You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Major Lazer Presents: Give Me Future Various<br />
artists (Mad Decent)<br />
EDM trio Major Lazer’s frontman<br />
Diplo has been described as<br />
the “coloniser du jour” for his<br />
perceived cultural appropriation<br />
of black music, including <strong>Caribbean</strong><br />
music; his fellow members,<br />
Trinidadian Jillionaire and Jamaican<br />
Walshy Fire, may laugh at<br />
that characterisation. An unsettling<br />
indictment, since in this soundtrack to the behind-thescenes<br />
documentary about the group’s groundbreaking<br />
2016 Cuban mega-concert for 400,000 people, half of the<br />
twenty-three performers are <strong>Caribbean</strong>s from Trinidad,<br />
Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. There’s no denying the<br />
impact Major Lazer has had in taking tropical rhythms and<br />
voices to areas of commercial music importance hitherto<br />
uncharted. On this album, new Latin rhythms and digital<br />
reggae vibes mix with Lazer’s trademark dance music,<br />
replete with its distorted electronic squeaks and island<br />
beats, via a number of collaborations that explore the<br />
nexus of Afrobeat, soca, dancehall, and other diaspora<br />
music, to suggest that one person’s colonisation could be<br />
another’s diffusion of global pop.<br />
Single Spotlight<br />
My Kinda Girl Beres Hammond (VPAL Music)<br />
Jamaican reggae icon Beres<br />
Hammond is the king of lovers<br />
rock, and this new single embodies<br />
the kind of romantic longings<br />
that typify the sub-genre: “I see<br />
the look in all the brothers’ eyes<br />
/ As if they are waiting for you<br />
to despise / But when you hug<br />
me in front of everyone / I know<br />
you are stating this is where you belong / You’re my kinda<br />
girl.” Hammond is steeped in the American R&B tradition,<br />
and the husky timbre of his voice has the smooth crooner<br />
stamping a “kinda” elder statesman vibe on the sexiness.<br />
This groovy rocker has a charm that can make couples smile<br />
when dancing close. This is grown folks’ music, without<br />
any snub of a younger audience in search of templates for<br />
a great song that can carry beyond the fleeting attention<br />
span of modern pop or dancehall. The young producer of<br />
the single, Kury Riley, says it was a privilege working with<br />
the “musical vocal god of decades.” It is our privilege to<br />
continue listening to Beres Hammond.<br />
Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell<br />
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 33
Change language