Episode 122: Tropical Top 100 Part 1

I am beginning my holiday programming in earnest this week, introducing one big theme hat is going to stretch through the end of this year and into the early New Year. This theme was inspired by my strong reaction to the new Rolling Stone magazine list of the top songs of all time… I hated that list, but I was inspired to make my own list covering my own beat of tropical music. The result is the official Tropicology list of the one hundred greatest songs from Africa, Brazil, and Latin America. Longtime listeners know that I don’t really cover the full span of that advertised territory… if you want to be specific, this is my top hundred songs from Brazil, West and Central Africa plus Ethiopia; Cuba, Colombia, Peru; Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Haiti… along with music from the diaspora of those countries in the US and Europe. I’ll add one more qualifier here: I am only covering songs with lyrics. No jazz in the list, so you will not be hearing from the likes of Mulatu Astatke or Joao Donato. 

Today we are going to be hearing the first 27 tracks on the list… I’ll be counting down from number 100 through number 74. But I do have a programming note before we jump in: please be advised that the numbering of the songs does not really get meaningful until we get to the final week of the series. That is to say, I haven’t put a lot of thought into why song number 80 gets a better spot on my list than song number 95. What I have done is to sort the songs by sonic profile, so that tracks play well alongside their neighbors to create enjoyable playlists. Accordingly, my opening set today features the tracks with the most unvarnished sounds; these are the country roots tracks from my top one hundred bracket.