Soca Recommendations?

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Next to the (fairly big!) reggae section in the Virgin Megastore there's a Soca section, and all the CDs look about as great as each other. I base this on:

- they all look very cheaply made.
- the covers are all healthy young women enjoying the Caribbean climate.

Anyway I had no idea what it sounded like until I downloaded a track today and I liked it very much. So what if anything should I be buying?

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 26 August 2002 11:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, I'm curious about Soca & other pop music from Caribbean countries outside of Jamaica too but it's unfathomably anonymously packaged to the untrained eye.

Does anybody know of a good website or book with background on this stuff for a neophyte? How about even a working definition of Soca? I think I remember hearing that the name comes from "SOul" + "CAlypso", but that's about it.

Guess I'm just restating Tom's question here, but please bring on the new answers!

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 26 August 2002 11:30 (twenty-three years ago)

There are some sound samples on Amazon.co.uk. Sounds bloody awful to me. Black Stalin gets my vote because of his name. So a further question: was there a golden age of soca? There seems to a be a fair bit of that 'batty boy' nonsense about nowadays.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Monday, 26 August 2002 12:49 (twenty-three years ago)

A friend is into a lot of recent soca stuff and sent me some mp3s a couple of months back -- very good fun! I'll scrounge around for those if possible, get some names.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 26 August 2002 13:43 (twenty-three years ago)

& other pop music from Caribbean countries outside of Jamaica

Don't forget that includes Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic (yes, as well as others, I know).

― DeRayMi, Monday, 26 August 2002 13:48 (twenty-three years ago)

i heard a track by shuwayne winchester (sp??) the other day, which sounded quite good. i can't add any more to that (i may have started a soca thread a while back, perhaps there are some recommendations from people on that??)

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 26 August 2002 16:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm a fan, Tom, though I've been out of touch for a while. I'd recommend Grina in particular - especially the great Get Out De Way - but also Sparrow, Arrow, Gabby, David Rudder (esp Madness), Tambu (esp Free Up), Gypsy, Byron Lee, Red Plastic Bag, Calypso Rose and others. I'm not sure there are any acts who've been consistently good - every album I have has some pretty limp material - but there are lots of odd good tracks: Ratty Ray by Eddy Grant, Don' Wine by Colin Lucas, Get Something And Wave by Superblue. You should check out some of the earlier calypso too, because a lot of that is terrific too.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 26 August 2002 16:41 (twenty-three years ago)

"Carnival people go crazy as u should know, so nobody should tell me stop, nobody should tell me stop, nobody should tell me stop, who wants so!" (Burning Flames - "Rudeness Mec Me" 1986)

"Burning Flames again, sweeter than sugar cane, Burning Flames again, more temperature on de brain, Burning Flames again, stronger than hurricane, u go whoopsy-whoopsy-whoopsy-whoopsy-whoopsy-whoopsy-BAM-BAM!" (Burning Flames - "With Your Bad Self" 1986)

― Paul (scifisoul), Thursday, 29 August 2002 00:57 (twenty-three years ago)

They played this stuff everywhere when I was on holiday in the bahamas. As far as I can work out the only merit is its infectious and unrelenting cheerfulness and the very rude dancing.

There was one fun track that I heard everywhere with a sort of bagpipe noise on it and a very infectious riff and vocals about "on our island, there are lots of things to eat" or something. I reckon recommend going to dirty north london soca club and watching the bashment girls grind their batties around, don't recommend actually buying any...

― Jacob, Thursday, 29 August 2002 12:44 (twenty-three years ago)

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