While the larger Trinidad was a principally Arawak island in its early history, named Iere (humming bird), the smaller Tobago was a Carib island, its name related to the tavaco (the traditional pipe for smoking tobacco leaves).
It is a thoroughly rural society, with a rural population of around 90% that, contrary to world trends, is actually rising (its rate of urbanisation is around -1%).Īlthough a unified nation today, the two islands of Trinidad and Tobago only joined together in 1889 and, until then, they had separate, and somewhat divergent, histories. Its religious affiliations are as mixed as its ethnic composition: it has large Hindu, Roman Catholic and Protestant populations and a large number of African-influenced religious sects (including Orisa (‘Shango’) devotees and the Spiritual Baptists), as well as a small Muslim minority. Unlike most other islands in the region, its demographics are equally split between two major ethnic groups: black populations, whose ancestors were African slaves, and (East) Indians, descended from immigrant labourers who came from India after the abolition of slavery.
With a population of around 1.3 million, it is the sixth most populous island in the Caribbean. Located at the very southeastern edge of the West Indies, just off the coastline of South America, Trinidad and Tobago is a dual island nation, the former much larger than the latter.
Today, the music of Trinidad and Tobago is less prominent than that of Jamaica or Cuba in ‘World Music’ circuits, but its legacy and its latest trends remain a central part of the contemporary scene. Of these, calypso has risen as a national symbol that, regardless of attempts by the modern tourism industry to rebrand it as ‘tropical’ fantasy, encapsulates a history of defiance against colonial authority tied to social comment and rebellion music. Trinidad and Tobago is home to a variety of celebrated music genres born out of the nation’s rich history of dance, devotion and demonstration.
0 kommentar(er)
