Carlo Jones (2 January 1939 - 10 October 2016) was a Surinam alto saxophone… Read Full Bio ↴Carlo Jones (2 January 1939 - 10 October 2016) was a Surinam alto saxophone player.

The Surinam Kaseko Troubadours with a lineup of alto saxophone, sousaphone, banjo, trumpet, skraki (a bass drum with cymbals atop), snare drum and trombone. Kaseko* is an irresistibly joyful, jumping music, it’s played for setdansi and for “various festive occasions.” On this record, it’s delivered by a team of immensely able musicians, both as ensemble players and soloists. André Jones’s sousaphone playing easily stands comparison with Kirk Joseph’s, while Carlo Jones brings an unstoppable flow of invention to the alto saxophone; he is, incidentally, a virtuoso of the reed squeak, always doing it at the right time, and never overdoing it. The brass players seem telepathic in the way they cede the front line to one another, switching instantly from melody to riffing support, and never clashing or competing for the limelight. If I have discussed kaseko mainly in terms of the influences on it from outside, that’s because I know more about them than I do about Surinamese music. For me, and I suspect for most readers of this review, the joy of discovering kaseko will reside equally in the delightful exuberance of the music, and in that music’s evident connectedness to sounds running the length of the Caribbean.
Surinam is a multi-racial society, as a result of the former colonial powers’ habit of moving labour around their empires as necessary, and the Indian, Indonesian and Amerindian peoples of Surinam all have their own musical cultures; gamelan, khawali and ghazal are among the styles to be found, along with modern Indian and Javanese pop. More relevant to this recording, however, is Melville Herskovits’ famous observation, with reference to the Bush Negro descendants of runaway slaves, that African culture in the New World is best preserved in Surinam. Kaseko is very evidently an African-American music, highly polyrhythmic in a manner that’s strongly reminsicent of both the New Orleans parade bands and the Mardi Gras Indians, but more complex than either. Kaseko was considerably influenced by New Orleans jazz in the thirties, so that the lineup similarities may be more than coincidence. Furthermore, bandleader and saxophonist Carlo Jones refers to his band members as jazzmen, and older people apparently still refer to kaseko as jazz.
Since the thirties, the music has taken on board other influences, seemingly blending in all the new sounds without deleting any of the older ones; during the forties and fifties, Cuban mambo, son and montuño were all the rage, and in the sixties and seventies calypso and Haitian compas were stirred in to the pot. The resulting music is given an unstoppable drive by the tuba, drums and banjo, over which are laid the polyphonic improvisations of jazz, the sinuously sexy lines of Cuban music, and the big, brassy, call-and-response riffs of soca and compas. All these ingredients are evidently mixed in with distinctively Surinamese elements, from the drum music of the Bush Negroes to Christian hymnody: the three main genres played by the Troubadours are the medium tempo bigi poku (which refers to the centrality of the bass drum in this style), the slow, solemn groot bazuinkoor – hymns with added rhythm – and winti poku, named after the winti, which are the spirit deities of the Bush Negroes.
All the tunes on the disc are instrumentals, but it seems that they may have – or once have had – lyrics. Na So Mi Yere So, Sani De Na Uma Koto, for instance, is said to be a set of innuendoes about what lies under women’s skirts, while Todo No Habi Wiwiri Ma’ Tyari Loso, which means “the frog is hairless but full of lice” effortlessly wins my “surreal title of the year” award. The official language of Surinam is Dutch, but these tune titles are in a creole of Dutch, English, French, Spanish and Hebrew (!) called taki-taki, which is the day-to-day means of communication among the different ethnic groups. Sometimes, it’s easy enough for an English speaker to understand: Wi De G’we, Wan Dey Unu Sa Miti Baka, the final track, is obviously “we’re going away, one day we’ll meet again;” it would be harder to deduce, however, that Bigi Emeri Fu Ban Ban Dyari Siton Graman“ commemorates Big Emelius with his hydrocele who lived in Bang Bang’s yard.”

Arhoolie CD 417
MW Records MWCD 3011

*Kaseko is a musical genre from Suriname, a fusion of African, European and American styles. The term kaseko derives from casser le corps (break the body) which referred to a swift dance during the period when slavery was legal in the region. Kaseko is related to other local styles, such as winti and kawina; like them, it uses call-and-response vocals and complex rhythms. Instruments include drums, saxophone, trumpet and, sometimes, a trombone.
Kaseko first evolved out of Bigi Pokoe, which was a 1930s' style played by large brass bands during festivals, strongly influenced by Dixieland jazz. Later, calypso, rock and roll and other styles left an influence.
In the 1970s, Surinamese expatriates, living in the Netherlands, popularized kaseko.