I’ve been travelling way too much over the last few weeks and haven’t had any time to write. Luckily Benn loxo listener, Ian, sent me a great guest post.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for zouk, the syrupy-sweet dance music that spread from Guadaloupe to nearly every French-speaking country in the world. It was the first style of music that I learned to dance to—or, more importantly, the first music that I learned to dance to with a girl. It’s not hard to like zouk on the dance floor: it’s relatively slow, the step is simple, and the dancers’ bodies are pressed together very, very snugly. With the right partner (and maybe a rum cocktail or two) a night of zouk can be quite, you know, inspiring.

Unfortunately, the problem with zouk becomes apparent when you take it out of the disco. It’s just too sweet, too full of high-calorie synthesizers and cloying vocals (its name means “sugar” in Kreyol, after all). It’s not something you can drop on the turntable at a dinner party or bump in your car on the highway. It’s not hip to like zouk; the stuff is musical junk food.

But just as junk food always has a more nutritional alternative, I’ve always figured that there must be guilt-free alternatives to zouk that keep its flavor while cutting down the calorie content. And indeed, there are. Here are some examples that I’ve found recently:

First up is Bwa Bandé, a Paris-based group that plays a style from Guadaloupe called gwoka. Gwoka, which shares its origins with Puerto Rican bomba and Haitian petwo drumming, is typically played on drums made from recycled rum barrels and covered with goat-skin heads. The larger drum, the boula, plays the fundamental rhythm while the smaller, the markeur, matches the movements of the dancers. The drums are accompanied by singers and small hand percussion, like gourd shakers and small wooden casks beaten with sticks. Gwoka vocals usually have a rough edge and a distinctive warbling vibrato that helps them cut through the sound of the drums.

“Toput je pa je,” Bwa Bandé’s ode to the game of dominoes, updates these vocals with dancehall-style toasting from Krys; it also features the one-note trumpets called vaksen used in carnival music.

Next is Emeline Michel. She’s a New York-based Haitian singer best known for mizik rasin, or roots music. It’s a tradition-minded amalgam of several Haitian styles: rara carnival music, twoubadou singing and, especially, vodou ceremonial drumming. All of the songs on Reine du Coeur, her latest album, are built around traditional rhythms like banda and petwo. She modernizes these sounds with electric guitars and bass, but (fortunately) dispenses with the synthesizers so loved by zoukistes.

Last is Jacques Schwarz-Bart, a Swiss-Guadaloupean saxophonist who was raised between Switzerland and Guadaloupe. As a child he learned to play gwoka. After studying jazz saxophone at the Berklee School of Music, Schwarz-Bart went on to play with some big names of jazz and soul, including Danilo Perez and D’Angelo.

On Soné Ka La, Schwarz-Bart melds the rhythms of gwoka with jazz, soul and reggae. “Pe-La” is the most radio-friendly track on the album, thanks to the dancehall-style vocals of Admiral T. “Déshabillé” features Jacob Desvarieux, the gravel-voiced lead singer of legendary zouk band Kassav’. The rest of the album is more jazz-oriented, toeing the line between tropical jazz and the easy stuff you might hear in a dentist’s office.

Check out the videos for these songs, as well as some great examples of old-fashioned gwoka drumming and dancing, here:

Bwa Bandé, “Tout jé pa jé”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TERZPgil_z8
Emeline Michel, “Gade Papi”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn7hHwISric
Jacques Schwarz-Bart, “Pe-la”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raHfPqBdPRs
Gwoka in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadaloupe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6h1MJNchoQ
Groupe Lewoz Gwadaloup Dubout, Guadaloupe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCMScQ9tUYw

Thanks for the music and insight, Ian.

Stay tuned over the next few week or two for some music from some of the places I’ve been over the last few weeks: Iceland, Romania, Ireland, England, Hungary, Italy, Turkey, Switzerland…

I just heard from Ian that there’s a Jacques Schwarz-Bart concert in NYC tomorrow night. Check it out and get back to us!

Bwa Bandé – Ké Byen
Bwa Bandé – Toput’ Jé Pa Jé
Emeline Michel – Gade Papi
Emeline Michel – Twa Fey
Jacques Schwarz-Bart – Déshabillé feat. Jacob Desvarieux
Jacques Schwarz-Bart – Pé La feat. Admiral T