Greg Scruggs reviews Bunji Garlin’s “Differentology,” a soca jam that he says may just be Trinidad and Tobago’s unlikely new national anthem. Calling Garlin the harbinger of a future sound, he credits the singer’s voice and the excellent crafting that went into the creation of “Differentology.” Scruggs writes: “It opens with a filtered foghorn and isolated piano reminiscent of Chicago house before segueing into handclap percussion and a neo-flamenco guitar lick. It’s a brilliant piece of moody pop, conjuring up Carnival dancers as marching protesters while Garlin belts out ‘We ready for de road.” Here are excerpts from the review and links to the full article and the song below:

A sleeper hit of the 2013 Carnival season, it is proving to have a robust life of its own, long after the masquerading masses left the streets of Port of Spain in February. DJ /rupture dropped it on his tastemaking radio show Mudd Up! on WFMU back in November. Then it peaked on the iTunes singles chart at #2 in late December before simmering through January and February as a popular tune, but it didn’t win any awards in Trinidad’s fierce and decisive Soca Monarch competitions at Carnival time. A month later, however, it’s back, blasting out of Major Lazer’s sound system at Ultra Music Festival in Miami and picking up over 500,000 views to date on YouTube even before an official music video has been released. At home, a military marching band pounded out a precision percussion version for the departure of the outgoing president and the inauguration of Anthony Carmona as the country’s fifth head of state.

Last week, MTV Iggy caught up with Garlin, AKA Ian Alvarez, at Hott Music Studios in the St. James section of the capital city to investigate this phenomenon. The prolific singer, who has captured Trinidad’s soca crown four times, could be responsible for breaking soca away from the perception that the genre is only for wining during Carnival. At the studio, he was reworking his track for yet another civic cause: the Office of Disaster and Preparedness Management asked him to translate the song’s refrain of “We ready” from party-hardy to prevention planning for families in case of emergency. [. . .]

In an interview after the session, Garlin insisted that the hit actually came together quickly and almost accidentally while the singer was killing time in the Black Ice Studios while waiting to pick up his wife, Faye-Ann Lyons. (Lyons is a national legend who swept the Soca Monarch competitions in 2009 while pregnant.) [. . .]

As for the Spanish style guitar, Nigel Rojas, frontman of Trinidadian reggae fusion band Orange Sky, told me point blank: “Bunji Garlin is the black Spaniard so the image I wanted to create was a bandido, a renegade, a desperado riding through the streets of the town, a bad Spanish dude.” Rojas, who earned co-artist credit on the track, is, like Garlin, of Venezuelan extraction. Venezuela is only eight miles from Trinidad, so that’s not uncommon.

On the flip side, Garlin pointed out, “A lot of musicians from Trinidad and Tobago have family lineage up the islands, from Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia and if you listen to their music, they have some very strong melodies and very catchy rhymes.” That goes for Garlin too, whose mother is from St. Lucia. What’s more, he explained, “Up the islands you can get songs that outlast the festival. That is something that we have fallen off from in Trinidad and we need to put focus on songs that can last beyond the season.” [. . .] It helps that he is bona fide musical royalty here. His father-in-law, Superblue, is a calypso and soca institution who made an epic comeback during this year’s Carnival for his first Road March title in 13 years (and his 9th overall since 1980).

[. . . ] Meanwhile, as Trinidad ebbs, the non-tropical Carnival circuit – from Berlin’s Karneval der Kulturen to Toronto’s Caribana to London’s Notting Hill to Brooklyn’s West Indian Day Parade – flows. You can be sure that “Differentology,” if not Bunji himself, will be revving up the crowds wherever the Carnival faithful gather.

Listen to “Differentology” here:

For full article, see http://www.mtviggy.com/articles/soca-beyond-the-season-dissecting-the-staying-power-of-bunji-garlins-differentology/