Song For a Dark Girl

I am really enjoying Leyla McCalla's music these days. She combines numerous things I love: Langston Hughes, Haiti, Black cultures, and folk music. Anywho, "Song For A Dark Girl" is McCalla setting a powerful poem of Hughes to music. After one listen it should be obvious what the song is about...

The Alabama Bus

I'm A King Bee

Raunchy blues classic by Slim Harpo. 

More Nemours Jean-Baptiste

Nemours Jean-Baptiste, saxophonist, bandleader, and originator of the compas direct. We see his band in this picture, including the teenager, Richard Duroseau, on the far left. Enjoy some more classic kompa music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaapAylSoeU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhA-IYwTQSM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5flejvTWZm8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB4OEYkpkcM

Kamèn Sa Wa Fè?

"Kamèn Sa Wa Fè?" was recorded back in the 1930s by Alan Lomax, who recorded a twoubadou band's (Ago's Bal Band) version of the song (using a Haitian version of the marimbula)! I knew I recognized Leyla McCalla's version of "Kamèn Sa W Fè?" somewhere. Given McCalla's interest in folk music, I shouldn't be surprised. I suppose I prefer Ago's Bal Band over McCalla's take because of the use of the clave and the Cuban son influence.

Les Trois Dangers

Les Trois Dangers, consisting of Richard Duroseau, Nemours Jean-Baptiste, and Raymond Gaspard, members of the original Ensembles aux Calebasses and innovators of the konpa direk. Duroseau's accordian was central to the sound of konpa direk, and Gaspard, guitarist, coined the term for the music, which was derived from earlier Haitian music, a boost of merengue from the Cibao (via the New York-based Angel Viloria Y Su Conjunto Tipico), jazz, and Cuban music. Although I usually hate the accordion, in Latin American and Caribbean music, it's more than bearable! 

Check out these links for more great music featuring these guys. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPqB8Blu-_8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxlZHEEqa8Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHjV3dbNTx0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGG-KBZl80k
http://grooveshark.com/s/Carole/4t011W?src=5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgMnUsCaY1g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPME_cIiG-E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOhKd0KNjkA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVVScp31W5U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiprgXixuLo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK31NPBqZ1w

Ludovic Lamothe's Lisette

I have not located a recording of Lamothe himself playing his arrangement of the earliest written Creole poem from Saint Domingue (what is now Haiti), but it's a beautiful melody he chose to adapt this old Creole poem to. It's very distinct from that of Louisiana Creole black slaves (yet both are clearly derived from the same textual source that must have spread to Louisiana through Saint Dominguan immigrants to Louisiana), but a more elegant, stately melody in the form of a Haitian meringue. Here is a jazzy version by Makaya that is quite moving, fusing the lyrics of the poem with Lamothe's arrangement in a jazz vein. Oh, and last but certainly not least, check out a folksy string band rendition of "Lisette." As stated in my previous post on the love poem for a black slave, Lisette, this song epitomizes the cultural (and musical) creolization that led to the flourishing of music in the circum-Caribbean region (which itself has tremendous import for the development of jazz, Haitian mereng, Cuban creolized forms of the contradanza and the son).