Frankie McIntosh and the Art of the Soca Arranger

Soca music, an offspring of older Trinidadian calypso, emerged in the late 1970s and is now recognized as one of the English-speaking Caribbean’s most distinctive styles of popular vocal music. Frankie McIntosh and the Art of the Soca Arranger tells a story of Caribbean music in the diaspora through the eyes and ears of a pioneering soca arranger. A fascinating collaboration between Frankie McIntosh and music scholar Ray Allen, this cowritten memoir places the music arranger at the center of several overlapping narratives of immigration and musical diaspora.

The book begins with McIntosh’s personal voyage from St. Vincent to Brooklyn and his efforts to hammer out a career in music while raising a family in his newly adopted home. His immigrant tale is intertwined with his musical journey, from popular Caribbean dance bands through formal studies in Western classical music and jazz to his work as a gigging jazz pianist and calypso/soca arranger. Along the way he embraced the varied musics of New York’s African American and West Indian communities, working with such iconic calypsonians as the Mighty Sparrow, Lord Kitchner, Calypso Rose, and Alston Becket. His story provides a unique lens for viewing Brooklyn Carnival music and brings into focus the borough’s rise to prominence as the transnational hub of the soca music industry in the 1980s.

An alternative to traditional scholarship that tends to focus on calypso and soca singers, this work explores the instrumental dimensions of the art form through the life and music of one of the most celebrated soca arrangers and keyboardists of all time.

Frankie McIntosh is recognized internationally as one of the architects of the popular West Indian soca style that emerged in the late 1970s. A pianist and music arranger, he served as music director for Brooklyn-based Straker’s Records for three decades. During that time, he composed musical arrangements and oversaw the recordings of close to a thousand calypso/soca albums for Straker and other Brooklyn-based calypso labels. He recently was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the West Indies. Ray Allen is professor of music and American studies emeritus at Brooklyn College, CUNY and worked as a senior research associate at the Hitchcock Institute for the Study of American Music. His books include Singing in the Spirit: African-American Sacred Quartets in New York City; Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Urban Folk Music Revival; Island Sounds in the Global City: Caribbean Popular Music and Identity in New York, coedited with Lois Wilcken; and Jump Up! Caribbean Carnival Music in New York City.