3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow, October 11, 2007
This review is from: Peter Was a Fisherman: The 1939 Trinidad Field Recordings of Melville and Frances Herskovitz, Vol. 1 (Audio CD)
I first found out about this album when Henry Rollins played a song off of it on his Halloween broadcast in 2006. I picked it up a while ago, figuring my CD collection needed to expand in this direction. The story of the recording is fascinating enough. A husband/wife team of musical anthropologists hauls a rugged acetate recorder around the island of Trinidad in 1939. They collect well over 250 songs. This CD alone has over 30. This stuff gathered dust in a university library for 50 years before the good folks at Rounder decided to release it. It says it is the first of a series, but I guess there have never been any more volumes.
Now, on to the music. This won't be what you expect. No steel drums, no basking-in-the-sunset music. The one thing you might be reminded of is early Delta blues or gospel music. Part of that is the level of audio fidelity, but also because of the Christian songs and traditionals some of the people sing. The locations of recording - Trinidad in the Caribbean - is vital. You can hear the links back to African music as well as ahead to the music black Americans would make. Now, while there isn't much instrumentation, there are interesting things going on. Just listen to the positively odd falsetto going on the background of "Roll, Jordan, Roll" and the uneasy chanting melody of "Invocation".
If you're into early Jamaican music, early African recordings, or even primitive Delta blues, you'll find something to like here.
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