The Wild Tchoupitoulas- The Wild Tchoupitoulas
I’ve gone on record, and if I haven’t let me do so, as being a fan of field recordings, that is, recordings of old music that is at a risk of being lost. Think the granddaddy to folk music. This album does something that I’ve only seen a couple of times: mixed the traditional and the modern so that both of them are still apparent. I’ve seen it done in some sampled music, but this is not a sample: this is the people whose songs these were for generations, making modern music out of them. The result is a hodgepodge, a heady fusion of zydeco, Caribbean music, Native American chant, and just a dash of funk for added flavor.
One constant throughout the album is the “call and response” style of music, which I actually had to look up because I never knew what it meant. Now, having read the first paragraph of Wikipedia and thereby becoming an expert, I can say that “call and response” is like a shortened form of the normal “verse chorus verse” format. Instead of speeches following each other, “call and response” is more like a dialogue, with two distinct voices. One example I saw was the Who’s “My Generation” where one voice says “Hope I die before I get old” and the other says “Talkin’ bout my generation.” This technique is all over this album.
There is a whole cultural history contained in this album, from the call and response music of the slaves to chants of the local Native Americans. One could dissect this and find every kind of Louisiana music. Louisiana music styles from zydeco to Cajun folk are already gumbos themselves. This takes spoonfuls of each and puts them together to make it’s own. It tastes like a mixture of all of them, but like none of them at the same time. I won’t say that it’s unique. It’s like a bunch of transparencies laid on top of each other, so there is a distinct shape, but it doesn’t look like anything known.
3/5 I really like this because it feels like it was kind of made for me, field recording lover that I am. But I know that this won’t appeal to everyone. Still if you’re looking for something a little weird, this might be for you.