Customer Reviews

Calypso Carnival

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Calypso always educates you while you're dancing. Calypsonians inform, philosophize, speculate and entertain. They mount challenges and outright wars against each other (usually in a playful spirit). And it's all on this recording. And the original giants of this seminal Trinidadian musical form are all here: Lord Invader, Growling Tiger, King Radio, Lionel Belasco, Caresser, Wilmouth Houdini and the very late Roaring Lion: musician, scholar and author, who passed away this past year(1999). This CD is Calypso madness! But madness you could put in the Smithsonian for all its historical importance. In fact, the Smithsonian has committed a fair amount of Calypso from this period to its archives. This is Calypso at a critical stage, in that all its original cultural influences are right in your face. Cyril Monrose and Lionel Belasco spent half their lives in Venezuela playing the same music, so Trinidad's Spanish heritage is obviated. Greats like Invader and Tiger draw heavily on the African kalinda songs (music that accompanies an African style of martial arts, something like kapuera in Brazil). Lion was the darling of the white creoles of Trinidad, always dressed in suit and tie, his music shows various British and French influences. My favorites on the recording are Baboolala by Lion about a notorious pyromaniac, In the Dew and the Rain with it's irresistible tempo and John Thomas (take your bundle and go) cuz that John Thomas is just bad news! This music is from a time when the music of Latin America and the Caribbean was just emerging from a more or less homogenous type into distinct regional forms. This recording bears witness to those hip and happening times.

One of the gentlest and most appealing albums I have purchased in years. The combination of clever and humorous lyrical content with fine musical backing is very easy on the ears. Van Dyke Parks did a wonderful album in the 70's called "Discover America", where some of this material was updated with "Hollywood" arrangements. It's great to be able to hear the original source tracks.

i am gonna tell you this, there is something about tracks like this that make me just forget that there is a modern life. this album i listen to as sort of a time machine vibe. i love the honest lyrics, the humor, and the crackly sound of the 78s. what i could do without though is the instrumentals. there is something about those violins that i do not particularly enjoy. other than that, the album as a whole is quite a nice example of what true calypso sounds like.