Chantwell

Music of Trinidad and Tobago
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Cariso is a kind of Trinidadian folk music, and an important ancestor of calypso music.

As early as the 1780s, the word cariso was used to describe a French creole song and, in Trinidad, cariso seems to have been perfected by the (mostly female) chantwells during the first half of the 19th century.[1] The chantwells, assisted by alternating in call-and-response style with a chorus, were a central component of the practice called Calinda (stick-fighting).

Calinda was a central component of early carnival celebrations in Trinidad, and after emancipation (1834), Afro-Creoles essentially took over the streets during carnival. Elite French Creole revellers, for their part, moved their carnival celebrations indoors and to private parties. Cariso used satirical and insulting lyrics, and is related to the picong tradition. Cariso singers, called chantwells, sang primarily in French creole.

Cariso is also Virgin Islander folk song.

The "chantwell" is another incarnation of the African "griot" tradition. On the Caribbean plantations African griots became chantwells, preserving the tribe’s history and traditions orally. They would sing to contemporary and mythical heroes and to the Gods. They would also preserve the complex oral traditions of West Africa with songs of derision, praise, satire, and lament. At first the chantwells were mostly women because the males were targeted for destruction on the plantation. On Emancipation the tradition continued and the chantwells would sing call-and-response chants called lavways lionizing and cheering on champion stickfighters. This form of music gradually evolved into the modern calypso.

Calypso music was developed in Trinidad in the 17th century from the West African Kaiso and canboulay music brought by African slaves imported to that Caribbean island to work on sugar plantations. These enslaved Africans were stripped of all connections to their homeland and family and not allowed to talk to each other. They used calypso to mock the slave masters and to communicate with each other.

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