Frankie McIntosh and the Art of the Soca Arranger

FRANKIE

McINTOSH

and the Art of

the Soca Arranger

Frankie McIntosh and Ray Allen

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi.

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of University Presses.

Copyright © 2024 by University Press of Mississippi

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McIntosh, Frankie, author. | Allen, Ray (Professor of music and American studies), author.

Title: Frankie McIntosh and the art of the soca arranger / Frankie McIntosh, Ray Allen.

Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024030249 (print) | LCCN 2024030250 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496854001 (hardback) | ISBN 9781496854018 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781496854025 (epub) | ISBN 9781496854032 (epub) | ISBN 9781496854049 (pdf) | ISBN 9781496854056 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: McIntosh, Frankie. | McIntosh, Frankie—Interviews. | Arrangers (Musicians)—Biography. | Jazz musicians—Biography. | Arrangers (Musicians)—Interviews. | Jazz musicians—Interviews. | Soca—Trinidad and Tobago—History and criticism. | Calypso (Music)—Trinidad and Tobago—History and criticism. | Popular music—Trinidad and Tobago—History and criticism.

Classification: LCC ML410.M4528 A5 2024 (print) | LCC ML410.M4528 (ebook) | DDC 782.421640972983 [B]—dc23/eng/20240703

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024030249

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024030250

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Finding the Arrangement in the Song

Chapter 1: Making Music in Saint Vincent and Antigua

Chapter 2: Brooklyn Is Meh Home

Chapter 3: The Saint Vincent Connection—Alston Becket Cyrus and Granville Straker

Chapter 4: The Art of the Soca Arranger

Chapter 5: Arranging with the Small Island Calypsonians

Chapter 6: Arranging with the Trinidad Stars

Chapter 7: Jazzing Up Calypso in the New Millennium

Epilogue: Our Calypso Tags

Appendix 1: Small Island Calypsos and Soca Songs

Appendix 2: The Trinidad Calypsos and Soca Songs

Appendix 3: Jazzing Up Calypso

Notes

Interviews

References

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The past four years have flown by as this book project moved from a nascent idea to a final published work. Thankfully, after several hundred hours of conversation and tedious coediting, we are still standing and talking to each other. Working together over such an extended period has posed challenges, but the collaboration has proved tremendously satisfying for both of us. For Ray, it has been a privilege to have helped tell the story of one of the Caribbean’s most esteemed and beloved musicians. For Frankie, it has been an honor to have had a music professor from his old alma mater, Brooklyn College, deem his life and music deserving of such thorough documentation.

Many colleagues and friends have contributed along the way. Frankie’s circle of musicians and associates who offered up their insights include Garvin Blake, Charles Dougherty, David Happy Williams, Alston Becket Cyrus, Dr. Hollis Chalkdust Liverpool, Leston Paul, Pelham Goddard, Linda Calypso Rose McCarthy Sandy Lewis, Maclean Short Shirt Emanuel, Paul King Obstinate Richards, Caldric Forbes, Errol Ince, and Rawlston Charles. We are indebted to calypso historian Ray Funk, Everybody’s magazine editor and long-time Carnival observer Herman Hall, and poet/historian Dawad Philip for their thoughts and advice along the way, and to Caribbean music scholar Jocelyne Guilbault who originally suggested the idea of this book to Ray. Our gratitude to those who read and critiqued various portions of our manuscript: Phil Rupprecht, Jeff Taylor, Denise Stephens, Fred Wasser, Nancy Berke, Laurie Russell, and the readers at the University Press of Mississippi. Our appreciation to editors Lisa McMurtray and Laura Strong, and to designer Jennifer Mixon, for advising and shepherding our manuscript across the finish line.

Frankie’s special thanks go out to all the musicians who played his music, whether in the studio or on live shows, and to the music lovers who supported it in various ways. Without them there would be no book. The work stands as a tribute to the extended McIntosh clan: his father Clarence Arthur Tom McIntosh; his mother Belle Cordice McIntosh; his siblings Cheryl, Arlene, Anthony, and Sonja; his first son Ahmad and his children Kaylah, Nasir and Nina (twins), and Ethan; his second son Omar and his children Rashid, Aiden, and Jasim; his daughter Jamilah and her son Jaiden; and his youngest son Hakim and his recently arrived son Kymani. Frankie hopes his nine grandchildren, and perhaps their children, will read this book someday and be reminded of where they came from.

And finally, from Frankie and Ray to their spouses, Patsy and Laurie: your love and support have kept us going through it all!

—Frankie and Ray

Brooklyn, November 2023

INTRODUCTION

FINDING THE ARRANGEMENT IN THE SONG

Frankie and Ray originally crossed paths some twenty years ago. I first heard Frankie McIntosh play at Restoration Plaza recalls Ray. It was a steamy August evening back in the early 2000s, just prior to the recent wave of gentrification, back when central Brooklyn was predominantly Black and West Indian. The occasion was a lively calypso tent run by Trinidadian producer and poet Dawad Philip. It turned out to be a memorable night.

Philip had chosen the locale wisely, showcasing his artists in a neighborhood that was heating up for Brooklyn’s annual Labor Day Caribbean Carnival celebration. The Restoration Plaza complex, located on Fulton Street near Nostrand Avenue, included a studio where many hit soca (soul/calypso) records were recorded, as well as the Billie Holiday Theater, a popular venue for West Indian music and dance productions. Just down the street from Restoration was Charlie’s Calypso City, a record shop and recording studio that produced many of Brooklyn’s greatest soca recordings during the 1980s and 1990s. The store’s owner, Trinidad expatriate Rawlston Charlie Charles, was permitted to shut down a section of Fulton Street on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend to run a Carnival block party featuring performances by visiting calypso dignitaries. Less than a mile to the south lay Eastern Parkway, the main route for the annual Carnival parade that drew millions of spectators on Labor Day afternoon. The Parkway parade culminated in front of the venerable Brooklyn Museum, whose outdoor grounds hosted the annual Dimanche Gras concert and Panorama competition held over Labor Day weekend.

Ray continues: "I had been attending Brooklyn Carnival events since the mid-1980s, and eventually began researching and writing about Brooklyn’s steelband scene in collaboration with Trinidadian journalist Leslie Slater.¹ As my interests shifted toward the calypso and soca side of Carnival music, I began frequenting calypso tents that popped up in Brooklyn around Labor Day. Dawad Philip’s tent that season featured a number of big-time calypsonians, among them Gypsy, Sugar Aloes, Short Shirt, and Swallow. In addition, his house band included a lineup of crack instrumentalists—Frankie on keyboards, Dane Gulston on steel pan, Errol Ince on trumpet, Jeff Granum on saxophone, Wayne Walcott on trombone, and Terrance Shaw on guitar. At the opening of each set, the band jammed around on a jazz or R&B standard, affording Frankie and the others the opportunity to showcase their improvisatory chops. I was impressed with Frankie’s keyboard skills, both his rich harmonic accompaniments and his cool, lyrical soloing, recalls Ray. I had heard of Frankie McIntosh, the arranger responsible for the music behind the soca hits ‘Don’t Back Back’ by Sparrow, ‘Lorraine’ by Explainer, ‘Is Thunder’ by Duke, and ‘Coming High’ by Becket, to name just a few. But I had no idea that he was so well-versed in jazz and R&B as well as soca and calypso. I approached him at the end of the show to say hello. As I recall our conversation that night was brief, but right then and there I knew this was a musician I needed to get to know if I wanted to understand more about Brooklyn soca music."

Frankie remembers it this way: "If memory serves, I first ran into Ray at a calypso event, a tent at Restoration Plaza. The last act had just finished and the audience was heading toward the exit, except for this gentleman walking in the opposite direction. Now, as with most musicians at the end of a long gig, I was tired and not eager to engage in lengthy conversation. But before I could get away, he introduced himself as Professor of Music from my old alma mater, Brooklyn College. That got my attention! He went on to compliment my playing and asked a question about one of the songs we had performed. As we briefly chatted, I realized this fellow was quite knowledgeable about calypso, not just someone with a passing interest in the music who somehow ended up at the show looking for exotic Carnival music. I told him I hoped to see him again sometime, but didn’t think much about the encounter until a few days later when I was browsing through some books in my home library. When I came across the volume Island Sounds in the Global City, edited by Ray and Lois Wilcken, I realized that this was the Ray Allen I had met at the concert. The article on Brooklyn steelbands in Brooklyn that he had cowritten with Les Slater confirmed my earlier appraisal that here was someone who knew quite a bit about the music through his academic research and who was out there attending events in the community. I later asked Les about Ray, about what it was like working with him. He described the experience as ‘gratifying,’ characterizing Ray as ‘honest and diligent,’ someone who was open to others’ ideas and someone you could trust. Les’s comments would have been a sufficient recommendation, but when my daughter Jamilah returned home from a music lesson at Brooklyn College and announced: ‘My professor saw my name and asked if I was related to you; his name is Ray Allen,’ I became further convinced that Ray was no dilettante, but someone with experience and a genuine interest in the musical culture to which I belonged. So, sometime later when Ray finally arrived at my home for a series of interviews in connection with his Carnival book project, I was ready and willing."

Following that chance meeting at the Restoration calypso tent, Frankie and Ray ran into each other on occasion, but it was not until the summer of 2013 that they finally sat down to have a serious chat about Frankie’s life and career as a soca arranger. Ray recalls: "I had just begun work on my next book project, a history of Caribbean Carnival music in Harlem and Brooklyn. Soca would be front and center, and Frankie’s work with Brooklyn record producers Granville Straker and Rawlston Charles were critical to the story. I was totally taken by Frankie, whose exuberant love and knowledge of all things musical lay quietly below his outwardly modest demeanor. His friends and bandmates often described him as a humble musical genius, and I quickly understood why. We hit it off right away, perhaps because he was eager to talk with someone who really wanted to dig deep into his music. And we bonded over our serendipitous connection to the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, where I had been teaching for the past twenty years and he had received his bachelor’s degree back in the 1970s. It quickly became apparent that we shared a great admiration for the Conservatory that had provided him with first- class musical training, but also a lingering frustration with the program’s Eurocentric vision of music that too often treated jazz and world music as second-class citizens. More on that later.

Frankie picks up the story: "I was happy to speak with Ray. In previous interviews, most journalists tended to dwell on a narrow range of interests: ‘What was it like playing with my father’s band as a twelve-year old?’ ‘Which calypsonian did I enjoy arranging for the most?’ But Ray asked more challenging questions, focusing on my arranging process and how I put things together, probing for my aesthetic philosophy. Right away he wanted to discuss specific examples from my previous recordings, so I couldn’t wander off into vague generalities. Above all it was quite clear that he respected my music and my artistry as an arranger. Those initial interviews were gratifying for me, and later I was pleased with the chapter he wrote about Brooklyn soca music in his Jump Up! book. The acknowledgments he gave me and record producer Granville Straker were greatly appreciated. But at that point, ten years ago, I was not thinking about a biography or memoir."

The seed for that idea, as it turns out, was planted a year after their initial interview sessions. Ray remembers: In 2014 I presented a paper at the Society for Ethnomusicology on my preliminary research on Brooklyn soca. Afterwards I was fortunate enough to have a cup of coffee with Jocelyne Guilbault, the widely admired Caribbean music scholar who had just finished a terrific cowritten biography with Trinidadian soca bandleader Roy Cape. Upon hearing more about my work in Brooklyn, she looked me in the eye and said quite emphatically: ‘Ray, you should really write a book about Frankie McIntosh, or better yet, a book with Frankie McIntosh.’ That was great advice, and Frankie and I thank her for it, emphatically!

The Art of the Soca Arranger tells a story of Caribbean music in the diaspora through the eyes and ears of pioneering soca arranger Frankie McIntosh. Soca music, an offspring of older Trinidadian calypso, emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and today is recognized worldwide as one of the English-speaking Caribbean’s most distinctive styles of popular vocal music. Fans are no doubt familiar with famed singers Lord Kitchener, the Mighty Sparrow, Calypso Rose, David Rudder, and a host of other bards whose poetic wit and wisdom became the defining hallmarks of the music. But much less is known about the arrangers and instrumentalists who created the musical setting in which those vocalists plied their craft. This work will fill that void by focusing on the life and music of one of the most celebrated soca arrangers and keyboardists of all time.

Franklyn Frankie McIntosh was born on the Caribbean Island of Saint Vincent in 1946. Like many Caribbean people, he was of mixed descent, tracing his ancestry to West Africa, India, Scotland, and possibly Germany. He cut his musical teeth as pianist and arranger for his father’s calypso dance orchestra in Kingstown before establishing his own band at the age of fourteen. In 1968 he joined the wave of Caribbean immigrants who landed in Brooklyn, where he studied and earned a BA degree in classical piano from Brooklyn College and an MA in jazz studies from New York University. For nearly a decade he made a living playing with Brooklyn calypso dance orchestras and small jazz ensembles, before joining forces with fellow Saint Vincent expatriate and record producer Granville Straker. Serving as the company’s musical director and leader of the studio band the Equitables, Frankie composed musical arrangements and oversaw the recordings of hundreds of calypso/soca albums for Straker’s Records as well as Brooklyn’s two other calypso companies, Charlie’s Records, and B’s Records. His list of musical collaborators reads like a who’s who of calypso and soca in the 1980s and 1990s: Chalkdust, Calypso Rose, the Mighty Sparrow, Lord Kitchener, Duke, Shadow, Machel Montano, Becket, and Swallow to name but a few. Today Frankie is recognized as a member of the esteemed pantheon of arrangers whose musical visions were indispensable in crafting the modern soca sound.

Most of the biographical writings on the music of the English-speaking Caribbean have focused on star vocalists, with little attention to the musicians and arrangers who played essential roles in shaping popular styles. Scholarly works on calypso and soca have emphasized social history and song lyrics while paying little attention to the music.² With the exception of Jocelyne Guilbault’s 2014 co-biography, written with and recounting the life of Trinidadian bandleader Roy Cape, little has been said about calypso orchestras, soca bands, and their musicians.³ Likewise, the individuals who created the musical accompaniments have been ignored, save for Guilbault’s chapter on early calypso arrangers Frankie Francis and Art de Coteau, and in Ray’s own work on more recent Brooklyn soca arrangers.⁴ To date, no in-depth study of an influential calypso or soca arranger and his/her music exists.

The Art of the Soca Arranger places Frankie McIntosh at the center of several overlapping narratives of immigration and musical diaspora. There is Frankie’s personal voyage from the Caribbean to Brooklyn and his efforts to hammer out a career in music while raising a family in his newly adopted home. His immigrant tale is intertwined with his musical journey, from popular Caribbean dance bands through formal studies in Western classical music and jazz to his work as a gigging jazz pianist and calypso/soca arranger. Along the way he embraced the varied musics of Brooklyn’s African American and West Indian communities. His story provides a unique lens for viewing Brooklyn Carnival music, and brings into sharp focus the borough’s rise to prominence as the transnational hub of the soca music industry in the 1980s.

The initial chapters of The Art of the Soca Arranger are arranged chronologically to coincide with Frankie’s life and musical experiences. The first chapter focuses on his childhood and young adulthood growing up in Kingstown, Saint Vincent. The story begins with his years of classical piano studies, follows his apprenticeship as pianist for his father’s calypso dance orchestra, the Melotones, and moves forward to his founding of the Frankie McIntosh Orchestra at the age of fourteen. In this rich musical environment, he became familiar with an array of Caribbean dance genres, from calypsos to tangos and boleros, as well as American jazz standards imported by records and written scores from the United States. After graduating from high school and a year’s teaching English literature in a local intermediate secondary school, Frankie relocated to Antigua in 1967, where he played piano for the popular Laviscount Combo that specialized in calypso as well as American R&B, funk, and pop tunes.

The second chapter turns to Frankie’s immigration to the United States in 1968 and his experiences upon arrival in central Brooklyn’s burgeoning West Indian community. He recounts his formal studies of classical piano and jazz performance at Brooklyn College and New York University, his introduction to the 1970s New York City jazz scene, and his memories of Brooklyn’s early Carnival celebrations. He was, by then, equally at home with the music of Claude Debussy, McCoy Tyner, James Brown, and the Mighty Sparrow. His challenge was to combine his skills as a performer and arranger in order to support his family upon the arrival of the first of four children in 1974. The second section of the chapter covers Frankie’s work as a keyboardist for a variety of local calypso orchestras, jazz ensembles, and R&B bands during the 1970s. Brooklyn’s calypso dance orchestras led by Sid Joe, Lio Smith, and Ron Berridge, provide an introduction to the borough’s vibrant Caribbean dance scene. In addition, he recalls his experiences playing in small clubs in Brooklyn and Queens that were frequented by Black American audiences in search of jazz and R&B.

The third chapter turns to Brooklyn’s emerging calypso/soca recording industry with the introduction of producers Granville Straker (Straker’s Records), Rawlston Charles (Charlie’s Records), and Michael Gould (B’s Records). Frankie’s initial foray into the soca world came in 1976 through his work with Vincentian calypsonian Alston Becket Cyrus. In the late 1970s, Frankie became the musical director for Straker’s Records and the leader of the Equitables, Straker’s studio band with an international cast of players from Trinidad, Saint Vincent, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Panama, and the United States. In New York’s advanced recording studios, he encountered the new multi-track recording systems and the latest synthesizer and drum machine technology that would become hallmarks of the emerging soca sound.

The first section of chapter 4 explores Frankie’s early training and the musical influences that shaped his development as a calypso/soca arranger. The story pivots to his arranging process and philosophy, focusing on the specific methods he used to move from the skeletal melody he received from a calypsonian to a full-blown arrangement ready for recording sessions. Questions of overall form, harmonic language, and melodic improvisation that characterized his most popular arrangements are explored, as are his approaches to composing introductions, instrumental band choruses, and codas. Frankie ruminates on the process of finding the arrangement inherent in a song through contemplation of the lyrical message and overall mood of the material presented to him.

The next two chapters focus on Frankie’s work with a number of the most influential calypso/soca singers of the 1980s. He describes in detail the collaborative creative process—how singers would visit his house in Crown Heights to drop off a cassette or to sing their latest offering while he began to work out chord progressions and horn lines on his old acoustic piano. Once the written instrumental parts were complete, he would contact musicians and set up separate rhythm, horn, and vocal sessions and oversee the studio recording. Chapter 5 centers on his early work with small island singers Alston Becket Cyrus (Saint Vincent), Winston Soso (Saint Vincent), Scorcher (Saint Vincent), Swallow (Antigua), Short Shirt (Antigua), and Obstinate (Antigua). Chapter 6 doubles back to Trinidad stars Chalkdust, Calypso Rose, Duke, Explainer, Shadow, Lord Kitchener, and Sparrow. Frankie recounts his experiences working with these artists, and discusses several favorite songs that he arranged for each. Ray’s brief biographical introductions to the singers provide context for Frankie’s commentary, and illuminates the roles these artists played in Brooklyn Carnival culture.

Chapter 7 jumps to Frankie’s activities in the new millennium. With soca production shifting back to the Caribbean, his work as an arranger began to dwindle, which in turn prompted him to take a job as a music educator in a Brooklyn neighborhood school. But he also returned to his earlier interests in jazz, and began playing and recording with steel panist Garvin Blake, bassist and singer David Happy Williams, bassist Max Gouveia, and saxophonist Charles Dougherty. The music they made is discussed in the context of Brooklyn’s Caribbean jazz scene, addressing the question of what constitutes the slippery categories of calypso jazz or pan jazz. Frankie and his bandmates offer their observations on the current state of Caribbean-influenced jazz and new directions for popular calypso and soca music.

An epilogue and three appendices complete our story. The latter contain listening guides timed to YouTube recordings of all the music we discuss in the book, along with basic chord charts and musical highlights for each piece. Listening, or more specifically our colistening experiences with these recordings, lies at the heart of the second half of this book. For Ray, it was a matter of returning to a number of old favorite soca songs from the 1980s and 1990s while hearing others for the first time, as well as discovering Frankie’s more recent jazzy calypso arrangements. For him, the sounds were fresh and exciting, music bursting with aesthetic pleasure and cultural agency waiting to be explored. That perspective clearly guided his questioning. For Frankie the experience was different—he was returning to songs he had helped create three to four decades earlier (and in many cases had not listened to in the interim), along with more recent jazz-oriented compositions. Revisiting one’s own art, years later, can be simultaneously reaffirming and disappointing—a combination of satisfaction, regret, nostalgia, and even sorrow when listening to singers and musicians who have passed on. These colistening sessions were sometimes challenging for Frankie, especially when pushed to comment on his original motivations, compositional strategies, personal aesthetic preferences, and finally for self-evaluation from his current perch, some forty years later. We hope the results are revealing, at times even illuminating, but they must be understood as our take on how the songs resonated with us at the moment, in the early 2020s, not necessarily back in the day when they were written and arranged. The passing of time may add perspective, but historians take heed.

The Art of the Soca Arranger is a coauthored project. We take inspiration from scholar/musician collaborations such as those by Jocelyne Guilbault and Trinidad bandleader Roy Cape, Kyle DeCoste and the Stooges Brass Band of New Orleans, and Stan BH Tan-Tangbau and Vietnamese jazz saxophonist Quyen Van Minh.⁵ We are both longtime residents of Brooklyn, and bring our individual backgrounds and particular skills to the task: Ray, a white, New York–born researcher, writer, and academic trained in ethnomusicology and folklore; Frankie, an Afro-Caribbean professional pianist and arranger with formal background in Western classical and jazz music and a lifetime of experience with Caribbean Carnival music. Voicing our parts to tell the story emerged organically through an ongoing process of dialogue and negotiation during over a hundred hours of recorded conversations and colistening. The first three chapters are primarily Frankie’s first-person accounts of his childhood and early musical career, with brief contextual interludes by Ray. The remainder of the work presents our in-depth discussions of musical practice and commentary on specific recordings. Because the conversations in these later chapters came about during our colistening sessions, we determined it best to present them as a running dialogue between us, broken up by snippets of history from Ray.

Together we approach this project as partners and aim to obviate the asymmetrical power relations that characterize more conventional biography and scholarship based on the traditional scholar/subject relationship. This is certainly a worthy and long overdue goal for music scholars who aim to decolonize knowledge. That said, we recognize the difficulties in totally transcending the traditional scholar/subject relationship with its innate power inequities when writing a book like this for an academic press. Consider our respective positions in this project: Ray, a full professor and published author; Frankie, an independent musician operating in the world of Caribbean popular music and jazz. That configuration creates certain expectations regarding authoritative voice and the division of labor. After all, Frankie is first and foremost a musician—his fingers at the piano keyboard yield beautiful music for us to relish and ruminate about. Ray is a teacher, writer, and amateur pianist, not a practicing musician—his digits click away at a keyboard attached to a computer in order to produce the final written product before you. But these scholar/subject, writer/musician binaries are by no means cut and dried in our particular situation. Keep in mind that we both hold advanced degrees—Frankie in jazz studies and Ray in folklore/ethnomusicology. Moreover, Frankie’s formal training in piano technique and music theory exceeds Ray’s (as does his knowledge of Latin and classical European history, among other things, due in part to the exacting nature of the British-style colonial education he received in Saint Vincent). Ray is more conversant with the scholarly literature on Caribbean music, but Frankie is well read, and he brings a lifetime of musical and cultural knowledge to the table. So, who is it that really speaks with the authoritative voice? Perhaps both in different ways? Frankie’s memories and musical oeuvre are at the core of the work, while Ray’s primary responsibility has been to organize those memories into a cohesive narrative. That recognized, the process has been dialogic throughout, from the early planning stages and choice of musical examples through the joint editing and reediting of Ray’s initial drafts and Frankie’s revisions. The final narrative is Frankie’s story, shaped by Ray’s queries and interludes.⁶

Frankie and Ray, Brooklyn, 2022. Photo by Laurie Russell.

Although our work appears on an academic press, we write for a broad audience, particularly those in the Caribbean community for whom Frankie is a cultural icon. In this spirit we couch our discussions of the music in language that we hope will be accessible to nonmusicians and those with broader interests in Caribbean studies and cultural diaspora. All the music examples we cover are readily available on the YouTube channel Art of the Soca Arranger,⁷ and we have included timed listening guides in three appendices for those interested in the more formal aspects of the music. We hope that you, dear readers, will become listeners, regardless of your musical backgrounds. Our words can only go so far in describing the ineffable magic of music—only by engaging with the recordings can you gain a deeper appreciation of the art of the soca arranger.

CHAPTER 1

MAKING MUSIC IN SAINT VINCENT AND ANTIGUA

When Franklyn Frankie McIntosh came into the world on August 19, 1946, Saint Vincent was still a Crown Colony under the rule of Great Britain. Outside the capital of Kingstown, most of the undereducated, agrarian population labored as subsistence farmers and workers on plantation-style estates producing arrowroot starch, sea cotton, and bananas. The majority of the island’s approximately 65,000 inhabitants were the descendants of African slaves who had been stolen away to the Caribbean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to work the early sugar and coffee plantations. Their ranks were bolstered by a smattering of East Indian and Portuguese indentured workers whose ancestors were recruited in the decades following the abolishment of slavery in 1834. A small upper class of planters and government administrators of British and mixed-race lineage controlled the agricultural estates and government.¹

But the spirit of democratic reform and the desire for self-government had been percolating for some time throughout the English-speaking Caribbean. In 1935 Frankie’s paternal grandfather, George McIntosh, led a group of working-class Kingstown Vincentians in protest against excessive colonial tax legislation. The gathering turned riotous and the elder McIntosh, after being charged and acquitted for treason, went on to lead the Saint Vincent Workingmen’s Cooperative Association. That organization would push for land reform and the universal suffrage that was finally granted in 1951.² During Frankie’s school years the struggle for independence continued, with Saint Vincent and other Caribbean British colonies attempting and failing to unite under the West Indies Federation (1958–1962). It was not until 1969, two years after he had left home to work in Antigua, that Saint Vincent attained Associated Statehood with the United Kingdom, and another decade before achieving full independence as Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in 1979.

Despite the colony’s autocratic rule and widespread poverty, the post–World War II Kingstown that Frankie grew up in was a bustling port with an active cultural life and a small but aspiring class of businesspeople, artisans, and educators. A handful of secondary schools provided an elite British-style education for the most talented students, including Frankie, who won a merit scholarship to the Saint Vincent Boys Grammar School at the age of nine. The school featured a curriculum of math, science, literature, and compulsory French and Latin, but little in the way of music save a singing class.³

Fortunately for Frankie, Kingstown and the surrounding villages were rich in musical offerings. An ensemble of Black and mixed-race string, brass, and reed players known as the Kingstown Orchestral Society was established as early as the 1890s. Frankie’s father, Clarence Arthur Tom McIntosh, his uncle Harold McIntosh, and trumpeter Shake Keane occasionally played with another group called the Saint Vincent Philharmonic Orchestra, which performed at outdoor concerts and colonial events.⁴ The island boasted a number of talented classical piano teachers and performers, including pianist Pat Prescod who formed the Kingstown Chorale in 1956 and went on to teach at the Boys Grammar School and serve as the music officer in the Ministry of Education.⁵ Prescod’s instructor, pianist Miss Eunice Horne, was employed to teach Frankie and his brother Tony.

In the more vernacular realm, military-style and police marching bands were common, as were dance orchestras. The marching bands played standard European and American brass and wind compositions, while the dance ensembles’ repertories included foxtrots, waltzes, boleros, merengues, calypsos, and American standard pop and jazz tunes. The Melotones orchestra, led by Frankie’s father Tom McIntosh; the Blue Rhythm Orchestra, led by his cousin Syl McIntosh; and the Latinaires Orchestra, led by Kerwyn Morris, were three of the leading groups that entertained regularly at town and village dances and annual holiday celebrations. The brass and wind players, along with most of the other musicians, read music from charts imported from Great Britain and the United States. Nearly all, including the percussionists, were able to play by ear and to improvise head arrangements of local calypso and Latin pieces.⁶

Saint Vincent’s rural and village areas were rich in folk music, ranging from African-derived big drum song/dance practices to hybridized bum drum ensembles of flutes and drums to more European-style string bands with flutes, guitars, cuatros, and scrapers. Various configurations of these groups would play for dances, weddings, and annual festivals, particularly around Christmas, Easter, and for Carnival celebrations.⁷ Carnival linked earlier slave emancipation celebrations and French-Catholic pre-Lenten festivities and featured boisterous dancing, masquerading, and the singing of satire songs. As in Trinidad and throughout the Caribbean, Africans took over Carnival and placed their own distinctive stamp on the celebration, which became known for its transgressive masquerading themes, percussive music, and call-and-response kaiso songs.⁸ Masking traditions and satire songs often lampooned the colonial elites who saw Carnival as a threat to social order—as early as 1879 the British authorities tried unsuccessfully to shut it down.⁹

Saint Vincent’s small towns and villages held their own informal Carnival celebrations dating back to the decades following the 1834 emancipation. But as the twentieth century unfolded, Kingstown increasingly became the center of more organized festivities. As early as the 1930s, groups of masqueraders and singers paraded through the city to the Botanical Gardens to perform for the colonial administrator. The best singer received a wooden scepter called the Pole, and was crowned the King of the Revelers.¹⁰ The Vincentian newspaper reported that a Trinidad-style steelband led by Raphael Davison played in a Kingstown Carnival jump up in the mid-1940s, and informal steelband competitions were reported as part of the Monday morning J’Ouvert celebrations as early as 1949.¹¹ In 1948 a more organized calypso monarch contest was established in the city’s downtown Victoria Park, followed by a steelband competition in 1962. These musical competitions, along with a Queen of the Bands costume contest, were usually held on the weekend prior to the Monday J’Ouvert celebration and the Shrove Tuesday parade of costumed bands, dancers, steelbands, and calypso singers.¹² A Carnival Development Committee (CDC) of local businesspeople and administrators was formed to coordinate activities.

A thorough history of Saint Vincent calypso has yet to be written, but the memories of calypsonian Peter Caribbean Pete Olson and Cauldric Forbes suggest a lively scene around Carnival time. During the 1950s and 1960s, singers with sobriquets Young Sparrow, Young Wrangler, Mighty Sheller, Lord Teach, Lord Hawke, Toiler, and Caribbean Pete dominated the calypso competition. Trinidad-style calypso tents were established where calypsonians would try out their latest songs for local audiences prior to the calypso monarch competition. The Melotones and similar calypso dance orchestras were often employed to provide instrumental accompaniments for the singers, and Frankie recalls that the island’s top calypsonians would often visit his father’s home to rehearse their latest songs. In addition to the monarch competition, calypso shows featuring local talent and visiting luminaries from Trinidad were held in downtown venues like the Russell Cinema and the Lyric Cinema during Carnival season.¹³ Because Saint Vincent lacked professional recording studios and production facilities, few of its singers were known outside the island until the 1970s, when several went to Trinidad (Sheller and Hawke) and later New York (Alston Becket Cyrus, Winston Soso, and Cyril Scorcher Thomas) to record. For many years Trinidad calypsonians maintained a cultural dominance throughout the Caribbean, and it was not until 1971 that the Carnival Development Committee declared that the island’s annual Road March should come from a Vincentian calypsonian. In hopes