by Shivanee Ramlochan, Paper Based Blogger

Long regarded as one of the region’s foremost experts on calypso, Dr. Louis Regis presents what might well be the definitive scholarly work on this art form. Keith Q. Warner, author of Kaiso! The Trinidad Calypso, salutes the work as “a significant contribution to the field of calypso studies”, adding that “few published works have taken this extensive a look at the political calypsoes and what informs them.”

Mining the political terrain of Trinidad and Tobago can be, to put it delicately, a messy business. Dr. Regis posits that in calypso, the tools for decoding, analyzing and appreciating political resistance are readily available, a matter of public record — accessible to anyone who will listen, and perhaps sing along.