The Mighty Duke, Canary, Fighter, Blakie - This Is Calypso!

Calypso is a style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago from African and European roots. The roots of the genre lay in the arrival of enslaved Africans, who, not being allowed to speak with each other, communicated through song. This forged a sense of community among the Africans, who saw their colonial masters change rapidly, bringing French, Spanish and British music styles to the island of Trinidad. The French brought Carnival to Trinidad, and calypso competitions at Carnival grew in popularity, especially after the abolition of slavery in 1834. While most authorities stress the African roots of calypso, in his 1986 book "Calypso from France to Trinidad, 800 Years of History" veteran calypsonian The Roaring Lion (Rafael de Leon) asserted that calypso descends from the music of the medieval French troubadours.
Kelvin Pope, known in the Calypso world as 'The Mighty Duke', is a legendary Calypsonian whose work spans a period of over fifty years.

Born in 1930 in Point Fortin, south Trinidad, 'Duke' grew up in a period that was marked by striking workers who challenged the colonial authorities by protesting against working conditions, wages, racism and exploitation in the oilfields.

Growing up in this turbulent period would have a lasting impact on Kelvin Pope and the music that he would create in years to come.
He started his calypso career at a calypso tent in Point Fortin but moved to the Southern Brigade Tent in San Fernando in the early 1960s. He then joined the Original Young Brigade Tent in Port-of-Spain where he performed from 1964 to 1967. He won the National Calypso Crown four times: 1968 ("What Is Calypso" and "Social Bacchanal"); 1969 ("Black Is Beautiful" and "One Foot Visina"); 1970 ("Brotherhood of Man" and See Through"); and 1971 ("Mathematical Formula" and "Melvine & Yvonne"). He also won the Road March title in 1987 with "Thunder." He died in 2009.

Tracklist.
1 The Mighty Duke - What is Calypso ?
2 The Mighty Duke - Woman baccanal
3 Canary - Beatnik generation
4 Canary - Tribute to Luther King
5 Fighter - What you sow you reap
6 Fighter - Pom pom
7 Fighter - Send me instead
8 Blakie - Monica

9 Blakie - We ain't going back again

10 The Mighty Duke - Send them girls by me

The Mighty Duke, Canary, Fighter, Balkie - This Is Calypso!

(320 kbps, cover art included)

Amiri Baraka - New Music New Poetry (1980)

Poet, playwright, critic, and novelist Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoi Jones) is best known to the jazz community for his two books, "Blues People: Negro Music in White America", published in 1964, and "Black Music" in 1967, both as LeRoi Jones.

Long before this, however, Baraka was identified with the New York School of poets and the Beats (he was included in Donald Allen's seminal anthology "The New American Poetry"). His first book of poetry, "Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note" was published in 1961. With Diane Di Prima he founded and edited the legendary "Floating Bear" newsletter. Baraka founded the Black Arts Repertory Theater/School and won an Obie award for his play "Dutchman" in 1964. He was an outspoken leader in the Black Nationalist movement in the late '60s and was a close associate - as well as spiritual godfather - to the Black Panther Party.

He changed his name to Imamu Amiri Baraka, and later dropped "Imamu" (a Muslim word for "spiritual leader") in 1970. Remaining an activist, Baraka dropped his nationalist stance in 1974 and adopted a Marxist/Leninist one and is regarded as one of the most influential African-American writers of the 20th century.

With influences on his work ranging from artists as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane,
Thelonius Monk, and Sun Ra to the Cuban Revolution, Malcolm X and world revolutionary movements,
Baraka is renown as the founder of the Black Arts Movement in Harlem in the 1960s that became,
though short-lived, the virtual blueprint for a new American theater aesthetics.

He recorded the wildly controversial play "Black Mass" with Sun Ra & His Arkestra in 1968 (issued on the Jihad label) and the amazing "New Music New Poetry" with saxophonist David Murray in 1980 on India Navigation. Baraka has added one more volume to his shelf of music criticism, "The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues", which he and Amina Baraka, his wife, published in 1987. Baraka has taught at SUNY Buffalo and Columbia University, and he is currently a professor of Africana studies at SUNY, Stony Brook. He lives in Newark, NJ.

Amiri Baraka - New Music New Poetry (1980)
(230 kbps, cover art included)