Episode 15: Charme Offensive

Every culture seems to have its preferred flavors of sentimental music. In the US it would be hard to ignore the influence of the country ballad dating back to Depression-era radio; this style merged with jazz and the blues to create a new generation of sentimental slowjams starting in the 1950s. (Whitney Houston covers Dolly Parton... I can hear a faint echo of twang.)

In France, there is a tradition of romantic troubadour ballads dating back centuries that evolved into the popular 20th Century French genre chanson. Although these sounds never caught on in the US, they were played frequently on Colonial radio stations throughout French colonies in the decades following World War II. These sounds were absorbed by local musicians in places like Ivory Coast, The Congo, Martinique, and Haiti. These musicians blended chanson singing styles with jazz and popular dance music to create sentimental sounds with swing. That is the theme of today's show.

Mostly music from the West Indies in the first few sets, with some attention for the merengue and compas big band sound from Haiti. We will hear some sympathetic sounds from Africa at the end of the first hour. Slowjams kick off the second hour of today's episode, then we follow the sound to the 80s discotheque dancefloor across the Francophone diaspora.