Episode 150: Pirates' Radio des Caraïbes

I am continuing with music from the Caribbean again this week, it will be another episode of Pirates’ Radio of the Caribbean. This week I will present music from a pretty wide variety of Caribbean territories… but sound-wise the focus today will be on the music of the French West Indies: Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Haiti. My interest in this music has been a relatively recent development, only happening over the past 4 years or so… it is easy for gringos to miss this music, it lives in a blind spot for us. How interesting it is that Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique are so close to us in the United States, but we never think about visiting these places, we barely know anything about them, and there has never been a breakthrough moment for their music in the US market. Today’s set is all about popular music, mostly from the 1970s. We will start off with the unique jazz sounds of biguine, a style that started in Martinique in the early twentieth century. In the second set we’ll hear how the hugely popular sounds of Cuba were interpreted in French speaking parts of the Caribbean. The third set today starts to branch out into international sounds, showing the influence of US soul and Jamaican rocksteady throughout the Caribbean. Then I’ll send it off with some uptempo sounds in the final set. Sounds from Colombia and Venezuela mingle with the French West Indies… it’s Pirates’ Radio of the Caribbean on today’s Tropicology.