Lovey's Band - the first native Caribbean record - Photos 2.0

click to hear recording https://whensteeltalks.ning.com/video/loveys-string-band-mango-vert-1912

By 1910, phonograph technology had spread, if not round the entire world, then round the “civilized” portions of same: those red spots on the map where the British Empire never set. (Or something.) And record companies, finding that they could make more money selling dark peoples’ music back to them than just limiting themselves to a white audience (the domestic market, sadly, took far longer to come to this conclusion), began to record popular acts all around the world. We’ve run across Hawaiians, Latin Americans, and Eastern Europeans; but these could all be described as records from civilized nations; Lovey’s String Band, on the other hand, is strictly colonial island music; the first native Caribbean record, the progenitor of all calypso, mento, ska, reggae, soca, dancehall, and dub to come. Although the record was issued by Columbia’s British wing, the group was recorded in New York (as Delta bluesmen would be fifteen years later, traveling up to cut odes to their hometown in Manhattan towers), where (among other things) they recorded this dance instrumental, some of the first genuine black vernacular music on record, with an insistent syncopated pulse that American blacks wouldn’t get on record for a while yet. In its fiddly whine, it anticipates not just the fleet calypso of the thirties and forties (the golden age of calypso, when it was to world music what reggae would be in the 60s and 70s), but the vernacular fiddle music of the Southern U.S., which wouldn’t get on record for another ten to fifteen years. Gid Tanner, Hoyt Ming, and Dennis McGee; there’s more continuity in the music of the Gulf than is generally acknowledged. click for full article Lovey's Trinidad Calypso String Band Lovey (George R.L. Baille - leader, violin), L. Betancourt (2nd violin), P. Branche (flute), W. Edwards (Clarinet) Louis Schnieder (Tiple), E.P. Butcher (Piano), Donald Black, L. Demile (guitars). F.A. Harte, C. Eugen Bernier (cuatros) Patrick Johnson (bass), Cleto Chacha (braga) —

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Comments

terry June 15, 2012 at 3:19pm

...........and those are some "sharp" tuxedoes.
Sandra June 15, 2012 at 3:36am

Wow! This is wonderful! Thanks for this piece of rare musical history...
Audley Sue Wing June 14, 2012 at 9:52pm

Thanks! I was just asking for this info. To all out there in the Diaspora, note this is a Trinidadian Calypso

String Band. We've been there for a long time now. Best wishes ASW.
terry June 14, 2012 at 4:50am

Wow...........1912!!
terry June 14, 2012 at 4:44am

Click on link provided: http://aceterrier.com/?page_id=1502

then scroll down to item No 23 and listen to Mango Vert by Lovey's Trinidad Calypso String Band.

Thanks, Pan Times, for this important T&T and Caribbean history of recorded music.

This reply was deleted.