The beautiful Calypso Rose that we will have the pleasure of welcoming on the big stage of the No Logo Festival on August 10th is releasing today its new album: So Calypso!
Originally from the West Indies, Calypso Rose has enjoyed success outside the island at over 70 years of age, with the help of a producer of choice: Manu Chao. Together, they presented a warm discographic nugget that exudes from the West Indian singer’s joie de vivre. Calypso Rose is now a genre in its own right and continues to conquer the ears and move the hips of audiences across Europe.
In her new album So Calypso! the Tobago diva has decided to go back to the references that have rocked her musical career and her life. Nat King Cole, Aretha Franklin, The Melodians, Angélique Kidjo: all of them, Americans, Jamaicans, Beninese, have nourished the line of conduct that the oldest calypso woman has respected since her beginnings in the 1960s: the marriage of black music and social struggle. From Nat King Cole, Calypso Rose thus reprises “Calypso Blues”, composed in 1949 by the pianist crooner, an activist against racism and segregation. Born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1919, Nat King Cole had very quickly embraced the cause of all Americans from elsewhere: African, Caribbean, Hispanic… With Calypso blues (words by Don George, Duke Ellington’s colleague), he challenges the American model, praising the merits of papaya juice and shrimp rice at the expense of hot dogs, the sweetness of life without dollars and the advantages of the Trinidadian woman preferred to ice blondes. Nat King Cole had presented his song in a memorable television sequence, “The Rhythm & Blues Revue” recorded at the Apollo Theater in 1955. Calypso Rose grabbed it with humour, adding a touch of reggae and soul, appearing grimée like a man, straps and straw hat, in a clip.
The 78-year-old diva, with 22 albums to her credit, brilliantly plays with nostalgia, the Caribbean “blues”, the good life and a continuing struggle.