Lord Shorty

About Lord Shorty

The man who invented soca, by folding the dholak and dhantal rhythms of Indo-Trinidadian music into calypso in search of a sound that belonged to the whole island. He called it the soul of calypso before the name contracted to soca, and Endless Vibrations in 1974 is the record usually named as the start of it. He later renounced the Carnival music he had created, took the name Ras Shorty I, moved to the bush and made devotional jamoo instead. Every soca artist on this page works in a form he built.