One of the pleasant things about life in the Caribbean is that you don't have to give up many of the pleasures in life you were accustomed to at home. For example, if you are a music fan who enjoys regularly attending concerts and shows by top stars you will be able to continue doing so while living as an expatriate in the Caribbean.

In the past three months here in Trinidad and Tobago we have had live performances by Grammy Award winners including Chris Brown, Lionel Richie, Peter Cetera and Jon Secada. This month, there will be live performances here by Bollywood stars Amitabh, Abhishek and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. At the Plymouth Jazz Festival in Tobago there were live performances by Diana Ross and Shakira, to mention just two.

A number of the islands annually hold music festivals that are sponsored or supported by the islands' tourism agency and by the governments as a means of promoting the islands' tourism industry. The St. Lucia Jazz Festival which began in 1991 plays host to a constellation of former and current stars in pop, R&B and jazz. Included among these have been Branford Marsalis, John Legend, Isaac Hayes and Natalie Cole to name a few. It is considered by some to be the premiere jazz festival of the Caribbean region. http://stluciajazz.org/

Tobago also has a jazz festival that encompasses a range of musical genres. The festival is now four years old and is called the Plymouth Jazz Festival after the island's second town. It is sponsored by the Trinidadian company CL Financial, a major Caribbean insurer whose interests also include distilleries, aromatic bitters, housing and other investment portfolios throughout the Caribbean and around the world. The festival has played host to a number of leading stars including Elton John, whose participation in 2007 caused some controversy on the island of Tobago among church leaders because of his lifestyle. http://www.plymouthjazzfest.com/ http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=2957852

In Barbados, there is the Holders Season, which typically offers opera, classical theatre, jazz and other forms of musical entertainment. This year, the season offered a play by the London Globe Theatre. In the past, there have been performances by the late Luciano Pavarotti, as well as by Kylie Minogue and violinist Patmore Lewis. The Holders Season, also known as the Holders Opera Season, has featured the operas Carmen, Madame Butterfly and the Magic Flute, to mention a few. Speaking from my experience of them, the performances ranged from magical to flat depending on the production. The festival was begun by John Kidd and his wife at their home Holders House in St. James, that is situated on what was a former plantation. Mr Kidd inherited the property from his mother, an English gentlewoman, the Honourable Mrs. Janet Kidd.

Then there are the two Jamaican reggae festivals, Reggae Sumfest and Smile Jamaica. These festivals, like the Caribbean jazz festivals, feature artistes from a range of genres including hip-hop and R&B. Smile Jamaica is about 30 years old and is closely connected with Bob Marley and the Marley clan. Last year they featured Barbados sensation Rihanna as their headline act. The festival Reggae Sumfest runs from July 13-19 this year in Montego Bay and will feature artiste T-Pain. The festival is 16 years old and has featured the likes of Mary J Blige and LL Cool J. http://www.reggaesumfest.com/

It should be noted that these festivals are often held in open air auditoriums with varying sections ranging from simple entry to VIP and VVIP. Food and drink are usually also on sale.

However, once you arrive in the Caribbean you may decide that you would like to sample something rather more local than the musical fare to which you have traditionally been accustomed. There is a wide variety of well established musical genres for you to choose from. For example, in Trinidad where I live there is the choice of calypso, soca, chutney and the steel pan.

Calyspo music began in the early part of the 20^th century in Trinidad and became a major purveyor of social commentary. Calypsonians, typically older Afro-Caribbean men, would comment on social and political ails affecting society with lyrics that used irony, humour and double entendre to convey their meaning accompanied by a strong melody. Perhaps one of the earliest and best known is the Mighty Sparrow's "Jean and Dinah" which was a song about the closure of the US naval base in Chaguaramas in Trinidad and the prostitutes who would be left looking for work as a result of the closure. Anyone listening to this song can comprehend the social commentary it entailed while appreciating the humorous lyrics.

Soca is an offshoot of calypso with a strong percussion element. It is typically music for dancing and singers frequently invoke their listeners to "hold something and wave". The lyrics in soca have caused many to criticise its singers for their lewd content.

Chutney is an East Indian derivative of calypso and soca that includes East Indian music, tunes from Bollywood movies and religious songs blended with an uptempo calypso beat. Chutney has a strong following in Trinidad and Tobago and every year there are festivals held to celebrate this artform.

These three musical genres each have competitions held annually to crown a "king" and sometimes a "queen" of the artform. These competitions are held in Trinidad and Tobago, in Barbados and in St. Vincent. The competitions are usually closely connected with the annual carnivals in these islands. In Trinidad the Carnival is usually around February; in Barbados the carnival is known as Crop Over which marks the end of the sugar cane season and is usually around May.

Of particular interest is the steel pan music which also originated in Trinidad and Tobago and took its present form around the middle of the 20^th century. Steel pans were fashioned by poor and frequently unemployed black men from discarded oil drums and tuned to produce a wide range of musical notes. In the early days of this musical genre, it was frowned upon by middle class members of Trinidadian society because its participants, referred to sometimes as "badjohns", were known for getting into frequent and bloody brawls. But once off the street and in their panyards making music, a different pattern of behaviour emerged, with discipline and the desire to have their band adjudged the best at competitions moving many of these same individuals to practice for long hours and work as a team. To hear a steelpan band peform a piece of classical music is truly impressive. I have found, however, that listening to the steelpan on the radio or in recorded form results in a loss of its purity and beauty of sound.

There are steelpan orchestras all over the world now, including in Japan, and at universities in the United States. Recently, an American interest tried to have the steelpan patented under its name. The government of Trinidad and Tobago challenged this in the United States courts and won. Though it is too late to patent the steelpan now since it is already widely produced around the world, the Trinidad and Tobago government is making efforts to safeguard the legacy of the steelpan as being a truly Trinidadian invention. For a truly informative article on the origins of the steelpan please see the following: http://www.lafi.org/magazine/articles/steel.html