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2LP
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YEB 2006LP
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CD
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YEB 2006CD
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"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."
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