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Various Artists - Dolores - Salsa & Guaracha from 70's French West Indies '2025

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Dolores - Salsa & Guaracha from 70's French West Indies
ArtistVarious Artists Related artists
Album name Dolores - Salsa & Guaracha from 70's French West Indies
Country
Date 2025
GenreWorld,Salsa,Guaracha
Play time 51:09
Format / Bitrate 24 BIT Stereo 1420 Kbps / 44.1 kHz
Media CD
Size 582 / 324 MB
PriceDownload $4.95
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Tracks list

Tracklist:

1. Malavoi - Te Traigo Guajira (04:03)
2. Los Caraibes - Donde (02:23)
3. Tropicana - Amor en chachacha (03:18)
4. Ryco Jazz - Wachi wara (03:30)
5. Eugene Balthazar - Dap pignan (02:55)
6. Roger Jaffory - Oey mi, Consejo (02:30)
7. Les Kings - Oriza (04:00)
8. La Perfecta - Tumbadora (04:12)
9. Les Super Jaguars - Tatalibaba (04:41)
10. Super Combo de Pointe-Noire - Serrana (04:58)
11. L'Ensemble Abricot -  Se Quedo Boogaloo (03:21)
12. Henri Guedon - Bilongo (03:15)
13. Les Aiglons - Pensando en ti (04:29)
14. Los Martiniquenos - Caterete (03:37)


 moreThe golden age of the orchestras that graced the Pigalle nights during
the interwar period further proves the point. As soon as the 1930s, Havana-born
Don Barreto naturally mixed danzón and biguine music in a combo based at
Melody's Bar. In the following decade, Félix Valvert, a conductor who was
born and raised in Basse-Terre in Guadelupe, also worked wonders in Montparnasse
with La Coupole, which was an orchestra made up of eclectic musicians. Afro-
Caribbean performers of various origins were often hired on rhythm and brass
sections in jazz bands, which used to enliven the typical French balls of the
capital. In the 1930s and onwards, Rico’s Creole Band was one of them.
Martinican violinist-clarinettist Ernest Léardée, who would become the
king of biguine music as well as the main figure of French Uncle Ben's TV
commercials (a dark stigma of post-colonial stereotypes), had musicians from the
whole Caribbean sphere play at his Bal Blomet – and they all enchanted
"ces Zazous-là" (according the words of Léardée's biguine-calypso
piece).

In les Antilles (French for French West Indies), music history started to speed
up in the 1950s, when trade expanded and radio stations grew bigger. The
Guadelupean and Martiniquais youth tuned in their old galena radio sets to South
American and Caribbean music. As for the women traders, les pacotilleuses, they
bought and sold goods across different islands (the "passing of items through
various hands" was thought to be most pleasurable) and brought back countless
sounds in their luggage. Such was the case of Madame Balthazar, who once
returned from Puerto Rico with the first 45rpm and 33rpm to ever enter
Martinique. Out of this adventure was created the famous Martinican label La
Maison des Merengues, a music business she opened and undertook with her husband
and which proved to be a major landmark.
At the end of the 1950s, in Puerto Rico, Marius Cultier competed in the Piano
International Contest playing a version of Monk's Round 'Midnight. He won the
first prize and this distinction foreshadowed everything that was to come.
Cultier, the heretic Monk of jazz, was quickly praised for writing superb
melodies, always tinged with a twist that conferred a unique sound to his music.
It didn't take long for the gifted self-taught musician to get to play with Los
Cubanos, making a name for himself thanks to his impressive maestria on
merengues. The rest is history. Besides, in the late 1950s, Frantz
Charles-Denis, born into the upper middle class in Saint-Pierre and better known
by his first name Francisco, went back home after working at La Cabane Cubaine
– a club located rue Fontaine where he had caught the Latin fever.
Francisco's music was therefore heavily marked by his Cuban cousins' influence,
which gave the combos he led a

specific style and also led to renewal. Things were swinging hard in La Savane,
located in the main square in Fort-de-France. He set up the Shango club close by
and tested out the biguine lélé there, a new music formula spiced up with
Latin rhythms. Soon afterwards, fate had him fly to Puerto Rico and Venezuela.
As for percussionist Henri Guédon (percussions were only a part of his many
talents), he was born in Fort-de-France in May 22nd 1944, the day marking the
celebration of the abolition of slavery. As an old man, he could remember that
in " [his] father's Teppaz, a lot of hectic 6/8 music was constantly
playing...". In the opening lines of his Lettre à Dizzy, a small illustrated
collection of writings published by Del Arco, he highlighted the huge impact
that cubop had on him as a teenage boy, around 1960. He eventually turned out to
be the lider maximo in La Contesta, a big band steeped in Latin jazz. He was
also the one who originated the word zouk to describe music which brought the
sound of the New York barrio to Paris. It was the culmination of a journey that
started in Sainte-Marie: "a mythical place for bélé, the equivalent of
Cuban guaguancó".
In the early 1960s, the tertiary economy developed to the detriment of
agriculture. Yet rural life was where roots music emerged in Martinique and in
Guadeloupe. Record companies played a major part in the process of Latin
versions sweeping across the islands – before reaching everywhere else.
Producer Célini, boss of the great Aux Ondes label, and Marcel Mavounzy, both
the head of Émeraude records - a firm which was founded in 1953 - as well as
the brother of famous saxophonist Robert Mavounzy, were big names to bear in
mind. Although there were many of them - all of whom are featured on this record
- Henri Debs was definitely the major figure in the recording adventure. He
proved to be so influential that he even got compared to Berry Gordy. In the mid
1950s, when he acquired his first Teppaz, he worked on his first compositions: a
bolero and a chachacha. Then, he became the one man who made people discover
Caribbean music, from calypso to merengue. He was among the first ones to rush
out to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to buy records and distribute them through a store
run by one of his brothers in Fort-de-France. He had members of the Fania All
Star come and perform there, which he was madly proud about. He was also the
first one to pay attention to Haitian music, such as compas direct and various
other rhythms which would soon flood the market. As a result, many of the combos
hitting his legendary studio would end up boosted by widespread "Afro-Latin"
rhythms. However, he never denied his identity: gwo ka drums were given a major
role, although they were instruments which had long been banned from the
"official" music spheres.

The present selection bears witness to such a creative swarming. Here are
fourteen tracks of untimely yet unprecedented cross-fertilization: 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." "It is so in jazz, but also in reggae, calypso, biguine,
salsa... This trace also manifests through the drums, whether Guadelupean,
Dominican, Jamaican or Cuban... None of them being quite the same. They all
point to the idea of a trace, seeking it out

and connecting to each other through it. This is the hallmark of the African
diaspora: its ability to create something new, in relation to itself, out of a
trace. It may be the memory of a rhythm, the crafting of a drum, a means of
expression which doesn't resort to an old language but to the modalities of it."
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 – Ray Barretto was a major New York drummer influenced
by Charlie Parker and Chano Pozzo – is magnificently performed by
Malavoi, a legendary Fayolais group (i.e from Fort-de-France). Additionally, the
compilation ends on a piece by Los Martiniqueños de Francisco. It
symbolically closes the circle as it is a genuine potomitan of Martinique
culture which also functions as a tireless campaigner for Afro-Caribbean music.
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.
These two "versions" convey the whole tone of a selection composed of rarities
and classics of the tropicalized genre, swarming with tonic accents and
convoluted rhythms. It is the sort of cocktail that the West Indians never
failed to spice up with their own ingredients. For instance, 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 track used to be – or so we think –
their only existing 45rpm. 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 – such as
their adaptation of Wachi Wara, a "soul sauce" by Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo
whose interweaving of strings and percussions can have anyone hit the
dancefloor. How can you resist Dap Pinian indeed, a powerful guaguancó by
Eugene Balthazar, performed by the Tropicana Orchestra and published by the
Martinique-founded La Maison des Merengues? It also acts as a symbol of the
maelstrom at work.
Going by the name Paco et L'orchestre Cachunga, Roger Jaffory used to play
guaguancó too: his Fania-inspired Oye mi consejo is one example of his style.
Baila!!!!! Dancing was also one of the Kings' focus points. Oriza is a Puerto
Rican bomba and a "classic" originally composed by Nuevayorquino trumpeter Ernie
Agosto, which reserves major space for brasses, giving it a special sheen.
Emerging from the New York barrios crucible was also La Perfecta, a Martinique
group originating from Trinidad, whose name directly references the totemic
Eddie Palmieri

figure as well as his own band, also called La Perfecta. Here they borrow
Toumbadora from Colombian producer and composer Efraín Lancheros and
interpret it by emphasizing percussions, which set fire to the track even more
than the wind instruments. The same goes for Martinique's Super Jaguars, who use
Tatalibaba – a composition by Cuban guitarist Florencio "Picolo" Santana
which was made famous by Celia Cruz & La Sonora Matencera – as a pretext
for sending their cadences into a frenzy. 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, a Puerto Rican composer,
singer and musician also known for his song Soy Boricua. Here again, their
vision comes close to surpassing the original.
In the 1970s, L'Ensemble Abricot provided a handful of tracks of different
syles, hence reaching the pinnacle of the art of achieving variety and giving
pleasure. They played boleros, biguines, compas direct, guaguancó and even a
good old boogaloo - the type they wanted to keep close to their hearts for ever,
"pour toujours", as they sang along together in one of their songs. 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. Such a
classic!!!!! And so were the Aiglons, the band from Guadelupe: choosing to
execute Pensando en tí, a composition by Dominican Aniceto Batista, on a
cooler tempo than the original, they noticeably used a wonderfully (un)tuned
keyboard in place of the accordion. On the high-value collectible single
– the first one released by Les Aiglons under the Duli Disc label
– there is a sticker classifying the track under the generic name "Afro".
Now that is what we call a symbol.



Dolores - Salsa & Guaracha from 70's French West Indies Hi-Res.rar -  582.9 MB
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