In the liner notes to this CD, a pamphlet approaching the thickness of the Swiss train schedule, it is admitted almost immediately that Caribbean Voyage: Martinique is hardly a thorough, balanced, or representative overview of this island's musical culture. History and geography are among the important reasons that so many different styles of music flourish in Martinique; a listener who crosses a mountain range or heads from country to city to hear a song might wonder if she is still in the same universe, let alone on the ...
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In the liner notes to this CD, a pamphlet approaching the thickness of the Swiss train schedule, it is admitted almost immediately that Caribbean Voyage: Martinique is hardly a thorough, balanced, or representative overview of this island's musical culture. History and geography are among the important reasons that so many different styles of music flourish in Martinique; a listener who crosses a mountain range or heads from country to city to hear a song might wonder if she is still in the same universe, let alone on the same island. In 1962, Alan Lomax dropped in and spent a few summer days running recording sessions, capturing a half-dozen different groups. The resulting program is reminiscent of certain charming productions for the French Ocora label in the '60s and '70s. The needle on the first side drops some dusty, remote location where someone would be strumming an instrument with two strings made out of yak hide. But by the end of the second side, the location was a hotel lounge and the musicians were wearing suits and ties, playing electronic keyboards and saxophones and referencing Sidney Bechet and/or Chuck Mangione. From this point, the makeup of someone's record collection or someone's expectations about what sorts of music might be on a collection such as this will really be deciding factors in truly measuring personal satisfaction. Many listeners will wish that the styles represented beginning on the 20th track, "Ti Paul," had made up a larger portion of the program. This so-called "urban popular music" is jazzy dance band combo action with horns, violins, guitars, and drums, the players relentlessly indulging in all manner of exotic ornamentation, phrasing, and tonal shadings. The latter phrase seems a bland way of describing a process that actually sounds like someone slathering marinade on the side of a clarinet; this could be a Caribbean process for making it easier to get over the instrument's infamous "break." There are also performances with an instrumentation typical to other islands in the region involving accordion combined with varying devices of a percussive nature. On Martinique the style is called taille haute, based on an old-fashioned style of dress. Percussionists cook up rhythms with drums called "tanbou dibas," which are bedecked with sympathetic jingles, supported by accomplices with triangles, shakers, scrapers, and "cha chas." Whatever these types of band wind up getting called from island to island and no matter what they use as instruments, it winds up being a sound that is hard to get too much of. What there might be too much of are songs from the island's north Atlantic region, 17 of them in a row in fact. These performances are perfectly fine, the singing perhaps more pretty than similar recordings in the series. That there is a similarity would be something that might occur to a collector who is indulging in a large selection from this Rounder series, the most expansive yet of various field recordings done by the famed Lomax family. One of the most common approaches for creating music on these islands seems to be singing, accompanied by drumming in which there are frequently two players per drum, one of them providing a tightly wound accompanying rhythm on the side of the drum with a stick. With so many of these performances dominating the unfolding program and the ensuing tracks so radically different, the first listen to this CD is an evolving response -- comfortable familiarity, ennui, disappointment, surprise, excitement, and finally a type of bliss. The playing of performers such as clarinetist Hurard Coopet and trombonist Raymond Laugetty fascinates. Full albums of these guys are desired along with posters, fan books, even lobby cards. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi
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