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"Tumbélé!: Biguine, Afro & Latin Sounds from the French Caribbean, 1963-74"
There has certainly been a flood of excellent African and Latin compilations released over the last few years, but Soundway seems to have outdone themselves (and everyone else) with this one. This is some of the hottest, wildest, and most unrelentingly rhythmic music ever set to wax.
The French Caribbean of the 1960s was one of those improbably perfect and fertile musical climates that can never again be replicated: the musicians of Guadeloupe and Martinique were heavily exposed to African, Haitian, and Cuban styles, yet were operating in such sufficiently insular pockets that different regions developed their hybrid musical styles independently of one another. The result was an incredibly varied and convoluted distillation of "hot" jazz, biguine, rumba, compas, bélé, gwo-ka, calypso, and guaguanco into what eventually became known as tumbélé.
The album kicks off with frenzied biguine (“Jeunesse Vauclin”) by clarinetist Barel Coppet, who actually played with Duke Ellington and Count Basie in Paris during the 1950s. While Coppet may have the most conspicuously impressive musical past (at least to those of us outside the Caribbean) among the artist featured on the album, his talent is not unique here. Tumbélé! is teeming with urbane, virtuosic jazz musicians playing alongside propulsive rhythms informed by rural drumming styles that originated from slave plantations. Naturally, this collision of highbrow culture and large goatskin slave drums was viewed as scandalous and highly politicized at first, but it quickly caught on nonetheless (presumably because it is awesome).
It is difficult to pick favorites from such a uniformly solid collection, but the surprisingly minimal gwo-ka “Ti Fi La Ou Té Madam'” by Anzala, Dolor & Vélo is hard to top due to its relentless deep African percussion, catchy call and response vocals, and wild saxophone improvising. Other standouts include the sensuously shuffling “Jean Fouillé, Pie Fouillé,” the sizzling calypso of “Cocas-La,” and the weird surf guitar and “crazed Haitian organ” of “Jet Biguine.”
The only minor grievance I have with Tumbélé! is that there is so much similarly propulsive material that it is somewhat overwhelming to take in one sitting. There is literally no filler included, but a couple more slow and sultry tracks would have been welcome to break-up the unrelenting dance frenzy a bit. Essentially, however, this is an absolutely great album and truly impressive feat of musicology (even though it confronts me with the unfortunate realization that people in Fort-de-France and Pointe-à-Pitre got to experience nightlife at a level that I cannot even begin to comprehend or hope to replicate).
Samples:
- Anzala, Dolor & Vélo, “Ti Fi La Ou Té Madam'”
- Barel Coppet et Mister Lof, “Jeunesse Vauclin”
- Raphaël Zachille, “Manzè Mona”
