CALYPSO, MENTO, JOROPO, STEEL & STRING BAND (2024 REPRESS)

(2LP)
Still deeper forays into the musical landscape of the Windrush generation.

A dazzling range of calypso, mento, joropo, steelband, palm-wine and r’n'b. Expert revivals of stringband music, from way back, alongside proto-Afro-funk.

Genre World
FormatVINYL
Cat. noHJRLP077
Label HONEST JONS RECORDS
Artist LONDON IS THE PLACE FOR ME 7
Release Date24/09/2021
Carrier2LP
Tracklisting
CALYPSO, MENTO, JOROPO, STEEL & STRING BAND (2024 REPRESS)
vinyl Album or track playing
An uproarious selection of songs about the H-Bomb and modern phones, prostitution and Haile Selassie, mid-life crisis and the London Underground, racism and solidarity, the Highway Code and a 100% West Indian Royal Wedding.

For example some frantic British-Guianan joropo music-hall about Eatwell Brown from Clapham, who starts out biting off a piece of his mother-in-law’s face at a party, then devours everything in his path… a chunk of Brixton Prison, a Union Jack, a policeman’s uniform. Or Marie Bryant — collaborator of Lester Young and Duke Ellington — taking time off from skewering the South African PM Daniel Malan at her West End revue, to contribute some arch, swinging filth about uber-genitalia.

Superior sound, courtesy of Abbey Road, D&M and Pallas; lovely gatefold sleeve; full-size booklet, with full notes, and fabulous previously-unseen photographs, including a set from the family archive of Russ Henderson (who led the first, impromptu Notting Hill Carnival march, in 1966).