Calypso War - Black Music In Britain 1956-1958

Calypso was considered the people's newspaper in Trinidad, and these mid-'50s recordings chronicle the adaptation of Caribbean immigrants to the U.K. during the mid- to late '50s.

The excellent liner notes provide much detailed information on artists and the social context, the last batch of songs before Jamaican sounds took over and the next generation went dreadlocks Rasta in the '70s.

Homesickness is part of that equation, and a fair number of these tracks are remakes of older calypsos popular in Trinidad. "Not Me" is thinly veiled rewrite of "Man Smart, Woman Smarter," (the melody recalls a revved-up take on "Meet Da Boys on De Battlefront" by the Wild Tchoupitoulas) given a jivey reading by the dismissible, exaggerated crooner Ben Bowers — luckily he only has three tracks.

The Mighty Terror tightropes along the dodgy divide of sexism and machismo — the stay-home-and-mind-the-baby-while-I-go-off-in-the-world theme of "Brownskin Gal" is pretty irredeemable, but "Woman Police in England" is funny as hell in its own way. It's pretty revealing of cultural differences in attitude, and so is "Patricia Gone With Millicent," where Terror gets abandoned for another woman but seems more puzzled than vindictive about it. Terror is a strong singer who cuts through crisp, clean arrangements built around jazz guitar and bongos.

The "Heading North" commentary on racism (South African apartheid and U.S. civil rights heating up are the focus) sound naïve in retrospect, not the least for ignoring the U.K. But "T.V. Calypso" is a great social snapshot of the moment television became a fixture in modern life, s well as a source of status and family pressure. Lord Invader wrote "Rum and Coca Cola," and was fresh from a victorious, ten-year battle for royalties from the songs when he began recording in Britain. His calypsos are gently mellow, featuring flute and bongos, and at first seem confined to lightweight themes like "Prince Rainier" (the famous wedding to actress Grace Kelly) or "Mahalia, I Want Back My Dollar." "My Experience on the Rieperbahn" is a hilarious cultural collision as our innocent Invader gets confused by a transvestite encounter in Hamburg's red-light district. But "I'm Going Back to Africa" is a surprisingly pointed repatriation song with jazzy guitar and bongos, and Invader sounds genuinely angry singing "Teddy Boy Calypso," updating his own 1945 calypso to 1958 U.K. street violence.

It's Lord Ivanhoe who delves most often into hard social commentary here. "Africa Here I Come" is a pointed statement of pan-African consciousness (the end of the European colonial era in Africa looming on the horizon in the late '50s), while "New York Subway" is a deceptively mild-mannered critique about getting lost and cabdriver racism. "Lift the Iron Curtain" is a sincere plea with a sly dig at Britain ("I think the Russians are selfish/In a way, they are like the British/For no man can get inside/To see what Moscow has got to hide") and a chorus referencing Khrushchev and satellites.

It's an interesting, if not essential, collection, and valuable for documenting the last round of U.K. calypso creators before Jamaican sounds took over in the Caribbean community there.

Calypso War - Black Music In Britain 1956-1958

(192 kbps, front & back cover included)