Creole Music Of The French West Indies A Discography 1900-1959

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mercial arrangements for recordings of French Antillean music in

Paris. The French capital continued into the 1950s as the principal

city where sessions featuring Franco-Caribbean music were under-

taken and pressings manufactured: these artefacts form the core of

this discography.

Though the original purpose was to list discs from the 78-rpm era it

became clear, as research proceeded, that the overlap between the

production of coarse groove and microgroove pressings (45-rpm or

-rpm) was indefinable — this is exemplified by the entry for ‘Hon-

oré Coppet et son Orchestre antillais’ dated 21 November 1956. A

measurement of time, therefore, was selected for our survey: the year

1959 concludes the six decades covered in this assessment.

On a few occasions Caribbean French-Creole music was recorded in

the United States for export to the Antilles and these sessions are

printed in this listing for the purposes of inclusiveness and compari-

son. Thus on three occasions in 1930, the Orquesta Franco-Créole

recorded in New York City for US Colum-

bia’s export series; at their first session in

February 1930, the melodies comprised

Haitian

Méringues

and Martinique

Biguines

—

the latter taken from Victor Coridun’s re-

cently published

Folklore Martiniquais, Le car-

naval de St-Pierre (Martinique).

In December 1933, with a mix of Haitian and

Martinique repertoire matching the

Orquesta Franco-Créole, rCA Victor also

recorded sides in New York City for export

to the French Caribbean. The session by

Divit et son Orchestre [Félix Band] included

vocals by ‘rick and Dido’. In addition, Félix and his ‘Krazy Kats’ cut

two sessions comprising instrumental Biguines and Paseos for rCA’s

Bluebird subsidiary in 1935. They were sold in the French- and Eng-

lish-speaking West Indies.

Paris, like London and New York City, was a centre where migrant

musicians sought engagements performing their own idiomatic styles

or other popular genres. Domiciled in Paris, black instrumentalists

from the French Antilles often played in United States jazz bands or

with Cuban groups. This listing includes French-Antillean practition-

ers recording jazz with either French bands, or units under the lead-

ership of black North Americans; similarly, their participation in

Caribbean-Latin music sessions is identified. Cuban aggregations were

generally led by migrants from that island, but following the Second

World War, the Guadeloupian Félix Valvert directed a band playing

in this idiom.

A few singers of more popular styles recorded French-Creole reper-

toire accompanied by Antillean musicians, and these releases have

been included for completeness.

In the 1950s, gramophone companies in France found that Paris-based

biguine recordings sold just as well in French-speaking West Africa

as in the Caribbean. For instance, Fiesta, Pathé-Marconi (EMI), and

Philips featured these releases in their specialist African catalogues,

and Decca also participated in this marketing strategy. All recordings

discovered of this nature are indicated in the discography. On occa-

sion West Indian performers, such as reedmen Barel Coppet and

robert Mavounzy, or the pianist Louis-Jean Alphonse (Alphonso), were

employed as principals in sessions for records aimed primarily at the

African market.

Similarly, after the Second World War, counterpart

UK record companies sold idiomatic Caribbean recordings made in

London to British colonies in the West In-

dies and West Africa.

While the basic ‘descriptor’ used by record

companies to define the rhythm or style of

this music is ‘Biguine,’ even within this ter-

minology there is considerable supplemen-

tary variety that enhances or refines the

expression, sometimes by defining a more

specific activity — for example the

ladgia

ritual fighting dance, the

la haute

haute

taille

(high waist) form of the quadrille, or

the Carnival

videe

parade. More often than

not the qualification is an extra generalisa-

tion —

folklore, vielles chansons

(old songs),

de Ste Rose

(of the Saint rose

Society) — or perhaps a style originating in another Caribbean island

—

calypso, rumba

— or the South American mainland —

samba

. In

other instances the word ‘Biguine’ is not used, and the ‘descriptor’

distinguishes a different style altogether, perhaps one of the supple-

mentary terms mentioned, or others of similar origin — from the

French-speaking islands these might be the

bel air

, the

cassé co

, the

grage

the

toum-blake

(all drum dances); the

mazouk

(mazurka) and

valse

(refinements of European dances); or mainland rhythms from the

Americas:

Boston, Fox Trot

(North),

Baïao, Tango

(South). Often the lat-

ter, together with (amongst others from the Caribbean) the Cuban

son

or Haitian

meringue

, reflect a dance fashion, popular at the time of

the release of a particular recording.