Album Review

Calypsoul 70: Caribbean Soul & Calypso Crossover 1969-1979


Calypsoul 70: Caribbean Soul & Calypso Crossover 1969-1979

[Strut; 2008]

8.0

Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala

Decades ago it was common for vacationers to the various islands of the Caribbean to return home with an LP cut by the hotel's resident band. I've picked up a few of these in flea markets, used record shops, and online, and I've frequently been surprised at how great some of them are. I guess if you spend every night playing the same songs, putting together a pretty great album of those songs is a cakewalk. The musical life of the Caribbean has long been one of cross-currents and mixed identities. The black, slave-descended populations of the islands have towering musical histories, often in spite of European attempts to squash those histories, while the legacy of colonialism and the reality of tourist-driven economies adds European and American influences-- to say nothing of what the hundreds of thousands of Indian and Chinese immigrants brought to the region after slavery's abolition brought with them (some of Folkways' LPs of Jamaican traditional music include Hindustani dance music).

Calypsoul 70 reflects that melting pot through the lens of the funky 70s with an inspired and wide-ranging selection of tracks from Cuba, Trinidad & Tobago, Bahamas, Martinique, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, St. Maarten, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Dominica, Antigua, and mainland Guyana that range from Carnival rave-ups to disco, reggae, gospel, hard funk, and soul jazz with garage rock organ on top. The use of the word Calypsoul as an umbrella term is more clever than historical, and it could be argued that the disc's broad focus means it fails to tell much of a story about this music, but it could be argued more strongly that such a body-moving mixture needs no larger intellectual justification-- there's a lot to be said for shutting up and getting down.

Getting down is no big challenge when confronted with the riff-heavy proto-disco of the Revolution of St. Vincent's "The Little You Say", one of a handful of dancefloor burners that are the stock-in-trade of compilations like this. Where the disc gets more interesting is when it heads a little further off the beaten track into distinctly Caribbean recordings. Clarence Curvan & His Mod Sounds turn in a swinging Carnival instrumental with the compilation's title track, mixing trap drums and hand percussion with a crashing, celebratory horn section and even a twangy guitar solo, while the Hondells' "Raycan" travels similar ground. It's uplifting, insanely fun music that sounds all the better for its relatively ragged production values. You can hear the horns in a room, all gathered around one microphone and just blowing.

Politics were never far from the mic in calypso music, and there are some brilliant examples of that at work here, from Tyrone Taylor's roots reggae "Move Up Blackman" to Biosis Now's raucous funk celebration of independence, "Independent Bahamas". Duke (known earlier in his career as Mighty Duke) is openly confrontational on "Freedom in Africa", offering that if dialogue doesn't produce results, war is certainly an option. The best of the political offerings, though, is Lancelot Layne's stunning "Yo Tink It Sorf?" The Trinidadian singer's style is sometimes called rapso, which makes total sense-- his sing-speak cadence on this song prefigures both dancehall toasting and rapping. The song's musical backing is little more than an army of hand drums and some flute, while Layne rips into Trinidadian youth's idolization of American ghetto life, sometimes oddly harmonized in his raps by his backing musicians. "How you going to feel to see a child suffer permanent brain damage from lead poisoning/ Who you go blame when they end up in the hands of some lawless lawman?" It's a breathtaking track and a revelation for calypso fans who don't know his work.

The other musically radical track is Martiniquan pianist Marius Cultier's wicked, rocket-propelled tribal jazz workout "Guanavaco", which opens with a call-and-response chant over wild hand drumming before settling into a strong piano-funk groove. Even tracks that scream novelty up front, like Amral's Trinidad Cavaliers Steel Orchestra's steel drum cover of Gwen McCrae's "90% of Me Is You" turn out to be great. For a lot of Americans and Europeans, the Caribbean is an entire region reduced to a couple tri-fold brochures and a taxi ride straight from the airport to the resort hotel. This collection doesn't change its image as a sunny, friendly place, but it does reveal deeper aspects of its melting pot culture and complex politics. It's a superb first step into the region for beginners as well.

— Joe Tangari, March 19, 2009


Album Player


Recently