Search - Various Artists :: Golden Age of Calypso

J'Ouvert Rumble

Lawrence Waldron | Queens, NY United States | 03/17/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is one of the few Calypso CD's I reserve a perfect score for. And I mean it! Somehow, the compilers of this CD managed to gather up some of the very most important songs of Calypso's Golden Age all on one disc. The minor key, roughneck stickfighting songs are all here, J'Ouvert Barrio, Man Man Peter, Clear the Way When the Bamboo Play and the infamous Man Man Biscoe. Generations of Calypsonians would later quote the lyrics to songs like Texilia on their own songs decades later. Kalinda chants, Calypso, Call and Response, Castillians or Spanish Waltzes and even Jazzy parodies are all reflected here, not to mention indispensible first-hand slices of Trinidad life in the 1930's. There are 20 tracks. If I were to mimic the spirit of a 1930's Carnival visit to Trinidad, I would program my CD player to play track 1 first, cuz it's blaring and frenetic...but I would have track 6, Nora Darling, a breezy swaggering tune play last...as a sort of goodbye wave as I step unto the silver American Airlines Clipper in my white linen suit."