Calypso Awakening: From The Emory Cook Collection

Product Description

A flourishing of Calypso creativity, a dramatic period in Trinidad’s history and an audio engineer inspired these exciting tracks, originally released on Cook Records between 1956 and 1962. Emory Cook used innovative recording techniques to capture the active interplay between calypsonians and their audiences. We hear classic song-duels between calypso legends like the Mighty Sparrow and Lord Melody, lively steel band processions, and a wide range of provocative calypso songs about life, love and politics. Live and studio recordings from Trinidad. 32-page booklet presents notes, song texts, Cook discography, bibliography. 67 minutes.

Review

During the late 1950s, calypso music in Trinidad was undergoing changes that reflected the island’s political ferment. During that fertile period, Emory Cook, one of the pioneers of high-fidelity recording, was producing a sizeable and varied collection that he released on his labels. Cook was quite enamored of calypso, at least partly for its improvisational qualities, and he went out of his way to record more or less spontaneous musical and vocal interactions in their natural settings. The 21 tracks on this release draw from nine Cook Records albums to present some wonderfully uninhibited performances. Included here are rousing performances by Mighty Sparrow and Lord Melody, both individually and as a duo singing picong melodies (consisting of friendly impromptu insults, otherwise known as versifying). There are also humorous and ribald songs, as well as Commander’s masterpiece of irony called “No Crime, No Law.” -Paul-Emile Comeau — From Rhythm Magazine