Repertoire Rec.
Exuma : Exuma (BH/US,1970)****°
Repertoire Rec. Exuma : II (BH/US,1970)****'
Another strange fellow, with a unique individuality is Exuma. He’s a singer-songwriter who’s music obviously is influenced by voodoo music & rhythms. With this kind of style I mostly am reminded of Dr.John’s “Gris Gris” which is a great example, and to which it is comparable to some degree. Of course a bit of blues is in it, with a distorted mad voice, and wild rhythms. The songs sound here and there like slave songs knowing the dark side of life, religion and of rituals, and are very evocative.
After the public accepted people like Screaming Jay Hawkins (a longer time before), or Arthur Brown’s crazy world, and were exposed to the brilliant voodoo-inspired Dr.John’s album Gris-Gris”, the public was warmed up, but still not fully prepared for Exuma’s music. Exuma’s singer, McFarlane Anthony McKay, was raised up on the Cat Island, Bahamas. I quote from Windowsmedia : “Raised on traditional Bahamian folk songs and the popular music known as junkanoo, a West African-based Bahamian version of calypso or samba named after a Boxing Day festival that's the local equivalent of Mardi Gras or Carnival, McKay nevertheless planned a career as an architect and fell into life as a performer almost by accident Exuma, the Obeah Man. (Exuma, besides being the name of one of the Bahamas' largest islands, was a spirit balanced between the worlds of the living and the dead; Obeah is an Afro-Caribbean tradition of sorcery, like Santeria in Cuba or Vodun in Haiti.)”
The music is a bit scary at times, because there are provoked some obeah (voodoo-like) rituals and ideas, with tribal rhythms, the singer’s voice is emotional, high peaked sharp, and with comprehensible lyrics that could also lean to blues or gospel, in a different, personal and unique way, guided by visions and life’s contrasts, in a style making an unprepared listener still somewhat uncomfortable. The label dropped him after the second album. Releasing other albums on different labels forced him to make his style a bit more mainstream and comprehensible. Making such world music magic, as on these two first albums, in such a personalized form, was something that was rather unknown in those days (it still might be the case now). Looking back on it, I realize this is the "real thing". To some degree it is very "African" music, made powerful by the individual personality and a vision so that a Western listener should have given recognition to it much earlier.
The second album sounds more fantasy-like and descriptive in a slighly more accessible, still similar form. It can be a bit funny, acceptable for children too, just like an African story told at a ritual communal gathering. Elsewhere can be sensed something more theatrical, gospel theatre a bit, which can sound very personal at other times too. Alice Cooper soon was going to make a fake horror theatre which made the seriousness of this category a bit into a corner of not-the-real World Music, which is of course not really the case. Can you imagine a better destiny for traditions than to put them into contemporary context, relived and revived within a context of a personal experience, from a singer-songwriter with a vision, with a group (called the Junk Band) that revived it all very well with him, in this case, in a rather African-sounding (Bahamian ?) community way. For me, Exuma's music is in a way not much different from how Yma Sumac and her husband interpreted Inca and other traditions, it is done here with elements from the Bahamas. Another great, more accessible album.
PS. I still wonder how much the fact that the only song (on the second album), a song about ‘human spirit’, that related to the US as a comment on their contribution in the Vietnam cause saying the president walked away with the devil, did make Exumas career more difficult or not, considering the importance given to patriotism in those days.
