This post presents several folktales from the Bahamas focusing on the adventures of the tricky, resourceful folktale hero Jack. We’ll see Jack escaping from the giants by charming them with his musical instrument and witness his courtship with the Devil’s daughter, Greenleaf. Like most Bahamian folktales, these stories contain complex wordplay and have songs embedded in the tales. The two tales here are very distinctively part of the Jack tale tradition, which must have been brought to the Bahamas with English settlers, but they also have African and other elements springing from their complex Caribbean roots. They were recorded by Alan Lomax and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle in 1935.
Welcome to our latest post in the Homegrown Plus series, featuring Louis Michot and Leyla McCalla, an outstanding duo performing traditional French-language music from Louisiana. Just like other blogs in the series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections. Louis Michot is a fiddle player and lead singer for the Grammy-award-winning Lost Bayou Ramblers. In addition to fiddle and vocals, Louis plays guitar, bass, ti-fer (triangle), and accordion--all the instruments of a typical Cajun band. Leyla McCalla was born in New York City to Haitian emigrants and activists. McCalla is a master of the cello, tenor banjo, and guitar, as well as a multilingual singer and songwriter. She is a founding member of Our Native Daughters and has appeared at the Library of Congress as a member of the Grammy-award-winning Black string band The Carolina Chocolate Drops. This event spotlights the New Orleans-based Nous Foundation and their Community Collections Grant project, "La Musique Nous Réunit: Documenting Louisiana French Music."
This post looks at photos and recordings of some important calypso stars of the 1940s New York music scene, Macbeth the Great (Patrick MacDonald), Duke of Iron (Cecil Anderson) and Lord Invader (Rupert Grant). The 1947 photos are part of the William P. Gottlieb collection at the Library of Congress Music Division, while the recording of a full-length 1946 concert by the three performers is part of the American Folklife Center’s Alan Lomax Collection. These collections shed light on an interesting time in American music, before the emergence of rock and roll, when calypso and related Caribbean styles were vying for popularity with other folk music genres. In 1944, the Andrews Sisters had a major hit with Lord Invader's "Rum and Coca-Cola." In 1956, Harry Belafonte's "Calypso" became the first million-selling LP record. During the period between those milestones, it looked possible that calypso could emerge to be one of the leading styles of American pop music. Performers like Duke of Iron, Macbeth, and Lord Invader engaged in friendly competitions like the ones documented by Gottlieb and Lomax, using witty lyrics, catchy music, and personal charisma to fascinate audiences on stage and on record. Find the photos and a link to the concert audio in this blog post.
