um, and that's why I
think of the archipelago as such, like a useful geographical
form for that um, and that's youheard that in the title of my
book.
That's one of the centralthemes of my work.
But maybe more important thanlike the theory or the
archipelago, is the fact that mymom and my dad, respectively,
are from St Kitts and Nevis and,as far as I understand,
(02:35):
generations before them alsowere from these two islands and
Anguilla and other small islandsof the Leeward.
So I think of myself as adaughter of the leeward
archipelago, what I know aboutmyself and my family, thinking
about my grandfather.
(02:55):
He was a Calypsonian andinstrumentalist.
Most of my uncles also playedmusic.
My father was a gigging studiobassist and vocalist for decades
.
In New York City, where I'mfrom, my cousins all sing.
I'm a singer, and so myrelationship to the Caribbean in
music is kind of one and thesame.
I know myself as a Caribbeanperson or as a petition division
descendant because of beingsteeped in the music that comes
(03:19):
from that space.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I always love hearing what our impetuses were for
beginning our careers inacademia, right, I think
sometimes there's thatimpression that, you know,
scholars just go to a place andare outsiders, which are some
people's stories from theCaribbean, of the Caribbean
(03:42):
diaspora.
It's beautiful for all thesethings to come full circle,
which we are definitely going totalk about a little bit more
later on in our discussion.
But before we get too far aheadof ourselves, why don't we
start off with the history ofwhilers, right?
As I said, I don't know howmany people are familiar with
whilers as one of our genres ofthe region, especially native to
(04:05):
St Kitts and Nevis, so couldyou tell us a little bit about
how it came to be and itsorigins and things to that
nature?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Sure, I realize that your first question.
You asked me about how I cameto ethnomusicology.
Would it be worth me talkingabout that a little bit more?
Sure, sure, okay.
So I said that my family wasreally musical and part of that
was also my parents being ratherintense about musical training.
I started piano at three.
When I got to high school Irealized that it was voice that
(04:33):
I was mostly interested in anddecided to do a bachelor's
degree in vocal performance.
But I ended up in a small musicdepartment that believed very
intensely that the music worksinging and studying was Western
classical music.
And when I talk to myundergraduates now it feels like
(04:53):
this was like centuries ago,that that would be the case,
that there would be spaces thatwould not see Black musical
traditions as legitimate music.
But I'm telling you that in theearly 2000s that was still very
much the case for me.
And so I came toethnomusicology.
I feel like a lot ofethnomusicologists and perhaps
like the field altogether as akind of haven for folks who
(05:16):
wanted to think seriously aboutmusics outside of the Western
canon.
And so I think ofethnomusicology as a because of
ethnography, our ability tothink with people, to not
necessarily have to rely onarchives, which I think in my
experience I'm curious aboutyour experience too, alexandria
that like sometimes thatarchives are kind of scant or
(05:38):
because they, if there arearchives, are gonna be colonial
archives mostly, and so it'sstill this process of like
reading through the lines forthe thing that you're actually
getting at.
But ethoneucology, I found, wasa field that was interested in
talking to folks.
I was interested in alternativemethodologies of how we might
get at information and that,just like very much appealed to
(05:58):
me, and so I found myself as anethoneucologist because it was a
space that I could do thethings that I wanted to do.
Now to your second question.
You asked about just thehistory of Wyler's.
Wyler's is a form of carnivalmusic that's how I would
describe it in the most abridgedform from St Kitts and Nevis
(06:28):
this.
I think it's most easilyidentifiable by its upbeat tempo
, a really consistent like heavy, deep kick drum that you would
hear as much as you would feelit, because it is largely
happening in very highlyamplified spaces.
It's like speakers stacked uponspeakers upon speakers, um, and
I think there's always asynthesized metallic kind of
ping pong-y sound.
I've been writing and thinkingabout Wyler's for a decade now
(06:50):
and I still haven't come up witha better term to describe this
sound.
And because producers are kindof protective of the specific
mixture of synthesized soundsthat they're using, I haven't
gotten anybody to tell mespecifically like what button is
they pressed or what sound itis that they're using.
But to me it's a sound thatsounds like iron.
(07:12):
It sounds like metal which, ifwe think about other Caribbean
genres the idea of an iron band,the idea of scrap metal in like
Antigua, in Trinidad, that itis a kind of distinctly
Caribbean sound but there's aparticular timbre of it and a
tempo of it that happens inwilders.
That for me is a reallydistinctive factor, thinking
(07:34):
about how the genre came to be,of course, complicated and I
think one could trace severaldifferent lines backwards.
I'm so hopeful that my work ishelpful to people of doing that
project, of maybe tracing itsomewhere else other than I have
, but I think of Wyler's firstas a jam band music.
So in the Caribbean, think of ajam band kind of as like an
(07:56):
improvisatory sort of band, notnecessarily playing original
music, but they can be, butsomething that feels maybe less
formal than some of what, likesome of my interlocutors called
the pretty shirt bands.
Right, these tourist bands orbands that were, you know,
everyone had on the same floralshirt and we, you know, did a
(08:19):
kind of like I don't knowrobotic, but you know what I
mean.
So I think of wilders, um, ascoming also out of out of the
jam band tradition that also wasplaying like catchy jump up
music that was really firstintended to incite carnival
feeling, feeling of gettingloose, releasing energy, and to
make audiences go wild.
I'm thinking here mostly of theearly 1990s, um, but also in
(08:42):
the late 1980s we had jam bands.
We had, you know, like morekind of electric dance bands
that were coming around Beforethis.
We have a history of like largebrass bands in the small island
Caribbean that were takingpopular hits from around the
world and putting them into newarrangements that sounded fiery
in a local kind of way.
So we can see that kind oftrajectory and the going wild
(09:06):
part that we get in the 90s andthe 2000s really comes from the
fact that this music again iscarnival music.
I like to call it popular music, but to the extent that
carnival is so central to somany societies in the Caribbean.
So for those of you who haven'tbeen to a carnival A you should
find one.
There's so many fantastic onesin the region and in the
(09:27):
diaspora.
But if you're thinking aboutbeing on the road that's the
context for carnival on the road, for eight, nine, 10, 12 hours
you're jamming, you'll be behinda band, those same stack
speakers that we're talkingabout are rattling your body.
Let's say you start out in aJube context at, let's say, 3 or
4 am by, let's say, 10, 11 am.
(09:51):
You've been on the road for along time and this is when the
kind of energy starts to shift.
You might think of this as atrance-like state for some
people, or just being in a zonewhere things start to take a
turn.
I think for those of us whoenjoy carnival, this turn can be
something that's kind ofeuphoric.
But for audiences or folks onthe periphery, perhaps an older
(10:12):
generation of folks, this can bekind of a scary moment where
people are really moved by music, where they feel like folks are
susceptible to the things thata band might be saying.
And so if you were chippingalong at first, and then now the
rhythm changes and there's adistillation of what was
happening musically fromsomething that's kind of maybe
vibey to something that feels alot more intense.
(10:35):
And this, to me, is whatwireless is.
It's a distillation of the kindof gooey, energetic core of
what soca and carnival musicoffers.
We can think of this and likeother traditions like, this is
the vamp.
This is kind of the breaksection if we're thinking about
like salsa.
Right, it's just like.
(10:55):
This is the good, heavy part,and I think Wilder's is about
condensing that and making thatthe entirety of the thing.
Again, we can see an example ofthis from videos like bands like
14 Minus in the early 1990s.
There is a YouTube channel Idon't know if there's a way to
put this in show notes orsomething, but there's a YouTube
(11:17):
channel by someone named DaddyPlay SKN and he does such a
wonderful job of archivingvideos of early 90s and through
the 2000s of these small islandbands.
And you can see in one videothat I like very much and that I
write about in my book, whereyou see this band after several
(11:39):
hours the rhythm kind of changes.
You just have someone chantingand the drums and these kind of
weird sounds.
It becomes really sparse andthen you hear somebody say are
you rougher than them?
Then push them Rougher thanthem, jam them, wind your waist
and you just sing that over andover again and as much as that
is in.
Maybe some sense is nonsensicalif you can imagine yourself
(12:02):
being in the moment.
It's really provocative, um,and I guess for some audience is
kind of scary about whathappens when you tell people
push or jam, and they take itliterally and not necessarily
metaphorically.
So I talk about that as a kindof distillation, it's a
condensation, just for the sakeof kind of thinking about it
metaphorically.
And taking 12 hours on the roadand Wilders becomes a
(12:26):
condensation of just the mostkind of energetic part, and I
think that Wilders over history,we might think of it as a
condensation of a lot of otherthings, kind of the most
energetic or forceful moment ofother kinds of practices.
So another line of history thatwe might follow, or at least
that I follow, is Christmassports, and the word sport here
(12:50):
refers to a more general use ofthe term to mean something like
to do something for the sake ofentertainment, to do something
for sport, and so Christmassports were various practices
that emerged and developed inthe window of time when enslaved
Africans and Europeanindentured servants were able to
have an extended period ofleisure relatively extended of
course, during the dayssurrounding Christmas and the
(13:12):
New Year, and so a lot of thesepractices participated in
different forms of likeridiculing the upper classes,
which is standard Caribbeanbangs.
Participating in roving bands.
I listened to your fascinatingepisode with Danielle Brown,
which you talked about Parang.
So think of something similarChristmas time, people mobile on
(13:34):
the street playing music, manyforms of recitation.
This would be when, like youknow, a play would be memorized
and then recited throughout in akind of dramatized way.
Different kinds of oratoricalperformances uh, string bands
were very popular and then 500drum ensembles, which in saint
(13:56):
pitts and other parts of theleewards would just be called
big drum.
It's worth noting that big drumis a term that comes up also in
a lot of places in theCaribbean, but does refer to
different ensembles depending onwhere you are.
And so, looking throughouthistory, folks have been
lamenting the loss of Christmassports since, like the 1940s and
(14:16):
1950s.
This, to me, the lamentation ofthe loss, is as integral to
Christmas sports as the actualsports themselves, which is kind
of an interesting idea about,like, what kind of rituals we
consider when we think about aperformance practice.
But particularly in 1950s, wehave folks talking about how
clowns and masquerades therewere different performances of
(14:40):
whatever iterations of cowboysand Indians.
This is a time when in theUnited States we have like a lot
of cowboy hero story moviesthat are being pumped into the
Caribbean, so we see how peopleare receiving this through
Christmas sports, the creationof different types of troops,
and we're losing this, accordingto the folks who are lamenting
(15:02):
in the 50s because of certainkinds of political uplift
regimes that were so central tothe push to independence and
statehood.
And so if Europe or Britain isdeciding that these small
islands that are not really thatuseful to them anymore are
(15:22):
going to be self-governing insome way, it's also dependent on
kind of creating a public thatthey feel is worthy of
self-governance.
And a lot of this is happeninginternally where the elites,
folks who have perhaps left andgotten education elsewhere or
just who believe themselves tobe like the kind of thinker who
(15:45):
can lead, these are folks whoare really vocal about the idea
that some of the Christmassports, especially the, you know
the particularly like what's agood word, I want to say a
vulgar, maybe the vulgar ones ofthe Christmas sports should be
the ones that are left in thepast and that, if we think about
, christmas sports be the onesthat are left in the past and
that if we think about Christmassports we should be thinking
(16:07):
about this in terms of apotential national product.
And so another condensation, Ibelieve, happens there, where
the practices of like listeningthrough the slats of another
person's house and then turningthe gossip that you know from
their business into a song, ormaking real bad fun of the
elites, those kinds of practicesare kind of sort of left behind
(16:31):
and the other ones areamplified, the ones that can
become a kind of nationalproduct.
So we see by the 1970s that pipeand drum bands, big drum and
masquerades become moreprominent in the Christmas
sports than the other ones.
By the 1980s, when we have thetourism product that's necessary
.
This is when we have anotherkind of condensation where
(16:54):
something like a big drumperformance that would be like
maybe all day of, like a bandroving around, and a relatively
short portion of it would belike the energetic, gooey part,
like I was talking about on theroad, that at some point kind of
became the bulk of it, likethis fancy, flying feathers,
intense kind of performancebecame really emblematic of St
(17:18):
Kitts and Nevis.
And so I think that if we mightthink about Wyler's as a
product of Christmas sports,wyler's as a product of carnival
, but Wyler's also a product of1980s technological innovations,
which meant that folks hadsynthesizers to be able to
translate what it is that theywere hearing into their own kind
of personal sound, and we mightunderstand how, like, a
(17:41):
condensation of these differentthings comes through in the
music that we're hearing in the2000s, which is my personal
favorite era of Wilder's music.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
I really appreciate you setting that scene for us,
obviously for us to more deeplyunderstand the history of
Wilder's, but also theconnections or interlocutors
that you raised right.
We are now obviously you tied toDr Brown talking about Parang.
You know, while we all have ourown carnivals, we all also have
(18:14):
our own individual histories andframeworks and things that
these come from right, and sothat's one thing that I think is
always so powerful for me interms of studying music it's
that Caribbean music is ourhistory in a lot of ways, and I
really appreciate the way thatyou were able to not only share
with us the history of Wyler'sand its formation and evolution,
(18:35):
but also you know the evolutionof St Kitts and Nevis and all
of the political movements, andyou know resistance strategies
as well, and I will be sure todefinitely link Daddy Play SKN
in our Strictly Fact syllabus.
So don't worry about that, forour listeners, you will see that
on our website.
You raised a point that also,obviously, is the focal point of
(19:00):
your book as well, and it'sthis idea that the tempo, or you
know, there's this perceptionof Wyler's being crazy, being
fearful potentially, as you wereraising right, but also it
being fast, right.
Where did this notion of itbeing too fast come from, and
how does this idea of Wyler'sbeing too fast compare with, you
(19:23):
know, some of the other verynumerous Caribbean music genres
that we know and love today?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, thinking about this question, there's also so
many ways to answer it, um, soone of the things that's
important to know is thateveryone was just saying it when
I went to St Kitts, when I wasdoing what I call the field work
of course, I've been to StKitts so many times in other
parts of my life, but when I wasasking these pointed questions
(19:51):
in the context of thedissertation and research, it
just kept coming up that what Iwanted to talk about, marla, is
that folks, the first thing thatfolks went to talk about was
the fact that the music was toofast, and that's why it occurred
to me that perhaps being toofast wasn't just about the
actual sound of the music,although let's agree that the
music is incredibly fast, thatthat is a feature of it and that
(20:14):
a feature of petition and thevision women walking up is that
it's like intense and energetic.
I think there is something kindof proprietary about the energy
and speed of folks in St Kittsand Movers, um, but I think one
of the reasons why the music wasseen too fast was, like I was
saying about this condensedmoment, this wilders.
The word wilders comes from thefact that the music makes
(20:37):
people go wild and wild out, um,and it comes from both sides.
It comes from folks who wantthat and who, you know, enjoy
that because they're young andthat's what you do, you know, at
17, at three o'clock in themorning, but also from, I think,
an older generation ofconcerned citizens who recognize
that the emergence of wildersor the diffusion of wilders was
(21:00):
also coinciding with anunprecedented uptick, that the
emergence of Wyler's or thediffusion of Wyler's was also
coinciding with an unprecedenteduptake in violent crime in St
Kitts and in this.
This is at a moment in, I think,global politics where there are
different I'm thinking hereabout neoliberalism, like kind
(21:23):
of an open economy idea wherethere's just more movement, I
think, in and through St Kittsand Nevis for different kinds of
people.
I think St Kitts and Nevis inthe 1990s is newly drawn into
like a global drug trade.
I think there's a differentkind of public view of St Kitts
(21:45):
and Nevis as something, as aplace that folks like literally
never heard of before, tosomewhere that's on a global map
, but on a global map because of, maybe, the underworld, of what
we think of as globalization,and I think that was terrifying
to citizens in St Kitts andNevis and folks in St Kitts and
Nevis who were used to thinkingof this place as slower, as a
(22:08):
sanctuary, as a kind of haven,as a small place as compared to
bigger islands.
So I think that's one way thatwe might one reason why the
music became fast.
It became kind ofrepresentative of the actual
feeling of things changing,which I think of as a feeling of
speed.
But musically speaking it wasalso too fast because the folks
(22:30):
creating it weren't necessarilyproper musicians.
And so I mentioned earlier that, like music technology of the
80s that became affordable andeasily accessible in the 80s and
early 90s, we have synthesizers, we have drum machines, which
means you can buy a keyboardthat is going to have preset
sounds in it.
(22:50):
And interestingly, a lot ofthese keyboards that were
initially circulating in likeWestern markets they were preset
with like world music sounds.
They had Brazilian drums andcongas and you know different
kinds of iron sounds, trianglesand steel pan sounds, so the
sounds that were already in theCaribbean.
(23:11):
But now they were easilyharnessed and accessible to just
regular Dianian people, whichwas kind of new, new, and so it
made it so that folks who didn'thave to go through the same
kind of hoops that oldermusicians had to.
When I talked to musicians whowere really prominent in the 50s
(23:31):
and 60s, they were talkingabout the fact that not only did
you have to maybe order aninstrument from somewhere far
away and wait the six months forit to come on a ship, um, after
you had spent a year saving upthe money to get the instrument,
um, you also like say you didhave the wherewithal to form a
band.
You can just play anywhere.
You had to prove to the partypromoter or the chair of the
(23:56):
whatever social committee thatyou were a respectable enough
band to be playing at theirevent.
This is a long-term process,but by the 2000s a young person
could have a keyboard and acassette or whatever in their
room, make 12 rhythm and getspeakers from whoever and be
(24:16):
playing it at full blastwhatever they wanted to on a
basketball court at a whatevertime of night.
And so this idea that you couldbe visible and audible without
going through these particulargates, I think also felt like
some younger musicians or werebypassing, you know, the normal
temporality of musicianship andI think that also made musicians
(24:38):
, older musicians feel like themusic was way too fast.
And finally, I think theseconversations always in the
Caribbean I don't want to sayalways, but I do kind of think
always.
I think maybe it's Alexandria,you might have someone who
thinks about women in the regionand music.
I think that even where womenaren't audible or visible,
(25:00):
there's always this conceptionof proper womanhood and proper
femininity.
That seems to be like the strawturning the drain for a lot of
these discourses, and so a lotof the discourse that I was
hearing about the music beingtoo fast, like even if it didn't
stop at talking about women,there were always times where
(25:20):
we'd touch on fast girl, fastwomen, sexual immorality.
You know that you're walking uptoo fast, too hard, too much of
your bum is visible, you'rejiggling in ways that are not
becoming, you know, arespectable person, respectable
woman and the idea ofrespectable motherhood.
You know I went to a high schoolreunion for one of my aunts and
(25:46):
you know it was maybe like a30th high school reunion and
like one of the main topics ofconversation was still about how
in St Kitts and Nevis, how it'sbecause of bad mothering that
there is crime, like all of theproblems of the nation can be
really pinned on mothers whoaren't doing it well enough, and
(26:07):
whenever there were women inthe dance in a jam on the road,
it was always indicative of thefact that she was not otherwise
taking care of herresponsibilities toward children
that she currently had orchildren she should have been
having you, you know or forbuilding whatever kind of wealth
or home that she should beparticipating in as a feminine
(26:31):
member of society.
And so the idea of too fast inthe English language throughout,
like the English-speaking world, the idea that girls or women
who are too fast are ones whoare doing things that men are
only allowed to do, was also, Ithink, a really important
contributing factor to why themusic was perceived as too fast.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
That's a really interesting point, I think, one
that even parallels some of thework on Jamaican music right,
thinking especially on studieson dance hall, carolyn Cooper's
work on dance hall, especiallyin Slackness, donna Hope several
others Shout out to mycommittee member, donna Hope but
(27:15):
yeah, that's a very interestingpoint to think that, you know,
even when women are not alwayscentral or as especially like
creators of the music or of thegenre right, just our mere
presence and performance is onethat is always sort of put down
or demeaned, in a sense, andeven something that I'm looking
(27:36):
at in my own work on reggae.
So that's a really, you know,interesting point, I think, one
that I would love to learn andstudy more about in terms of how
it pervades in St Kittsneo-colonial resistance
strategies in a sense, but alsothose who may be of the earlier
generation are sort of alsobuying into these ideas that
(28:08):
have been put in place by ourcolonial.
I don't even like saying forfathers or whatever, um, but yes
them, um.
You know how that also evenaffects this idea of the tempo
and your analysis of of Wyler'stoday, and you know its history.
(28:31):
How did you get to this sort ofthese conclusions about Wyler's
being too fast and it beingseen in, you know these various
ways, from the musicianship toBlack women's sexuality.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I think this is where the ethnography portion of my
project, I guess, shines throughthe most.
Let's say, if I had to critiquemy own work, it would be that
it's like not always obviousthat so much of what I'm coming
to is because this is whatpeople were telling me and that
may be maybe a conversationabout what it's like to do
(29:08):
research with, like your familyand in the place where you're
from, which seems super enticingbut has its own kind of
methodological kind of obstacles.
I really came to it because it'swhat people were saying.
It just kept coming up and thefact that it kept coming up in
so many different contexts thatI do like just saying too fast
(29:30):
or focusing on the speed of athing, of a way somebody is
moving a particular song of,when people are describing a
song, talking about it just interms of its speed, talking to
musicians outside of St Kittsand Ligets, talking to people
from other parts of theCaribbean, and when I would say
(29:52):
I'm interested in the conditionof visual music, be like, oh
that fast stuff, that stuff istoo fast.
I can't even dance to that,gosh, I'd be out of breath.
I don't know how y'all do it,you know, know it's, it's just
like became so central.
And what's interesting, I feellike about a lot of the way that
Caribbean people talk, ifyou'll allow me to generalize
(30:12):
about Caribbean people, is thatit's just so poetic and kind of
archipelagic.
It's like the metaphors justrun so deep in a way.
And this is I'm not forgettinghis name and you will know
repeating island I write so muchabout.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
No, is that Benitez?
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yes, benitez Roth, thank you, okay.
So I write so much about him,I'm embarrassed, okay.
But so the repeating island.
The idea, of course, is that,like, we can see all these
things from the Caribbean inother parts of the Caribbean,
but always in a different way.
So if in Cuba it's the way thatthe wrought iron on a fence is
(30:55):
curved, we'll see it in the waythat someone moves her hips in
Guadalupe and, like you know, itobviously takes a certain kind
of eye or, in my argument, acertain kind of ear to be able
to pick that up.
But I really felt, like in StKitts and Nevis, that when I'm
talking to people or when I'mwatching performances, when I go
to a queen show, you know, whenI hear people gossiping that
(31:16):
speed and tempo was just socentral to the way that folk
were able to categorize behaviorwithout explicitly castigating
it.
To suggest that was too fastwas already pointing to social
norms and the ways that it wasoutside of it.
I think, because this projectfor me is also about my family,
it's about my grandfather, it'sabout my father I don't know if
(31:39):
I mentioned my grandfather thatI came to ethnomusicology
because it was also a space thatI was able to do the
legitimizing work that my fathervery explicitly asked me to do
about his father who was, like Isaid, a califsonian and an
instrumentalist.
When Roger Abrams and Alan Lomax, who were folklorists, were in
(32:01):
the Caribbean in 1962, they wererecording in different islands
and when they got to Nevis theyrecorded a few hours or maybe a
few songs of my grandfathersinging.
Later these recordings ended upon some anthologies and there
was a whole repatriation projectwhere descendants of Lomax and
(32:24):
others who were part of hisfoundation went to the different
islands that they visited togive back copies of these
recordings.
Many, you know many peopledidn't even know the recordings
existed.
It's only kind of through loreLike they'd heard at some point.
You know, daddy was recorded,daddy has albums and it, you
know, we find out 30 years laterthat the albums are these field
(32:45):
recordings.
Anyway, they received thesefield recordings in Nevis.
My uncle was in Nevis at thetime.
He receives them, sends themback to my dad in the way that
Caribbean folk do.
You know, this is in a suitcasewith a bunch of other stuff, a
lot of tamarind jam and, youknow like maybe a fruit,
clandestine mangoes.
Okay, so there's an envelopewith these recordings and they
(33:06):
were contextualized in terms of,like Alan Lomax and Roger
Abrams project.
But my father really wanted morecontext in terms of us, our
family, in terms of theCaribbean, in terms of St Kitts
and Nevis, and so he was like,yeah, you seem into all of this
research stuff.
This is on your plate, jessica,and I've taken that really
(33:29):
seriously.
Actually, of course, I've hadto translate my questions about
daddy into questions about theCaribbean region and about small
islands and big islands, andwhat is history and what is the
utility of music, and how do wethink about tempo and what is
the utility of music and how dowe think about tempo and what
are the methodologies that workwhen thinking about people who
(33:52):
know you, who know your historybut see you as outside of it, et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But yes, these have beenquestions about my family.
I think I lost the thread of myquestion.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
No worries, we were talking about how you got to
these conclusions in terms ofmusician strip and sexuality.
But I mean, what you weresaying definitely even brought
me to my next point.
Going into St Kitts and Nevisand you know, doing these
recordings, as you noted, rightthem becoming part of archives
(34:35):
abroad without even theknowledge, you know the
knowledge and potentially evenpermission.
You know all of that stuff alsogets muddled right when
sometimes scholars are goinginto places.
But what it was like for youand your family to even find out
about that was, you know.
One of my following questionsand I guess to pivot from and
sort of continue on that point,what advice do you have for any
(34:57):
of us from the region, you know,hoping to write the stories of
our families and of ourancestors in ways that are
meaningful, ancestors in waysthat are meaningful, and you
know, especially in your case,to not necessarily challenge but
maybe better expound the workthat has been done before.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I was thinking a lot about this, about, like, what
kind of advice I would give andyou know, of course, advice
always comes from this place ofwhat you wish you had done
better, or at least for me itdoes.
Um, I will say one thing thathas been surprising to me, and
is how quickly all of the kindof archival spaces, whatever
(35:37):
they may be, whether it be likeone woman on Facebook who posts
very often or, you know, anational archive how quickly
these things do actually change.
I think it's maybe easy to saythat I checked in this one place
for something and it wasn'tthere, or I didn't find what I
wanted, and now I have to moveon, but I'm finding that in the
Caribbean, really broadly, thatfolks are very quickly
(36:01):
recognizing the importance, theutility, the relevance of, like
their family trove of things ofcassette tapes, of pictures and
it's becoming even morecommonplace to be posting those
things or to recognize that theycould be donated to a national
(36:22):
archive.
And so I think that maybe partof this is recognizing that
whatever story you're writingand telling is a living thing.
It's a living, breathing,ongoing kind of story.
There is no definitive historyof you or me, or Wyler's or
Reggae right.
There is a story that we cantell and that the archives are
(36:44):
changing and the stories arechanging too.
So in one way, this is aboutnot giving up because you may go
back to a place and find thatthere's new information, but
also being perhaps not sotethered to the idea that there
is one way to talk about thething that you're interested in.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Beautiful, thank you, I mean I think I will take that
into account for my ownresearch.
No-transcript or patriarchalperspective, one-sided
(37:34):
perspective in some regards.
So I take that for myself butalso hope that it is helpful for
several of our listeners.
We have gone from whilers towriting in, I think, a beautiful
and organic way, but I dodefinitely, in addition to Daddy
Play SKN, I definitely do wantto give our listeners some more
(37:58):
ways to check out and listen toWyler's music.
It's something that I enjoydoing and compiling playlists
and things of all the songs thatwe discuss here on Strictly
Facts.
So what are some of yourfavorite Wyler songs?
Or you know videos, albums etc.
That you could share with usthat I will add to our Strictly
(38:20):
Facts syllabus.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Okay, so, in addition to Daddy Play again, this is
fantastic, really greatrepository of like a kind of era
of like home video, which younot aren't getting a lot of
other places um, and St Kittsand Nevis at least this was the
case, you know, over the lastseveral decades is that you kind
of have a band and this is yourband.
You sort of stick to it.
(38:42):
I believe that me and my cousinare New Vibes fans.
This is kind of we have anallegiance to New Vibes.
So I think my first pick forquintessential whilers, even
though it's not the fastest, isPeople's Sugar, which is a song
from the 2001, 2002 season byNew Vibes.
(39:04):
This is one song that a lot ofmy interlocutors who you know
were in their late teens, early20s, in the 2000s and early
2000s, just remembered this juveso vividly and talked about it
with like such detail and kindof reverence.
Like this is what wilders andcarnival can be, and also it's
(39:26):
from it's from an album calledSugar.
I'm really interested in theway that Sugar does this very
interesting reinvention in StKitts and Beavis right, like
we're thinking about the verysource of enslavement that's
metamorphosized into, you know,the fuel that is behind the
emblematic energy and speed thatwe think of when we think of
(39:47):
contemporary music.
So, people sugar, and then theSmall Axe Band, which also the
fantastic band I am under Brad'shead, but Small Axe Band also
quintessential Wilders.
I like their album from 2013.
It's called World Tour and Ithink the album does a really
good job of showing how thebands that make wilders are also
(40:11):
making a lot of other kinds ofmusic.
I think there's a song on therecalled Zouk.
There's some that have like aLatin flair and that is part of
being, I think, from a smallisland, but being from the
Caribbean in general, which isthe idea that you are really
familiar with other kinds ofstyles.
You feel like these stylesbelong to you or are in you in
some way and can come through inthe music.
(40:32):
So even the idea that any onegenre is from one place, which
is another point that DanielleBrown made on that really
fantastic episode that yourlisteners should listen to if
they haven't already.
Yeah, I think they do a goodjob on that album and I really
love it.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Perfect.
Well, I will, as I said, besure to add that to our Strictly
Backed syllabus and check itout for myself.
I always enjoy.
You know exploring, as we'vetalked about today right,
exploring our music from acrossthe region, and you know noting
the similarities and differencesin the sounds that we create.
And so for my final question,there are so many ways that I
(41:10):
think we can study and documentmusic.
There have been people who youknow analyze lyrics and
performances, aesthetics, youknow what somebody might be like
wearing in a music video,things of that nature.
I've certainly done that in myown work as an ethnomusicologist
.
What do you think studyingtempo adds to our analysis of
(41:31):
Caribbean music?
And especially in our growingdigital world of remixes and
cross-genre collaborations andthings like that, how can we use
tempo to either maintain ortrack the evolution of Caribbean
music genres going forward?
Speaker 2 (41:49):
I love this question.
It's a really great question.
Thank you for asking it, notbecause I have like a
particularly good answer even,but just because I think that
tempo is kind of somethingdifferent than the traditional
metrics that we use torecategorize music, you know,
and when we're able to usedifferent metrics we get
(42:09):
different answers.
And, as someone studying thesmall island Caribbean, that's
always kind of the kind ofundergirding question is like
well, what can I study thatallows me to take this place
seriously?
And I study all of Caribbeanmusic.
Unfortunately, speaking, Ishould probably be talking about
reggae, right, I should betalking about Marley.
(42:29):
I should be talking about steelpan.
I should be talking aboutcalypso.
These are like very legitimateand important genres.
I should be talking about salsa.
I should be talking about sun.
I should be thinking about Cuba.
But what questions can I ask totake this space seriously?
And I think tempo is a metricthat allows me to think
(42:50):
differently about how we'rethinking, about what is
influential, where things aregoing and coming from and how
people in the Caribbean definethemselves sonically, where
there is the repeating islandtiming effect, where it's not
exactly the same, but you couldtrace whatever is happening
(43:11):
probably to somewhere else, ifyou wanted to.
As with most places in theCaribbean, there's no kind of
origin story.
We did not invent pan, we arenot the progenitors of reggae or
dub, which revolutionizes allof global pop music, but what
the folks in St Kitts and Nevisfeel like they do have is a kind
of lock on tempo, on creatingan experience of speed, on
(43:36):
pushing the tempo, on being ableto perform in such a way that,
like you, can keep it at a hightempo for a long time.
These are the things that theyimagine as proprietary, and I
think that, yeah, our ability totalk about different kinds of
spaces by looking at differentkinds of metrics is really
important to our ability to tella really fulsome story about
(43:58):
the region altogether.
And I think another thing thatwas important for me is that
when I was first starting tothink about tempo and speed, all
the literature is thinkingabout Europe and the United
States.
When we think about acceleration, moving forward, being at the
forefront, technologicalinnovation, nobody's thinking
(44:19):
about the Caribbean for real.
It's about accelerationists,it's about cybernetic.
It's a conversation that isrelated to the Caribbean for
sure.
Um and uh Louis, uh Chudes,soke's work on, like black music
and technology, I think does afantastic job of making it clear
(44:41):
that the that there is a bridgebetween like technological,
accelerationist kind ofdiscourse and Caribbean music.
But it occurred to me that theidea of having to innovate
quickly and often, of having tokind of anticipate trends, that
that is also a decidedly smallisland attribute.
(45:02):
It's necessary.
People live on islands and havemoved through islands
pre-colonially until up till now, and probably forevermore, in a
context knowing that theirability to have resources that
they need is dependent on amoving throughout, that things
are coming from elsewhere,they're going elsewhere.
There's this archipelagic ideaand so being innovative,
(45:27):
changing things up and beinglike responsive to like what's
happening in the world climate,wise, politically and these are
(45:49):
also the things that make upacceleration, that make up tempo
and speed, and that this is notjust the like European people,
white people, the US, they don'thave an ownership on these
ideas.
And when I was able to thinkabout it like that, it also led
me to see how something likeWyler's is related to genres
like Detroit and Chicago, housemusic that's also coming around,
you know, within the 1980s,young like black youth with a
keyboard and a cassette player,thinking of how they can like
(46:09):
change the thing around.
I'm thinking about New Orleansbounce music to think about like
an extended kind of circlingCaribbean also is coming from
this idea about tempo pushing ita little bit.
Um, I'm thinking also aboutregional hip-hop genres that are
also that like, if we thinkabout tempo, other kinds of
things come into the fore andthen it sort of has to shift the
(46:31):
whole thing in a way that Ijust think is really beautiful.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
I am so excited for the book to drop, personally, um
, and so I thank you so much, drSwanson Baker, for joining us
for this episode.
Um cannot plug enough foreverybody to get Island Time
Speed and the Archipelago fromSt Kitts and Nevis when it is
out in two weeks, because thisis coming out just a few weeks
(46:56):
before the book, and sodefinitely be sure to grab a
copy.
The link will always be in theshow notes in our Strictly Facts
syllabus.
And again, dr Sw, again drswanson baker, thank you so much
for sharing a bit about whilerswith us.
I didn't want us to give awaytoo much because I definitely
want everybody to check out thebook when it comes out.
Um, but, as always, umtremendous episode on music, on
(47:20):
the various caribbean musicsthat we, you know, pivot and
shape and change and just createas a region and for our
listeners.
I hope you enjoyed learning alittle bit about St Kitts and
Nevis, about Wyler's and, ofcourse, about Dr Swanson Baker's
history and writing experiencesas well.
And, as always, little more.
(47:42):
Thanks for tuning in to Stfacts.
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