?In re­cent times it has been said that ca­lyp­so is dy­ing and head­ing for ex­tinc­tion. In my opin­ion it is more a case of it be­ing as­sas­si­nat­ed by the lack of air­play on the ra­dio sta­tions (with the ex­cep­tion of 94.7), the pro­mo­tion of so­ca and the lack of ed­u­ca­tion by par­ents. While I must ad­mit that the schools and Ju­nior Monarch com­pe­ti­tions do make a vi­able con­tri­bu­tion to its ex­is­tence, this on­ly ac­counts for a drop in the vast ocean of so­ca "songs" that is pro­duced every year and pol­lutes the air­ways. Ad­mit­ted­ly, so­ca has its place in so­ci­ety and will con­tin­ue to be around, but why must we al­low ca­lyp­so to die be­cause of this? It is just not a case of lack­ing air­play. The sit­u­a­tion, as I see it, is ir­recov­er­able and sim­ply be­cause the younger gen­er­a­tion is not be­ing en­cour­aged to ap­pre­ci­ate and em­brace ca­lyp­so by their par­ents. As ca­lyp­son­ian Pos­er in his 2010 con­tri­bu­tion blunt­ly put it, "you didn't teach the chil­dren."

It has reached a stage where so­ca is iden­ti­fied as be­ing for the young and ca­lyp­so for the old­er gen­er­a­tion. Why must this be? You think that in Cu­ba, Puer­to Ri­co and Latin Amer­i­ca the young peo­ple don't know and love the tra­di­tion­al son, sal­sa, bolero, meringue etc that their par­ents and grand­par­ents lis­tened to? Sim­i­lar­ly, they have their "off­shoot" genre of young peo­ple mu­sic like reg­gae­ton, but they do not scoff at the tra­di­tion­al mu­sic be­cause they recog­nise that it is part of their cul­ture and up­bring­ing, hav­ing been taught that by their par­ents and grand­par­ents. Any young Cuban (still liv­ing in Cu­ba) knows the lyrics to Chan Chan, El Cuar­to de Tu­la, Dos Gar­de­nias and many more of their tra­di­tion­al songs that go back 30 years or more.

This is be­cause the cul­tur­al tra­di­tion­al mu­sic of any coun­try is not and should not be sup­port­ed by a par­tic­u­lar age group on­ly. Cul­ture needs to be passed on to the chil­dren. The irony of it all is that the young par­ents of to­day are al­ready tak­en up in the so­ca thing and would prob­a­bly teach their chil­dren that so­ca is the on­ly mu­si­cal art form to fol­low. The on­ly sav­ing grace is that in some of the Car­ni­val fetes the DJs have to re­sort to "oldies" by Stal­in, Rud­der and Su­perBlue to avoid "killing" the pa­trons with the mo­not­o­ny of so­ca.

?W Dop­son

Wood­brook, PoS