ABSTRACT
This chapter examines identity politics by focusing on a popular music usually found in the bins of record stores under the label "international music" or "world music." While this project falls into an important new trend in academic studies, popular musics that are deemed profit-oriented, known not for their focus on text but rather for their focus on pleasure, dance, and sexualized bodies, have rarely been studied in relation to the notion of nation. My hope is to fill part of this gap by exploring soca from Trinidad, a popular music also often called "party music," that emerged in the mid-1970s and has been a dominating force in the carnival music industry since the late 1980s.
