Historiography and Musicology of Virgin Island

There is a paucity of olden records and musicological research and evaluation of Virgin Islander music. The tone records Mary Jane Soule and ethnomusicologist Margot Lieth-Philip cooperated on a marked CD, Zoop Zoop Zoop: Traditional Music and Legend of St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John; these liner notes are among the comprehensive pictures of the traditional music recognized. Lieth-Philip has also written some other materials, on bamoula (which she regards to as a forgotten pattern of Caribbean music) and other topics. The local and the Smithsonian Institution have also recorded some traditional customs, but their research remains hugely unpublished. Carmen Nibbs-O’Garra, wife of the popular Antiguan calypsonian Figgy, is the writer of In de Calpyso Tent, which, however probably no longer accessible, contains information of calypso contests of St. Thomas and also reproduces the words of renowned Virgin Islands calypsos, and past programs from the previous calypso tents on the islands. While not an academic record of the island’s musical life, the Memoirs of Alton Augustus Adams, Sr., First Black Bandmaster of the United States Navy was currently published by the University of California Press in an academic edition by Mark Clague. This book shows a first-hand account of musical life in the Virgin Islands from the 1900s through the 1950s. Adams’s remembrances are remarkably precise as in addition to his musical activities, he worked as a journalist and much of his writing is based upon the books and notes he captured for The St. Thomas Timesand the Bulletin as well as The Pittsburgh Courier.