The term "world beat music" is less than a decade old. The music is a genre defined by the heads of a number of small London-based record labels who found that their records from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean were not finding rack space. Major record stores had no obvious place for these unclassified sounds. The average listeners have not. Today the major record chains - Spec's, Best Buy, and others - have responded to buyers' demand to make available music from Africa, Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil and Latin America. Finding releases from Senegal's Kouding Cissoko or Baaba Maal is no problem. Finding the Afro-French, hip-hop sound of Les Nubians is simple; so finding the music of Nacio from Dominica, Gilberto Gil from Brazil, or Bamboleo of Cuba.
The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, a group of Nyabinghi ceremonial drummers founded by the legendary Count Ossie in the 1950s, is not only making its New York debut but is raising the curtain on the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts' "Caribbean Roots: Caribbean Routes" festival. Chris Combette, who has been collaborating with Mungal Patasar on several tracks for his new album, opened the show with his beautiful fusion of Caribbean styles - samba, salsa, soca, bossa nova, reggae and zouk sweeping over the auditorium like warm waves. Based in French Guiana, bordering Brazil, Combette has soaked up the melodies of the region, while his lyrics address the nostalgia or alienation of the immigrant, and racist murder in the metropole. Beneath his sinuous, sometimes ethereal music lurked incisive Kwéyol irony and melancholy metaphors. It was left to Kali and his banjo to bring down the curtain on the festival with his brilliant reworking of Martiniquan traditional music, mazurk, biguine, chouval bwa, gwo ka (from Guadeloupe) with reggae, funk and jazz. It was good to hear St. Lucian Luther François, one of the Caribbean's foremost contemporary composers and sax players, adding punch to this excellent band and the finale of a significant festival for Caribbean music.
