The rise of calypso feminism: gender and musical politics in the calypso

The sky is the limit We rising, we rising, we woman rising, (Easlyn Orr, cited in Ottley 1992, p. 154) In February 1999, two women of Afro-Caribbean ancestry won their respective societies' highest musical honours. On 14 February, Singing Sandra was crowned Trinidad-Tobago's Calypso Monarch 1999 – the second woman ever to win this coveted title, a full twenty-one years after the country's first woman calypso monarch, Calypso Rose. Two weeks later in the USA, Lauryn Hill received five Grammy awards, the most in any single year for a female performer or a hip-hop artist. This trend continues in Great Britain, where ‘rude girl’ DJ Patra has a growing posse of fans, and in West Africa where the pop music stylings of Benin's Angelique Kidjo and Mali's Oumou Sangaré enjoy mass followings.