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Saturday, December 31, 2005
1) HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU!
The Qualities
Saturn Records : 1956
Available on: Sun Ra: The Singles
[Buy It]
2) TAXI DRIVER
Small Island Pride
Jump-Up Carnival
Cook : 1956
Available on: Calypso Awakening: From the Emory Cook Collection
[Buy It]
3) TUKUNGA NZILA (LET'S BLOCK THIS ROAD)
Paul Mwanga
Ngoma EP 31 : 1961
Available on: Ngoma, Souvenir Ya L'Independence
[Buy It]
4) GOUVERNEMENT YA CONGO
Depiano
Ngoma EP 38 : 1961
Available on: Ngoma, Souvenir Ya L'Independence
[Buy It]
5) NO NAME NO FAME
Buena Vista Fight Club
Courtesy of Fat Planet
6) BROADWAY JUNGLE
Toots & The Maytals
Wild Bells : 1964
Available on: Pressure Drop: The Definitive Anthology
[Buy It]
7) I'M GOING BACK TO AFRICA
Lord Invader & His Calypsonians
PYE/Mixa : 1958
Available on: Trojan Calypso Box Set
[Buy It]
to be continued....
NOTES:
The Qualities: Doo-wop a la Sun Ra. There's something magically off-kilter about this song, which should be familiar to MW afficionados, and we're using it to kick off a four-day post of our New Year's mix. This is the fourth draft - it takes us a few weeks to get these things just right, which they never quite are. There's no real subtext to it - no socio-poilitical agendas, no women we're sending semi-coded messages to, just songs we've fallen more or less in love with - or, at worst, songs that seemed like good segues.
Small Island Pride: AKA Theophilus Woods, was born in Grenada, and recorded the two songs you'll find here in Trinidad, in 1956. We found both on a Smithsonian/Folkways compilation called Calypso Awakening, which contains the recordings one Emory Cook made during Carnival's not-quite-post-colonial-but-getting-there heyday. Not quite commercial releases, not quite field recordings, they're the only tracks I've heard that gave me some idea of what these songs must have sounded like in their natural habitat. Small Island Pride, who recorded with minimal accompaniement, is especially good. This track (and "Carnival Celebration," which kicks off tomorrow's post) = highly, highly, highly, highly, highly recommended.
The Paul Mwanga & Depiano songs are both from a German compilation of Congolese music circa 1961. The liner notes for track 3 read: "Merengue in Kikongo, recorded on 6.6.1961.... Mwanga sings about the enemies of Congo's independence, who wantg exploitation to continue, how they come and go and that their road should be blocked." (Preferably with bodies?) Track four - a Cha Cha Cha - takes "Ah, Mobutu!" for a chorus.
We know almost nothing about the Buena Vista Fight Club, but according to Australia's Fat Planet, this Spanish-Civil-War-Meets-William-Gibson mash-up was big whoop in Croatia. "Broadway Jungle" = early Maytals at their Tootsiful best. And "I'm Going Back To Africa" is from the third disk of Trojan's Calypso Box, which seems to consist of Calypsos recorded in England, for the PYE label (which later signed the Kinks) - also on the eve of Trinidadian independence. A nice contrast to Small Island Pride, and a lovely Calypso in its own right....
Tracks 8-15 (out of a total 27) tomorrow!Labels: alex, holidays
posted by Alex
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