Browse by Label: ISMA'A (FRANCE)

Artist:	VA
Title:	Creole Love Calls
Label:	ISMA'A (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	YEB 2001CD

"As we listen to Creole Love Calls it's a surprise to discover, 20 or 30 years after their creation, some unknown Anatolian masterpieces of the Latin music. This rich and original production from the 60's and 70's has unfortunately rarely crossed the West Indian community. The musicians from Martinique and Guadalupe have explored the whole panel of the Caribbean music while keeping in touch with their own languages. This selection of rare and really-hard-to-find magical tracks will put a spell on listeners with the Creole poetry and the various rhythms: beguine, mazurka, santeria, boogaloo...So, look out. You're about to discover the hot and fevered atmosphere of straw-walled ballrooms, the 'dens of iniquity' where in the 1970's every honest West Indian mother dreaded finding her children mixing with the riffraff." Features: Henri Guédon, La Perfecta, Ryco Jazz, Eddy Louiss, David Martial, Dolor et ses Etoiles, Marius Cultier, Les Vikings, Les Aiglons, Les Rapaces.

Artist:	GUILLAUME, JEPHTE
Title:	Bourrique La
Label:	ISMA'A (FRANCE)
Format:	12"
Price:	$8.00
Catalog #:	YEB 2003EP

"In 2001, the label Isma'a produced Creole love calls, a compilation of 70's tunes from the West Indies, inspired by Latin, soul, jazz and African rhythms. Following the interest aimed to this compilation by the electronic scene DJ's, influenced by Latin and African music, and, through the impetus given by Discograph, the label Isma'a has decided to keep on going the Creole adventure through a concept of modern production. The project called 'Creole Re-Creation serie', is about one series of twelve inches dedicated to modern re-rendering of old Anatolian compositions. Jephté Guillaume chose for the first 12 inches, a title from the amateur singer Dolor Méliot, called 'Bourrique la' that came out on 7 inches in 1970. Jephté lighted up this melancholic and roots track, for a spiritual and Afrocentrist variation, carried on by his mystic voice and a trombone. Some simples arrangements but dense, magnified by the use of an old school keyboard to the glory of Larry Heard etc?"

Artist:	BRIVAL, ROLAND
Title:	Waka
Label:	ISMA'A (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	YEB 2006CD

"New Diaspora Soul. Waka: a name for what Roland Brival calls the 'mythic source' of Caribbean music (wa, voice, and ka, the drum). But also a name for a dialogue at the core of art. Brival, a stunning polymath -- as an accomplished visual artist as well as the author of ten novels and a number of screenplays -- says that 'for me, voice and rhythm are the essential tools of all communication, and thus of any art form. Even a painting is the expression of an inner voice, and there's no sculpture without rhythm.' Brival's music pursues that source in the main mode of Caribbean culture: creolization, a mixing of styles and languages, insistent and infectious. This record was deliberately recorded in just four days mainly in 'live in studio' single takes, in order to evoke the freshness and urgency of a range of music from the late 1960s and early 1970s -- whether the free-and-loose Antillean bands of the era, or the convergence between funk and free jazz that brought Sly Stone towards the Art Ensemble, or Funkadelic towards Sun Ra. With such an approach, this record defies expectations about French Caribbean music. It's not nostalgic folklore, and it's definitely not prepackaged studio confection. From the first notes of 'To Be One' (where Carnival street parade drums meet a rhythm guitar from the JBs), Waka drops a diasporic bomb on Zouk. Roland Brival's voice is sometimes reminiscent of Gil Scott Heron, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, or early Al Jarreau."

Previous Page Index of Labels Next Page