O Grande Amor

Part 6

I do not remember how I learned of the opportunity. SOB’s in NYC needed a substitute DJ for their French Caribbean Friday nights for the summer of 1995. I went and interviewed with Larry Gold the owner and got the gig. The arrangement was that I would DJ Soul and Funk for the afterwork crowd from 5-8 pm. Then at 8 pm I would start playing Haitian, African, Zouk. As soon as I switched music all the mostly African-American crowd left like someone had yelled '“Fire!”. On Friday nights the best Haitian bands would blow me and the crowd away. Bands like Lakol, Zin, Emeline Michel and Tabou Combo. They were relentless and I was grooving away up in the sound mix/ DJ booth. The venue is not that big but it was always filled to capacity. It was at SOB’s during Martinique Days that I met another DJ from Guinea Bissau. We both shared a love for zouk and he introduced me to music from his country, Cabo Verde and Angola. He told me about a store in Brockton MA owned by Angolans that sold cd’s from Angola, Guinea Bissau and Cabo Verde. While Cabo Verde and Guinea Bissau gained their independence in 1975, Angola has had a much more difficult path to independence that involved Cuban and Soviet interference along with intervention from Zaire (now the Congo) and South Africa. The protracted civil war, droughts and political corruption has been especially hard on the people of this country. Regular democratic processes did not occur in Angola until the 2008 and 2017 elections. Someone once said that the most beleaguered countries make the most beautiful music. I find this to be especially true when it comes to Angola.

(Station break: I have never cared for the term “world music”. All music is world music to me. Jazz is world music as is funk. If the music comes Africa, I usually call the music African or maybe the country in Africa to be more specific. Some Africans prefer the term African rather the country name due to post-colonial implications. Record stores and even web based retailers used the term because they did not know how to categorize certain music. I don’t mean to be elitist or picky but that’s just the way I feel about it. I know a lot of it has to do with the record labels and marketing. I believe that the term gained traction in the mid 1980’s in England. Evidently there was an American ethnomusicologist who first used the words in the early 1960’s. It’s like the word “hipster”. They are both meaningless.)

Paulo Flores is an Angolan singer and guitar player whose music I first heard in that Brockton store many years ago. I remember the song that Santos played for me. It was “Tributo A Cabo Verde” a languid soulful song with a pretty melody. He could have played a more uptempo track but he knew what to play. Something wistful and filled with saudade. He asked me if I was married to an African woman and how I came to like this music. Why did this short white guy drive 185 miles to buy this music? I was thirsty for African music and I had finally struck the motherlode. To this day he is my favorite African artist.