Rough Guide To Voodoo

If you want to hear real Voodoo Music, this is not it! Very disappointed! The title is very misleading. Rough Guide has no idea what voodoo is.

As a Voodoo 101 this CD has a lot going for it. It's varied, the songs are good and there's a mixture of English and (largely) local dialects. Standout tracks include the opener, Guide Nibo by Grupo Vocal Desandann, and Canto de Xango by Baden Powell (!) and Vinicius de Moraes. Including two versions of Marie Laveau is an interesting decision: I can't decide whether it's lazy production or a desire to provide a contrast between the two versions, given the long playing time of a CD. Rough Guides do this on their Klezmer collection, to largely good effect.

This is a really varied collection, ranging from Louisiana zydeco to Haitian tribal drums, and Brazilian jazz to Gulf Coast Blues, traditional to modern. It's a very high quality mix. I've got quite a few of the Rough Guide CDs now and this is one of the best. The free CD by Erol Josue that comes with it is fantastic, a real genre-defying mix that ranges from traditional, bluesy sounds through jazz and Latin influences to using electronic techniques. Quite seriously I've never heard something quite so hard to describe to people. The nearest I could say is, if you've heard Gil Scott Heron's last album (I'm New Here), it reminded me somewhat of that. But back to the main CD, the highlight for me is Shango by Lord Nelson. Wow, what a ferocious piece of music, the drums are hypnotising. I'd recommend buying this CD just for that.

very good!

A very good start if you are interested in santeria, candomblé and the haitian and caribbean tradition and syncretism in this region.