Lionel "Lanky" Belasco, who died in 1967, was our first West Indian musical genius. He composed '400 ballads, pasillos, waltzes, calypsos and rumbas," according to "Rum and Coca-Cola" lawyer, Louis Nizer: "From the time he was 16 he had conducted his own band. Later, he turned professional and toured the West Indies - Barbados, Santa Lucia, Martinique, British Guiana and Venezuela."

Calypso historian Gordon Rohlehr suggests that Belasco's 'prodigious talent', drawing on folksongs from the entire region, introduced Trinidadian entertainers to their own multi-lingual heritage. Indeed, many songs credited to Belasco were actually folksongs he'd heard in his travels, and adapted.

Apart from his seminal influence in opening up the melodic, rhythmic and instrumental possibilities available to calypso, however, Belasco was simply a good composer whose tunes sometimes possess startling beauty and elegance. Thus he is aptly compared, on the new CD Goodnight Ladies and Gents: the creole music of Lionel Belasco, to the great Afro-American ragtime composer Scott Joplin.

Both were brilliant, classically trained pianists, who brought their knowledge and talents to popular music. Joplin's music was revived after The Entertainer was used as the theme for the Academy award-winning movie The Sting. So who knows - perhaps an appreciation of Belasco's genius will be sparked by Goodnight Ladies and Gents.

Produced by Calypso Callaloo author Don Hill, the CD contains 25 of his songs, most about three minutes long, most recorded in the 1920s or 1930s. there are ten calypsoes sung by Wilmoth Houdini, a chantwell-turned-calypsonian who migrated to the U.S. where he recorded popular calypsoes with Belasco's band.

Some of these we all know, such as "Sly Mongoose" and "Caroline", the latter being re-released by Lion a few years ago.

Most of Goodnight Ladies, and Gents, however, is instrumental, generally European music such as waltzes, leavened by an Afro-creole syncopation. Generally, their fiddle and clarinet melodies, which alternate with Belasco's piano, show the Venezuelan influence, although it reminds one of nothing so much as John Buddy Williams' "French Suite" (which David Rudder sampled in "Another Day in Paradise").

These delicate and beautiful melodies - along with the American ragtime, and the Cuban danzón, for instance - represent the first mature fruits of the great New World art form that is popular music, fruits borne by the strong, grafted tree of Afro-European music.

Goodnight Ladies and Gents: the creole music of Lionel Belasco is available from Rounder Records Corp, Massachusetts, U.S.

TOP