The 1939 Trinidad Field Recordings of Melville & Frances Herskovits
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Rastlin' Jacob: The Music of the Spiritual Baptists of Trinidad
The 1939 Trinidad Field Recordings of Melville & Frances Herskovits
$16.99

In 1939 anthropologists Melville and Frances Herskovits carried out a summer's work in Toco Village, Trinidad, where they recorded most of their eventual 352 songs from people in this small creole community in the northeast corner of the island. They recorded Carnival songs (calypsos, kalindas, "Wild Indian" songs); bongos, reels, quadrilles, and sentimental songs, Spiritual Baptist songs, and West African (Yoruba) songs, nearly the whole range of music known by the people of Toco. This collection, perhaps the finest body of Caribbean field recordings of its era, was previously accessible only to scholars. This CD (Volume 2 of a projected series of albums from the collection) focuses exclusively on the Spiritual Baptists and their music. Called "Shouters" by the authorities, they were an outlawed church between 1917 and 1951, because of their loud music and because of certain aspects of their rituals. But the Baptists point to Romans 8:26 in their own defense: "&the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." Every effort has been made to convey the warmth of these "groanings" through unobtrusive restoration of the sound of the original performances.

Also available by special order:
Peter Was a Fisherman: The 1939 Trinidad Field Recordings of Melville and Frances Herskovits, V. 1

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