CCMusic.com

Here are fourteen tracks of untimely yet unprecedented cross-fertilization from the French West Indies: all types of music rooted in the Creole archipelago have found their way, whatsoever, to the tracklisting. Whether originating from the city or being more rural, they all go back to what Edouard Glissant, in an interview about the place of West Indian music in the Afro-American scope, called "the trace of singing, the one which got erased by slavery." The opening track features one of the emblematic orchestras of this aesthetic identity, criscrossing many music types from the archipelago. The 1974 Ray Barretto guajira is magnificently performed by Malavoi, a legendary Fayolais group. Additionally, the compilation ends on a piece by Los Martiniqueños de Francisco. Practicing the danmyé rounds (a kind of capoeiria) to the rhythm of the bèlè drum, it delivers a terrific Caterete, a kind of champeta of Afro- Colombian obedience which was originally composed by Colombian Fabián Ramón Veloz Fernández for the group Wgenda Kenya. The icing on the cake is Brazilian Marku Ribas, who found refuge in Martinique in the early 1970s, bringing his singing to the last trance-inducing track. The Los Caraïbes cover of "Dónde," a famous Cuban theme composed by producer Ernesto Duarte Brito, has a typical violin and features renowned Martinique singer Joby Valente and his piquant voice. The meaningful "Amor en chachachá" by L'Ensemble Tropicana, a band which included Haitian musicians among whom was composer and leader Michel Desgrotte, also recalls how Latin music was pervasive in the tropics in the mid-1960s. They were the ones keeping people dancing at Le Cocoteraie in Guadelupe and La Bananeraie in Martinique. Around the same time, another "foreign" band, Congolese Freddy Mars N'Kounkou's Ryco Jazz, achieved some success on both islands by covering Latin jazz classics. In a more typically salsa vein, the Super Combo, a famous Guadelupean orchestra from Pointe-Noire that was formed around the Desplan family and had Roger Plonquitte and Elie Bianay on board, adapt "Serana," a theme by Roberto Angleró Pepín. Léon Bertide's Martinican ensemble excelled at the boogaloo which had been composed by Puerto Rican saxophonist Hector Santos for the legendary El Gran Combo. Three years later, in 1972, Henri Guédon, with the help of Paul Rosine on the vibraphone, tackled the Bilongo made famous by Eddie Palmieri.