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v/a - tanbou toujou lou: meringue, kompa kreyol, vodou jazz, and electric folklore from haiti 1960-1981 - ostinato records - vinyl

New Copy

Genre: World - Misc

1. Lagen
2. Francine
3. Bebe Showman
4. Gislene
5. La Viw Vieux Negre
6. Rapadou
7. Pele Rien
8. Erzulie Oh!
9. Haiti Cumbia
10. Prend Courage
11. Lonin
12. Tripotage
13. Lola
14. Madeleine
15. Samba Pachas No. 2
16. Souffrance
17. Diable Le
18. Epoque Chaleur
19. Meci Bon Dieu

Charted by

Julien Lebrun (hot Casa)

Selected from an array of private collections and radio archives in Brooklyn, New York, and multiple digging trips in Port-au-Prince, Jacmel, Gonaives, and St. Marc, are twenty tracks that encompass the vast diversity of styles during the seminal years of musical innovation and percussive potency in Haiti.

From the legendary, elegant big band dance parties in iconic nightclubs of Port-au-Prince to the rhythms of the countryside; from accordion-driven meringue and Vodou-derived drum patterns, to hypnotic tenor sax arrangements and psychedelic interpretations of folklore, the music of 1960's, '70's, & '80's Haiti enjoys a royal repute across the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Colombian coast.

Between the 1960s and 1980s, experimentation and electric reinterpretation of traditional rhythms was rife, along with the sophisticated balancing of a host of influences. There's the jazz-era instrumentation, brought during the early 20th century American occupation, which introduced horn sections to Haitian ensembles. Cuba, cultural imperator of the Afro-Atlantic and perennial ally of Haiti, imbued Meringue, Mambo, Son, Guajira, Charanga, and a slew of Afro-Cuban styles into the Haitian repertoire. Accordion-driven Colombian Cumbia and Dominican Merengue left their mark. A melting pot of sound was all held together by the countless rhythms, drum patterns, and percussion brought across the Atlantic from Africa, surviving slavery's violent cultural repression.

Nago rhythms from what is today Nigeria and Benin, Kongo rhythms from Central Africa, and Petwo rhythms from the Vodou traditions of Guinea, among many others, were revived and given special importance in an age of black consciousness, driven by the Negritude and Noiriste philosophies of Afro-Caribbean intellectuals like Jamaica's Marcus Garvey and Martinique's Frantz Fanon.