Global Hit

Kobo Town

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We close our program today with two new CDs of calypso music. First up — a group called Kobo Town. The band is based in Toronto.

But Kobo Town gets its name — and musical inspiration — from a neighborhood in Port of Spain, Trinidad, known as the birthplace of calypso.

This musical genre was once known for lyrics full of double entendres and hidden political messages — as band leader Drew Gonsalves explains.

GONSALVES: “I love the calypso of the early era where they had to use ingenious lyrical devices to suggest their political ideas in a time of heavy censorship. And I also love the exuberant melodies that were always common to calypso. I would like to take those and present them in a way that is both musically and lyrically relevant to the time we grew up in.”

Kobo Town leader Drew Gonsalves is a native of Trinidad and Tobago. So is the man known as Lord Relator. He’s another popular calypso singer. Back in 1980, he won a national competition with a song complaining about skyrocketing food prices.

Now, Lord Relator has a new version of the song. He plays it with steel pan musician Andy Narell on the new CD “University of Calypso.”