Twofer Tuesday #4

A lost masterpiece from Guadaloupe and a heavyweight dub set from the island of Great Britain and feeling mortal amid such Godlike drums

According to Guadeloupean artist Maria-Line Dahomay, the roots of her island’s traditional music, gwoka (which you can also find as gwo-ka or gro ka), reach back centuries. It’s born from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, “inherited by the African ancestors brought through via the slave trade,” she said. “Gwoka is found in beguine, zouk, jazz, urban music, etc. More than music, this genre has what we call a special ‘santiman’ which is a unique sign of true cultural identity.” The eternal tug and push between the deep bass sound of the boula drum (made from stretched male goatskin) and the makè drum (its head made from the female goatskin) gave the island its heartbeat.

These were the drums that drove mizik a vié nèg (“bad negro music” in Creole), the sound of late ‘60s foment on the island, echoing the Mai ‘68 of its former colonizers across the ocean. Modern gwoka was birthed the year prior when construction workers in Point-a-Pitre went on strike asking for a wage increase. High schoolers joined in and at some point, tensions boiled over and the French riot police opened fire. The ka drums of gwoka powered the protests.

(For further reading on gwoka, I wrote this primer a few years back on Bandcamp.)