Caribbean Beat — November/December 2017 (#148)

Single Spotlight
Long Over Due Leston Paul (self-released)
From the arranger who gave
the world’s most popular
soca song (Arrow’s “Hot, Hot,
Hot”) a life of its own comes
a new album that runs the
gamut from Caribbean soul
to smooth jazz to new soca
fusion. Long Over Due has
a technical gloss and aural
sheen that suggest Leston
Paul’s production values are on par with the best in
the industry anywhere. In a style that can be seen as a
Caribbean parallel to Quincy Jones’s during his Back on
the Block era, Paul harvests the talents of a number of
Trinidadian musicians and singers to the best of their
ability to give an overview of the range of music that is
celebrated in these islands. From the languid elegance
of “Night and Day” to the tongue-in-cheek nod to the
classicism of calypso legend Kitchener’s “Pan in A Minor”
— complete with faux orchestral strings — to the soulful
strut of “Lots of Talk” and “Mt Irvine Beach Jam”, this
album is a satisfying exercise in Caribbean music genre
fusion.
Normal Freetown Collective (self-released)
“Rob the bank normal and
buy a Range Rover normal
/ Lie to the people normal,
practice evil normal.” These
lyrics, sung by Freetown
Collective’s Lou Lyons and
Muhammad Muwakil, suggest
or possibly reflect a
cynical take on life in modern
Trinidad and Tobago. A generation
born in the 1980s has struggled through the
posturing of island politics to render its impressions and
observed reality as a ceaseless litany of the agonies and
ironies of woeful living for the ninety-nine per cent below
the line. Freetown Collective are modern calypsonians
unhinged from the melodic template of the past century,
but aware of the lyrical tradition. With a trap music production
aesthetic, the song’s angst-filled vision generates
a head-bopping reaction reminding the listener that, just
like calypso, behind every good groove there is a message
that takes notice of another side of our local existence.
Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 37