KOBO TOWN Juno Award Winning Calypso Group

JUNO Award winning group brings their distinct calypso-inspired sound to Salmon Arm after delighting audiences from Port-of-Spain to Paris and from Montreal to Malaysia.

Founded and fronted by émigrée Trinidadian songwriter Drew Gonsalves, KOBO TOWN is named after the historic neighbourhood in Port-of-Spain where calypso was born amid the boastful, humorous, and militant chants of roaming stick-fighters. Situated near the fishermen’s wharf, the area was a site of constant defiance
and conflict, a place where sticks and stones, songs, and verses clashed with the bayonets and batons of colonial rule!

At once brooding and joyous, intensely poetic and highly danceable, Gonsalves’ songs betray deep roots in Caribbean folk music, while the band delivers them with an indomitable energy that has earned them a considerable following far beyond the niche of world music enthusiasts and calypso fans.

Calypso is the folk music of urban Trinidad, always drawing on outside influences, from big band and jazz in the 30s and 40s, to funk and disco in the 70s and 80s. It’s hard to pin down pure calypso. Experience calypso and dance, dance, dance with Kobo Town.

“Kobo Town resurrects, reinvigorates and redefines calypso for the new millennium.” – Exclaim!

“an intoxicating blend of lilting calypsonian wit, dancehall reggae and trombone-heavy brass” – Guardian

“unique, transnational composite of rhythm, poetry and activist journalism.” – Exclaim!