Search - Various Artists :: Field Recordings: Caribbean Island Music

This compilation plays like a breathless epic through the sounds of the English, French, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean, pointing out along the way the vivid signs of a much larger, more complex series of musical dynamics than colorfully garbed natives warbling a Harry Belafonte ditty to the twinkling melodies of a steel drum. In its sweep, this set takes in the Dominican Republic's tonados, salves, and work songs still heard in factories today; Haiti's vodu and merengue; and, in Jamaica, the tambu drumming heard only in Trelawny parish, call-and-response digging songs, and mento, the Jamaican form of Calypso that eventually evolved into reggae. Rich and immensely varied, Caribbean music is always rooted in African polyrhythms and call-and-response singing. Yet, as this collection suggests, from work songs all the way up to the most polished modern studio productions, its greatest pleasures are found in its many and varied conflations of Europe and Africa, the African roots that sprout exotic mutants of ancient European ballads, lullabies, and quadrilles. --Elena Oumano